More Than a Hundred Years Ago, Jews, Muslims, and Christians Lived in Peaceful Coexistence. Is It True?

On December 8, 2025, CAM (Combat Antisemitism Movement) published an interview with Sheikh Mahammad Mehdizade, European Director of the Global Imams Council. Unfortunately, some of Mr. Mehdizade’s statements are factually inaccurate.

One of the statements claims that more than a hundred years ago, Jews, Muslims, and Christians lived in peaceful coexistence. But is this true?

We contacted CAM to request publication of our commentary (see the full correspondence below); however, we have not received a response to date.

We urge media outlets to ensure that goodwill is matched by rigor and that public understanding of Islamic doctrine is not compromised for the sake of idealistic narratives.

— CSPII Monitor Team

↓ Read our full response and documentation here ↓

From: CSPII Monitor <[email protected]>
Date: Dec 22, 2025 9:00 PM CET Time
Subject: Regarding the interview with Sheikh Mehdizade

Dear CAM editors and staff,

With regard to the article on your website "‘We as Muslims Cannot Be Against Jews’: Sheikh Mahammad Mehdizade on Challenging Islamic Radicalism and Combating Antisemitism in Europe" (December 8, 2025), we would respectfully like to raise several concerns:

“We believe in the prophets before Mohammed, how can we be antisemitic?”

Sheikh Mahammad Mehdizade conflates hatred of Jews today and in the past 1400 years of Islam with hatred of Jewish figures from the Bible who lived more than a thousand years before Mohammed. The Islamic narrative blames Jews in the time of Mohammed and their ancestors for distorting the Torah and the messages of the prophets. It considers these prophets to have been Muslims, not Jewish by religion, and that Jews already in the time of the prophets and up to the time of Mohammed distorted or concealed this truth.

The Islamic doctrine tells its own story about the prophets, with characters that have resembling names and similar, though not identical backgrounds. The stories are different, and sometimes the messages and morals are radically different. One example would be Abraham/Ibrahim, who according to Islamic doctrine built the Kaaba in Mecca and intended to sacrifice Ishmael, not Isaac. The moral of his story is not Jewish particularism and a covenant with Yahweh, but about total submission to Allah. Another example would be David/Dawud, where in the Torah the central moral lesson is that even kings sin and must face consequences, while in Islamic doctrine Dawud never committed adultery with Batsheba, and prophets are “maʿṣūm” (protected from major sin).

“More than a hundred years ago when Jews, Muslims and Christians lived in peaceful coexistence”

Mehdizade might be referring to some cherry-picked episodes of relative coexistence and quietly ignoring (a) the legal hierarchy built into Islamic law and (b) a long list of major persecutions and massacres.

The Islamic doctrinal foundation for relationship with Jews living under Islamic rule was set in the Khaybar agreement, which is the precedent to the dhimmi contract, and later seen in the Pact of Umar. The rules for dhimmis were: no building new churches or synagogues, no public display of crosses, distinctive clothing, not riding horses, no bearing arms, no proselytizing, obligations like admitting Muslims into their churches and hosting them, the jizya (a punitive tax on Jews and Christians), and the possibility that rulers could tighten or relax enforcement depending on mood or politics.

Even in the specific periods where the claim of coexistence is most romanticized, such as the Umayyad al-Andalus emirate (8th–11th centuries, especially Córdoba) and the Ottoman Empire & the millet system (15th–19th centuries), Jews and Christians were not legal equals under the dominant Islamic framework. They were typically treated as dhimmis, paid jizya, and could face state-enforced social restrictions (sometimes including distinctive dress rules). Enforcement varied widely, so daily life was not uniformly oppressive, but the legal hierarchy made minorities structurally vulnerable to policy reversals and periodic persecution.

