Yiddish is mostly Bavarian with some Hebrew words. Ladino is mostly Spanish from before 1492. I learned some Bavarian growing up and found I could understand Yiddish pretty well. I learned Spanish concentrating from about the 11th to 17th centuries and found that I could understand Ladino. I don't know the rest.

But Hebrew is used in songs that Jews sing all around the world. Most Jews don't know what they are singing, but they know how to make most of the mouth noises.

epepke wrote:Yiddish is mostly Bavarian with some Hebrew words. Ladino is mostly Spanish from before 1492. I learned some Bavarian growing up and found I could understand Yiddish pretty well. I learned Spanish concentrating from about the 11th to 17th centuries and found that I could understand Ladino. I don't know the rest.

But Hebrew is used in songs that Jews sing all around the world. Most Jews don't know what they are singing, but they know how to make most of the mouth noises.

Yes, the thing that made Yiddish distinguish Jews from gentiles was that Yiddish mainly was largely spoken among Slavic peoples - so altho' a Bavarian would understand it fairly well, a Slovak or an Ukrainian wouldn't. Likewise, although Ladino originated in Spain, for quite some time it was spoken in the Ottoman empire. Qaraim is related to Turkish, but is nowadays almost exclusively spoken in Lithuania. So often, these aren't that much distinct from various non-Jewish languages, but the fact that they're maintained even under shifting linguistic circumstances is kind of the unifying factor.

Peter Brown wrote:

Islamic cultures in general have been less anti-Semitic than Christian ones.

I’d disagree with that in as much Islam treats all non Muslims the same… equally badly.

That's completely wrong. Islam DOES, most explicitly, draw a distinction between the followers of other Abrahamic religions - the "people of the book", and atheists and polytheists. The koran is full of advice about the importance of treating the former well and getting on peacefully with them.

Islam does not force conversion after it invades and occupies. Instead Islam offers three choices to all non Muslims. Convert to Islam, pay a poll tax along with other optional edicts designed to make conversion the better option or death by the sword.

I’d suggest all three options Islam offers as anti Semitic by default.

This is also historical revisionism. Most of the muslim conquests led to the settlers reaching very peaceful terms with those they conquered, and pretty much leaving them in peace to get on with their lives - including practising their own religions freely. They had to do this because there simply weren't enough muslim invaders to rule all the lands they conquered so quickly by sheer force of numbers. Yes, they imposed the dhimmi tax, but raising some such form of tribute is what invaders had always done. That's how empires are built: it's no different in principle from the Roman empire, or indeed the British and Spanish many centuries later exploiting the labour and resources of various new world people and feeding the wealth back to Europe. There's certainly nothing to indicate that their treatment of those they conquered and taxed was particularly barbarous, and much to indicate that it was more enlightened than most.

Interestingly, when the Christian crusaders came to "liberate" the holy land, most of the jews living there sided with their muslim rulers and fought together against the Christians, rather than seeing the Christians as natural allies against the oppression of Islam. Probably wise, considering the numbers of jews that the Christians massacred along the way.

There is no denying the strain of anti-semitism in Wahhabist islam that has emerged over the last two centuries, but it obscures the previous millennium in which peaceful coexistence between the two groups was the rule rather than the exception.

There is no denying the strain of anti-semitism in Wahhabist islam that has emerged over the last two centuries, but it obscures the previous millennium in which peaceful coexistence between the two groups was the rule rather than the exception.

I keep hearing this all the time. It's true, but I'm not sure what it means. It might come in handy if I were to stumble across a time machine. It also might inform the jury of the gold medal for Best Fucking Monotheistic Religion.

Sure, there have been Islamic societies that were pretty great, especially when they were a bit Sufi, which appealed to Jews as well (including the son of Maimonodes). But I don't live then. I live now, and some things have happened since then.

epepke wrote:

There is no denying the strain of anti-semitism in Wahhabist islam that has emerged over the last two centuries, but it obscures the previous millennium in which peaceful coexistence between the two groups was the rule rather than the exception.

I keep hearing this all the time. It's true, but I'm not sure what it means. It might come in handy if I were to stumble across a time machine. It also might inform the jury of the gold medal for Best Fucking Monotheistic Religion.

Sure, there have been Islamic societies that were pretty great, especially when they were a bit Sufi, which appealed to Jews as well (including the son of Maimonodes). But I don't live then. I live now, and some things have happened since then.

Sure. But if you look at the totality of Islam in the world today (as opposed to the extreme end of the wedge that certain parties in the media want us to think is typical and mainstream), Wahabbist extremism is a very small proportion of that. Most muslim-majority societies have sizable Christian and Jewish minorities living in them with full and equal rights under the law. The lunatic finge like Saudi and Pakistan are just that - a fringe.

