Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2002 19:25:59 GMT
Subject: Fw:Muslim Clerics State: Jews Are The Descendants of Apes, Pigs, And O
From: rb <chaimberel-AT-juno.com>


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From: "MEMRI" <memri-AT-memri.org>
To: "MEMRI Subscribers" <memri-AT-memri.org>
Subject: Muslim Clerics State: Jews Are The Descendants of Apes, Pigs, And Other Animals
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2002 06:22:32 -0500

Special Report - Arab Antisemitism 
November 1, 2002
No. 9

Based on Koranic Verses, Interpretations, and Traditions, Muslim Clerics State: 
The Jews Are The Descendants of Apes, Pigs, And Other Animals

To view this Special Dispatch in HTML format, please visit: 
http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SR902

The following is a summary of a MEMRI study on the subject. The full report will be available on Friday, November 1, 2002, at www.memri.org/release.  

Introduction

Defining the Jews as "the descendants of apes and pigs" is widespread today in religious, educational and public discourse in the Arab world. In his weekly sermon (April 2002) the Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Muhammad Sayyid Al-Tantawi, the most senior authority in the Sunni Muslim world, described the Jews as "the enemies of Allah, sons of pigs and apes."(1)

Viewing Jews as the "descendants of apes and pigs" is grounded in the most important Islamic religious sources, both in divine revelation in the Koran,(2) in the Hadiths (traditions about the Prophet Muhammad), and in the most reliable compilations of traditions collected by the leading ninth-century sages Al-Bukhari and Muslim [both mention transformation into mice and lizards as well]. The notion of transforming Jews into animals appears also in ancient Arabic literature.(3)

It should be noted that the religious Muslim sources also mention transformation of Christians(4) and sinful Muslims(5) into apes and pigs. However, in the case of Christians and Muslims the sources are not Koranic - as in the case of Jews - but are Koranic commentary and traditions. Furthermore, the number of references to Jews as apes and pigs in these sources is greater.

These beliefs about the Jews were common not only during the period in which they arose, but also in the pre-Islamic era, and clearly since then. The belief that people could be turned into animals, statues, or stars by supernatural intervention - primarily by divine punishment - was prevalent in the pre-Islamic era among Arabs and other peoples.

In North Africa, under the Muslim Aghlabid dynasty (9th through 11th centuries), Jews were forced to wear a shoulder patch with a picture of a monkey and Christians had to wear a patch with a picture of a pig. These images had to be affixed to the doors of their respective homes. In Spain, during periods of friction between the various religious communities, the Muslims called the Jews "apes" and the Christians "pigs and dogs."(6)  Furthermore, the concept of transformation of humans into animals influenced Islamic dietary law.(7)

The Muslim Religious Commentary 

The most common explanation among Koran commentators for punishing Jews by transforming them into apes and pigs attributes the punishment to their violation of the Sabbath. According to the Koran, the Jews in question were inhabitants of the village of Iliya.(8)  Testing their obedience to His precepts, God made a school of fish appear on the coast on the Sabbath and disappear at nightfall until the next Sabbath. The Jews, who were banned from working on that day, devised ways of circumventing the divine prohibition. According to one tradition, one Jew trapped a fish secretly on the Sabbath, tied it with a string to a stake in the ground and threw it back into the water. The next day he pulled it out and ate it. When he repeated his deed his neighbors smelled the fish and followed suit. For a long time they secretly ate fish and Allah did not hasten to punish them. But when they began to fish and sell their catches openly at the markets, they were punished. 

Some of the Jews warned the sinners that Allah would punish them. When the latter refused to stop, they separated themselves from the sinners with a wall. One day, the sinners were not seen leaving their gate. When those who observed the divine precept climbed the wall and opened the doors of the locked houses they found that all men, women, and children had turned into apes.(9) According to some commentators, the young people among the sinners became apes, while the elderly became pigs.(10)

The Punishment in Practical Terms

Most of the commentators take the writings literally and maintain that the Jews were physically changed into apes and pigs, as explicitly stated in the Koran. Only one Koran commentator, Mujahid,(11) who is cited in other Koran interpretations, held that the Jews were not physically transformed and that the change was metaphoric; their hearts were changed and their souls, but not their external appearance, came to resemble those of apes.(12)

In a recently published series of articles in the Hamas monthly Falastin Al-Muslima, author Ibrahim Al-'Ali takes the approach of physical change literally: "Allah did not mete out the punishment of transformation on any nation except the Jews. The significance of it is actual change in the appearance of the Jew and perfect transformation from human to bestial condition... from human appearance to the form of genuine apes, pigs, mice, and lizards..."(13)

The Connection Between the Sin and the Punishment

The 14th century Koran commentator Ibn Kathir(14) explains that every deed has its appropriate recompense; the Jews conspired to fish on the Sabbath, preparing hooks, nets, and poles ahead of time. Since their sins and subterfuges were outwardly like the truth, but in essence opposed to it, so was their reward one suited to their deeds.(15)

Jordanian researcher Dr. Sallah Al-Khaledi follows the same argument: "The logic of this transformation is that Allah wanted them to be humans who would live as real people and actualize their humanity in the best possible way. But when they rebelled against Allah's laws, they rejected divine grace, and thus relinquished their humanity and honor and turned spiritually into animals. Then Allah [also] changed their form into apes, and turned them into real animals, [thus] creating a correlation between the spiritual and physical images."(16)

Did the Transformed Jews Have Offspring?

