Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

This comprehensive, meticulously documented collection of scholarly articles presents indisputable evidence that a readily discernible, uniquely Islamic antisemitism--a specific Muslim hatred of Jews--has been expressed continuously since the advent of Islam. Debunking the conventional wisdom, which continues to assert that Muslim animosity toward Jews is entirely a 20th-century phenomenon fueled mainly by the protracted Arab-Israeli conflict, leading scholars provide example after example of antisemitic motifs in Muslim documents reaching back to the beginnings of Islam.

The contributors show that the Koran itself is a significant source of hostility toward Jews, as well as other foundational Muslim texts including the hadith (the words and deeds of Muhammad as recorded by pious Muslim transmitters) and the sira (the earliest Muslim biographies of Muhammad). Many other examples are adduced in the writings of influential Muslim jurists, theologians, and scholars, from the Middle Ages through the contemporary era.

These primary sources, and seminal secondary analyses translated here for the first time into English--such as Hartwig Hirschfeld's mid-1880s essays on Muhammad's subjugation of the Jews of Medina and George Vajda's elegant, comprehensive 1937 study of the hadith--detail the sacralized rationale for Islam's anti-Jewish bigotry. Numerous complementary historical accounts illustrate the resulting plight of Jewish communities in the Muslim world across space and time, culminating in the genocidal threat posed to the Jews of Israel today.

Scholars, educators, and interested lay readers will find this collection an invaluable resource for understanding the phenomenon of Muslim antisemitism, past and present.

Average Customer Rating:

The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History	Customer Rating:
Excellent. Not a beach book. Leaves no doubt that mainstream Islam is a bloodthirsty, oppressive religion.

weak Islamic bashing	Customer Rating:
This is highly selective and predictably biased. Not really worthy of being dignified as "scholarship" at all as most balanced scholars of the history of Islam will affirm.

The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History

Customer Rating:

Professor Bostom has accomplished a daring feat by refuting an age old myth within the discipline of Middle Eastern History. His thesis statement, that Jews were not treated better under Muslim auspices, cuts through preconceived notions. It is an immense work that will take the avid historian weeks to go through, but it is all worth the work. Even though he is not an historian by trade he still manages to conjure new and old muslim source material, which makes his case all the more solid. It is not only a wondrous scholarly achievement, it is a stab at the greater narrative of Islamic history and religiosity. Come one come all and take a walk on the historical wild side, cause you might never come back. Read it and enjoy.

Considerably biased

Customer Rating:

As a non-Muslim who has done some minimal study of Islam, I found this book to be very one-sided and polemical. Even a non-expert like myself can easily identify the biases and one-sided arguments in this book. Given the somewhat understandable bias against Islam in the Western world, no doubt many people will find this book confirms their views of Islam. However, I would encourage those inclined to agree with the author to consider that many Muslims do not hate Jews and to do their own research on this subject by reading or talking to Muslims. Furthermore, consider that it would be quite easy for a Muslim to write a similarly-biased book arguing that Judaism or Christianity is at its core anti-Muslim.

FALSE ARGUMENTS. DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME, AND MONEY	Customer Rating:
Just from my own research I found at least 23 false argumnet through out the book. Unfourtunately, some people just want to hate others. For those people, this book might be good.