Again, I'm not denying for a moment that there is anti-semitism within Islam. But the idea that it is routinely made part of social structure itself, everywhere that Islam settles, is misguided. And historically, it'd be a hard call but I reckon Christian societies have probably slaughtered more jews than Islamic ones.

@Beatsong,
if Nazi Germany is counted as a Christian society, Christian societies lead by millions. Or thereabout.

In Medieval China, Muslims once rioted when the Chinese government were introducing a new tax aimed specifically at the Jews.

From second hand reports I understand that the fundamentalist Jewish political body in Israel holds enough votes that the other parties can't get a majority without their support allowing them to push their agenda through ensuring that the fundies get there way and don't need to do much in the way of work.

If there are any Israeli's who can comment on this please do.

Beatsong wrote:

Peter Brown wrote:

Islamic cultures in general have been less anti-Semitic than Christian ones.

I’d disagree with that in as much Islam treats all non Muslims the same… equally badly.

That's completely wrong. Islam DOES, most explicitly, draw a distinction between the followers of other Abrahamic religions - the "people of the book", and atheists and polytheists. The koran is full of advice about the importance of treating the former well and getting on peacefully with them.

Islam does not force conversion after it invades and occupies. Instead Islam offers three choices to all non Muslims. Convert to Islam, pay a poll tax along with other optional edicts designed to make conversion the better option or death by the sword.

I’d suggest all three options Islam offers as anti Semitic by default.

This is also historical revisionism. Most of the muslim conquests led to the settlers reaching very peaceful terms with those they conquered, and pretty much leaving them in peace to get on with their lives - including practising their own religions freely. They had to do this because there simply weren't enough muslim invaders to rule all the lands they conquered so quickly by sheer force of numbers. Yes, they imposed the dhimmi tax, but raising some such form of tribute is what invaders had always done. That's how empires are built: it's no different in principle from the Roman empire, or indeed the British and Spanish many centuries later exploiting the labour and resources of various new world people and feeding the wealth back to Europe. There's certainly nothing to indicate that their treatment of those they conquered and taxed was particularly barbarous, and much to indicate that it was more enlightened than most.

Interestingly, when the Christian crusaders came to "liberate" the holy land, most of the jews living there sided with their muslim rulers and fought together against the Christians, rather than seeing the Christians as natural allies against the oppression of Islam. Probably wise, considering the numbers of jews that the Christians massacred along the way.

There is no denying the strain of anti-semitism in Wahhabist islam that has emerged over the last two centuries, but it obscures the previous millennium in which peaceful coexistence between the two groups was the rule rather than the exception.

I want a pair of those spectacles! Rose is my favourite colour!

What do you think would happen, and how do you think Liberals/ Labour supporters would react, if lets say...We made Liberals/ Labour supporters pay 10% more tax if a conservative government was in power? How would Labour supporters react, if a conservative/Liberal government was in power, who taxed all labour supporters 10% more?

Its called discrimination. Not rocket science.

Edited to add...People who dont see this discrimination, are whats called "apologists", useful idiots!

On the other hand, dhimmis didn't have to pay zakat. (Which probably was somewhat less, but at times, muslim authorities reduced the difference to discourage conversions ...)

Christians in Syria and Lebanon found Muslim rule superior to Byzantine rule from an economical point of view, as they were taxed much lighter by the Muslims.

As a lesser infraction in the west, Jews couldn't hold higher office in Sweden until the 1950s! On the books, there were laws that forbade Jews from settling in Finland, except in the cities of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Norrköping into the early 20th century*. Stuff like that has been just as prevalent in Christian countries. First in the latter half of the 19th century, Jews were given the same rights as far as property, trade, etc is concerned.

This isn't apologetics, this is showing that Islam and Christianity have about equally dirty hands as far as Jews go. (But compare other things - remnant communities of pre-islamic religions in Muslim countries are way more numerous than such remnants in Europe - you have like, some Samis on the north end of Europe, and the Jews - the Muslims have yazidi, zoroastrians, (jews, christians,) mandaeans, samaritans, ...

* the astute reader will notice not a single one of those cities are in Finland in the first place! (This follows from the funny exception that the Czar permitted Swedish law to remain in force in Finland after Russia conquered it. The Lutheran Finns saw it quite useful that all Jews that wanted to immigrate were restricted to do so into a few towns in *another damn country*. The czar enforced an exception for Jews in the Russian army, however.)

james1v wrote:What do you think would happen, and how do you think Liberals/ Labour supporters would react, if lets say...We made Liberals/ Labour supporters pay 10% more tax if a conservative government was in power? How would Labour supporters react, if a conservative/Liberal government was in power, who taxed all labour supporters 10% more?

Not sure I understand the relevance of the question. Do you mean NOW? In which case, don't you first have to point out to me where in the Islamic world Christians and Jews have to pay 10% more tax than muslims? Then we would have something to compare with.