Thirteenth-century Koran commentator Al-Qurtubi explained that two approaches developed among clerics on this matter: The first considers all apes to be the offspring of the sons of Israel. Those of this view base their belief on Hadiths in which the Prophet Muhammad warned against eating particular animals, such as mice and lizards, for fear that they were originally the sons of Israel. The second states that the apes who used to be Jews left no offspring, and that therefore today's apes, pigs, and other animals are the offspring of animals in existence before the divine punishment. Early Islamic commentator Ibn Abbas maintained that anyone whose form was changed lived for no more than three days and did not eat, drink, or propagate.


Ibrahim Al-'Ali, writing in Falastin Al-Muslima, states that the Jews who were turned into apes, pigs, lizards, and mice were also punished by not being able to reproduce. However, he claims, "The extinction of the Jews punished with transformation does not mean that their punishment had ended. The punishment left its mark in the souls of the Jews who came after them: their spirit, their opinions, their feelings, and their ways of thought - which are reflected in face and external appearance - became like their nature and like the appearance of apes and pigs, and this profoundly affected their ways of behavior."(17)

Furthermore, according to the article, the whole theory of evolution was devised by the Jews to erase the shame emanating from the punishment: "...Since the Jews felt disgrace and shame because of this special punishment, which changed them into the brothers of apes and pigs, they attempted to dispel this accusation from themselves with the help of the satanic thought that guided them in despising the entire human race, by saying that [man's] origin was in animals, and that it developed over time from ape to human form, by means of the theory... of the Jewish ape Darwin."(18)

Conclusion

Associating Jews with apes and pigs, as well as other animals, is firmly grounded in the most important and authoritative religious sources, namely the Koran. The idea that God punishes sinners by transforming them into animals can also be found in various pre-Islamic sources. The concept of transforming the Jews into apes and pigs has spread among Muslim societies, and contemporary writers still discuss the idea and offer explanations to theological problems that the ancient Koranic commentators addressed. 

All links referenced in this report were current at the time of its publishing but may no longer be so.

Endnotes:
(1) www.palestine-info.info/arabic/palestoday/readers/mashhoor/22_4_02.htm
(2) Divine punishment of the Jews is mentioned in three Koran verses: "...They are those whom Allah has cast aside and on whom His wrath has fallen and of whom He has made some as apes and swine..." (5:60); "...You have surely known the end of those who from amongst you who transgressed in the matter of the Sabbath, in consequence of which We condemned them: Be ye like apes, despised" (2:65); and "When, instead of amending, they became more persistent in the pursuit of that which they were forbidden, We condemned them: Be ye as apes, despised" (7:166).
(3) In his ninth-century treatise The Book of Animals, the greatest of these authors, Al-Jahiz (d. 869) mentions that it is generally thought that the cheetah, eel, white ant, mouse, and lizard were originally Jews. He mentions the tradition telling how a sage saw a man eating a lizard and said to him: "Know that you have eaten one of the sheikhs of the sons of Israel." He does not mention why they were changed into animals, but does say that proof of this is that "the lizard's foot resembles the human hand." See Al-Jahiz, Omar bin Bahar, Kittab Al-Hayawan. Cairo: Mustafa Al-Bai Al-Halabi and sons (1943), Col. I, p. 309.
(4) See commentary on Koranic verses 5:112-115, by the renowned 10th-century commentator Al-Tabari. Al-Tabari explains that the apostles were punished by being turned into apes and pigs, or, according to another version, pigs only, because they did not fulfill God's demands even though He produced a miracle for them by bringing down a table laden with food from the heavens, as they requested. 
(5) Punishment by transformation into apes and pigs on Judgment Day was for Muslim sinners whose ideas (such as denying predestination) and deeds (such as drinking wine, playing instruments, and singing) had a Jewish or Christian connection. The aim of punishing these sinners with punishments identified with Jews and Christians was to fight foreign influences that had infiltrated Islamic society and were considered a threat to the unique Muslim identity. See Uri Rubin, "Apes, Pigs, and the Islamic Identity," Israel Oriental Studies XVII (1997), pp. 93-102. 
(6) F. Viré, "Kird," Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition.
(7) M. Cook. "Early Islamic dietary law," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam [JSAI], 7(1986), 223-233.
(8) Apparently Eilat, on the Red Sea. Ibn Kathir (7:166) explains that Iliya is situated on the coast between Egypt and Al-Madina. According to Al-Damiri, Iliya is between Midian and Al-Tur. Other places identified in the commentary with "the village on the coast" are "Median" situated between Iliya and Al-Tur (see Al-Tabari 2:65, Ibn Kathir 2:65.
(9) Al-Tabari 2:65, Ibn Kathir 2:65. 
(10) Al-Qurtubi 2:65. 
(11) Mujahid bin Jaber Al-Maki (died circa 718-722).
(12) Al-Tabari, 2:65, Ibn Kathir, 2:65, Al-Qurtubi 2:65.
(13) Falastin Al-Muslima (London), September 1996, pp. 54-55.
(14) Isma'il bin Amer Ibn Kathir (died 1373).
(15) Ibn Kathir, 2:65.
(16) Falastin Al-Muslima (London), September 1996, pp. 54-55.
(17) Ibid.
(18) Falastin Al-Muslima (London), September 1996, pp. 54-55. 

*********************
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and documents cited, as well as background information, are available on request.

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