Those who believe in the “golden age” of Andalusia should remember the slaughter of 3,000 to 4,000 Granadan Jews in 1066, a massacre preceded by the polemics of ibn Hazm, who repeated the traditional calumnies characterizing Jews as liars, tricksters, and the “filthiest and vilest of peoples, their unbelief horrid, their ignorance abominable.”
So, too, the verses of Abu Ishaq, ibn Hazim’s contemporary, which sounded all the traditional notes of Islamic Jew-hatred, particularly the “humiliation and abasement” due to “apes.” Since this linkage of traditional rhetoric with violence continues in our own time, we must take such utterances seriously
and not dismiss them as Muslim frustration with neocolonialism or Israel’s so-called occupation of Palestine.