If OTOH you mean at the time that the dhimmi tax was levied in muslim countries, then you'd have to revise your analogy since the Labour party didn't exist then. Presuming that your tenuous point is about attitudes to discrimination in general, then pretty much all of Europe at that time had most definite, legally defined areas of discrimination against jews. Far more than most muslim countries in fact. And probably most people in the west would have been well in favour of any additional tax upon jews.

If OTOH you want to compare attitudes to discrimination in the west NOW, to parallel attitudes in muslim countries 500 years ago, then that's a pretty silly and useless comparison and one has to wonder why you would even want to make it.

Its called discrimination. Not rocket science.

Neither is a basic study of history and accounting for progression in law and attitudes throughout most of the world over time, or a basic respect for comparing like with like.

Edited to add...People who dont see this discrimination, are whats called "apologists", useful idiots!

That's very much a personal attack. Fortunately there's no need to report it as any sting it might hold is blunted by the absurdity of your "argument". Christian societies today treat the jews better than Islamic ones did a thousand years ago. Yeah, OK.

Beatsong wrote:Sure. But if you look at the totality of Islam in the world today (as opposed to the extreme end of the wedge that certain parties in the media want us to think is typical and mainstream), Wahabbist extremism is a very small proportion of that. Most muslim-majority societies have sizable Christian and Jewish minorities living in them with full and equal rights under the law. The lunatic finge like Saudi and Pakistan are just that - a fringe.

It is, unquestionably. Indonesia is the country with most Muslims, and they've only had fewer than a half dozen bombings by nutty Muslims.

At the same time, the overwhelming majority of the world's Christians have no problem with evolution. Yet we still have problems from those who do, nicht wahr?

epepke wrote:It is, unquestionably. Indonesia is the country with most Muslims, and they've only had fewer than a half dozen bombings by nutty Muslims.

A Jewish acquaintance of mine related that when he visited Indonesia, when praying - he's orthodox - he always went to Mosques, to avoid the rather prevalent Hindu idolatrous thingies in that area. He was consistently met by friendly, albeit curious Muslims that seemed to consider him an interesting fellow - if we say they saw Muslims as brothers (which they meet on an almost daily basis), they saw him as a cousin from a far away town, that they seldom got to know as well as they wanted (bad analogy).

Apart from which the bombings in Indonesia are the work of some particular muslim extremists organisations - not the official policy of a muslim government or laws of a muslim state - and AFAIK have nothing to do with anti-semitism in particular anyway.

And anti-semitism enforced by muslim states is what we were arguing about. Not "all the other things we dislike about muslims" (even though that's what muslim-bashers invariably change the subject to when they lose any argument about specifics).

Beatsong wrote:Apart from which the bombings in Indonesia are the work of some particular muslim extremists organisations - not the official policy of a muslim government or laws of a muslim state - and AFAIK have nothing to do with anti-semitism in particular anyway.

And anti-semitism enforced by muslim states is what we were arguing about. Not "all the other things we dislike about muslims" (even though that's what muslim-bashers invariably change the subject to when they lose any argument about specifics).

Um, no. We were talking about Sam Harris on the persecution of Jews. It's the title. Pretty easy, I think. You can read it. The idea of Muslim anti-Semitism was a sidetrack.

Zwaarddijk wrote:

epepke wrote:It is, unquestionably. Indonesia is the country with most Muslims, and they've only had fewer than a half dozen bombings by nutty Muslims.

A Jewish acquaintance of mine related that when he visited Indonesia, when praying - he's orthodox - he always went to Mosques, to avoid the rather prevalent Hindu idolatrous thingies in that area. He was consistently met by friendly, albeit curious Muslims that seemed to consider him an interesting fellow - if we say they saw Muslims as brothers (which they meet on an almost daily basis), they saw him as a cousin from a far away town, that they seldom got to know as well as they wanted (bad analogy).

I believe that.

Ubjon wrote:From second hand reports I understand that the fundamentalist Jewish political body in Israel holds enough votes that the other parties can't get a majority without their support allowing them to push their agenda through ensuring that the fundies get there way and don't need to do much in the way of work.

If there are any Israeli's who can comment on this please do.

Yes, that's how I understand it--that's how a coalition government works. It's very hard and there's no incentive for compromise. A party only needs to get 2% of the vote to get a seat in parliament, so those seats can wield a disproportionate amount of influence.

(I'm not Israeli, but my dh is quite knowledgeable about these things. He says, and I quote: "It's because of their stupid-ass system" )

Tbickle wrote:

cpt_pineapple wrote:How is a religion an ethnic group?

Culture (including religion) is one thing that can define an ethnic group.

Edit: Sorry for reanimating the zombie...