There are also many more cases where things were much worse. It is impossible to ignore the following events and facts:

• The 1066 Granada massacre, where about 4,000 Jews were massacred
• Almohad rule (12th–13th centuries) in Morocco and al-Andalus, Jews and Christians in many areas were given the choice of conversion, exile, or death;
• Egypt and the Copts - Copts gradually became a minority only after the 14th century, in part due to repeated waves of persecution, increased taxation, destruction of churches and pressure to convert under different Muslim dynasties (Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, Mamluk, Ottoman)
• North Africa & Morocco – Fez, 1033 – around 6,000 Jews massacred. Fez 1465 massacre, massacre of thousands of Jews under Sultan Mulay al-Yazid (late 18th century)
• The Ottoman Balkans and the Christian genocides, including the April Uprising and Batak massacre (Bulgaria, 1876) and the Armenian genocide (1915-2916)
• Mughal India (1658–1707) after Akbar’s relatively tolerant reign, policy moved back toward a more classical Islamic framework, Jizya was reimposed, Hindu temples were sanctioned and destroyed.
• Overall, 270 million non-Muslims were killed by jihad over the last 1,400 years. LINK

“Islam is not antisemitic”

Here are just a few examples of many in the Islamic doctrine:

Koran 98:6: Allah declares all non-Muslims to be the worst of all created beings

Koran 9:73: Allah commands Mohammed to fight non-Muslims and to be harsh with them

Hadith, Bukhari 2926 (also 2925, 2922, 2921a)
Mohammed: “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. “O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.”

Koran 5:51
“O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.”

Sira, Ibn Ishaq 690: On one occasion, Mohammed was personally involved in beheading 600–900 defenseless Jewish prisoners of war.

Not a popular view

The primary Islamic doctrine (Koran, Hadith, Sira) is one thing, and the Islamic world (Muslims, scholars, political leaders and Islamic organizations) is another. While Mehdizede and the Global Imams Council (GIC) tell us that our view of Islam is wrong, very few within the Islamic world align with their view. 

For example, the GIC opposes and criticizes Hamas, and puts all the blame for everything that happens in Gaza on Hamas and its strategy of using human shields. The GIC never blamed Israel for the deaths that arise from Hamas’ strategy of using human shields. They did not blame Israel for  genocide, famine or intentionally targeting civilians. They only criticize Hamas, which they view as having and acting out of the wrong version of Islam. So, is this position common within the Islamic world? Not at all. The biggest Islamic organizations in the West such as CAIR, ISNA, FIOE, MCCE, MCB and more, all constantly blame Israel for everything, ignoring Hamas’ jihad that sacrifices Muslims just so that they can pin it on Israel.

The GIC also avoided so far any criticism of Islamic organizations such as CAIR, ISNA, FIOE, MCB, CSMB, UCIDE and IFE, for promoting the opposite narrative blaming Israel for genocide. In other words, it does not criticize those Islamic organizations who spread blood libel against Jews. While they claim that "true Islam" does not condone antisemitism, GIC's view of Islam and antisemitism does not represent the wide Islamic world. That’s because it’s not in line with Islamic doctrine. After all, the only authentic and official authorities to say what is and what is not Islamic are Mohammed and Allah.

Conclusion

The GIC takes a stance against antisemitism and jihad, but does not mention the Islamic doctrine that is at the root of that violent jihad, and at the root also of the non-violent jihad (attempts to Islamize non-Islamic societies through politics, migration, deception and rewriting of history, using the legal system, the media, etc.). They are not criticizing the Islamic world for its widespread Jew-hatred. This obscures the simple truth – that the root of these issues is in Islamic doctrine itself.

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In light of these issues, we kindly request:

• A clarification or follow-up article that details these issues.
• A review of the way the Islamic doctrine is presented, that is detached from the reality of Islamic doctrine’s largely negative view of Jews that is clearly present in Islamic law, scholarship, and history, and political reality in most Islamic countries today.

We believe your audience would benefit from a more accurate portrayal of the situation at play.

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Sincerely,

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