What is the nature of Muslim-Jewish relations in Europe today? Based on qualitative interview data, this book explores narratives about Jews among Muslims in Norway. Drawing on culturally embedded narratives as well as personal experiences, interviewees reflect on the relationship between Jews and Muslims. The interreligious exchange between Islam and Judaism is as old as Islam. Today, the Arab-Israeli conflict has become an important frame of reference in the public discourse on Muslim-Jewish relations. The narratives presented in this book delineate shifting community boundaries and identifications that transcend dichotomised notions of "Muslims versus Jews." The analysis shows how Jewish history in Europe and the history of modern antisemitism serve as interpretative keys in the narratives, used for explaining the situation of the Muslim minority today. Furthermore, the book demonstrates how interviewees' perceptions of society's attitudes toward Muslim and Jewish experiences also strongly influence their perceptions of Muslim-Jewish relations.

In recent years, harassment and violent attacks against Jews and Muslims have become issues of concern in many Western countries. However, antisemitism and Islamophobia are often framed as essentially different phenomena, not least as a result of political polarization and deeply divided opinions on both immigration and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The present volume challenges this view and argues that antisemitism and Islamophobia are largely related phenomena and linked to xenophobic ideas in the general population. The study is based on varied and comprehensive survey data about attitudes towards Jews and Muslims in Norway, including the attitudes and experiences of the two minority groups themselves. Moreover, it supplements survey analysis with qualitative research, exploring the discursively constructed boundaries of “what can or cannot be said” about Jews and Muslims. Focused on the rich material of the Norwegian case, the volume thus offers new perspectives for the study of prejudice in general.

This book traces the history of conflict and contact between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Ottoman Middle East prior to 1914.

This book examines an undertheorized topic in the study of religion and sacred texts: the figure of the neighbor. By analyzing and comparing this figure in Jewish, Christian and Islamic texts and receptions, the chapters explore a conceptual shift from "Children of Abraham" to "Ambiguous Neighbors." Through a variety of case studies using diverse methods and material, chapters explore the neighbor in these neighboring texts and traditions. The figure of the neighbor seems like an innocent topic at the surface. It is an everyday phenomenon, that everyone have knowledge about and experiences with. Still, analytically, it has a rich and innovative potential. Recent interdisciplinary research employs this figure to address issues of cultural diversity, gender, migration, ethnic relationships, war and peace, environmental challenges and urbanization. The neighbor represents the borderline between insider and outsider, friend and enemy, us and them. This ambiguous status makes the neighbor particularly interesting as an entry point into issues of cultural complexity, self-definition and identity. This volume brings all the intersections of religion, ethnicity, gender, and socio-cultural diversity into the same neighborhood, paying attention to sacred texts, receptions and contemporary communities. The Ambiguous Figure of the Neighbor in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Texts and Receptions offers a fascinating study of the intersections between Jewish, Christian and Islamic text, and will be of interest to anyone working on these traditions.

Introducing a new comparative theory of ethnicity, Andreas Wimmer shows why ethnicity matters in certain societies and contexts but not in others, and why it is sometimes associated with inequality and exclusion, with political and public debate, with closely-held identities, while in other cases ethnicity does not structure the allocation of resources, invites little political passion, and represent secondary aspects of individual identity.

A historical tour de force that demolishes the myths and taboos that have surrounded Jewish and Israeli history, The Invention of the Jewish People offers a new account of both that demands to be read and reckoned with. Was there really a forced exile in the first century, at the hands of the Romans? Should we regard the Jewish people, throughout two millennia, as both a distinct ethnic group and a putative nation—returned at last to its Biblical homeland? Shlomo Sand argues that most Jews actually descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered far across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The formation of a Jewish people and then a Jewish nation out of these disparate groups could only take place under the sway of a new historiography, developing in response to the rise of nationalism throughout Europe. Beneath the biblical back fill of the nineteenth-century historians, and the twentieth-century intellectuals who replaced rabbis as the architects of Jewish identity, The Invention of the Jewish People uncovers a new narrative of Israel’s formation, and proposes a bold analysis of nationalism that accounts for the old myths. After a long stay on Israel’s bestseller list, and winning the coveted Aujourd’hui Award in France, The Invention of the Jewish People is finally available in English. The central importance of the conflict in the Middle East ensures that Sand’s arguments will reverberate well beyond the historians and politicians that he takes to task. Without an adequate understanding of Israel’s past, capable of superseding today’s opposing views, diplomatic solutions are likely to remain elusive. In this iconoclastic work of history, Shlomo Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel’s future.