Aladdin is Chinese
The Berean challenge (part 1)
"Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing during our two thousand years of suffering and deserve all that will come to us."
—Albert Einstein, November 1929 to Chaim Weizmann
"Whatever the outcome, the Arabs will stick to their offer of equal citizenship for Jews in Arab Palestine and let them be as Jewish as they like."
—Azzam Pasha, 21 May 1948 as Secretary General of the Arab League
"It hath reached me, O King of the Age, that there dwelt in a city of the cities of China a man which was a tailor, withal a pauper, and he had one son, Aladdin..." This line begins one of the few stories from the Arab world that is familiar to us in America. "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp" is from the world classic One Thousand and One Nights which is sometimes assigned as required reading to students of world literature.1 What a surprise it is to these American readers to discover that the famous peasant-prince, Aladdin, is not a desert-dwelling Arab but a resident of faraway China. What else did Disney change, you may wonder... Was there one evil sorcerer or two? How many genies? And does every story really have a wedding at the end? Portrayals of Aladdin’s story over the decades exemplify the stereotypical Western perspective of "the Orient" — exceedingly more magical, backward, corrupt, sexualized, and barbarous than Europe or America.
There are many other surprises in store for Westerners surveying the literature and history of the Arab world. Chief among them are the high levels of peaceful collaboration between Jews, Christians, and Muslims around the Middle East and Mediterranean compared to the European histories with which we are more familiar. This was especially true in the Ottoman Empire which ruled Palestine for four hundred years until 1917.2 Genocidal anti-Semitism, like Aladdin, seems to be an import from faraway lands: Europe and Russia.3
European-style prejudice and violence toward Jews seems to have made its first inroads into the Arab world in the mid-19th century and did not fully develop until more recently in history. The problems experienced by Jews in the Arab world prior to this time were similar to those experienced by other non-Muslim groups and were not accompanied by the riot-inducing libels and conspiracy theories that students of Western history are familiar with. Christian travelers and immigrants from Europe were one source of trouble. For example, a progressive Muslim mayor of Jerusalem wrote to a prominent French Rabbi in 1899, "There are fanatical Christians in Palestine [...] who, considering Palestine as belonging to them alone, are very jealous of the progress of Jews in the country of their ancestors and do not miss any opportunity to incite hatred of Muslims against Jews".4 In general, however, Muslims and Jews and Christians got along reasonably well in Ottoman Palestine prior to the arrival of Political Zionism in the late 19th century.5
As the Zionists built a presence in Palestine and especially after England sponsored the Jewish nation-building project in 1917, the centuries-old equilibrium between the ethnic-religious groups in the region began to erode. After Israel's 1948 War in which approximately 750,000 Arabs were driven out of their ancestral homes into neighboring countries6, the region was badly destabilized, and the peaceful coexistence of Jews and “gentiles” in most of the Arab world was shattered by factional resentment.7
Nonetheless, despite what naysayers and extremists would have us believe, there is ample precedent for peaceful coexistence between Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the Arab world.8 This is especially true in Palestine, which for decades prior to the arrival of Zionism had a reputation for being one of the more progressive and secular regions of the Muslim-majority world.9 And even if there were no precedent in history, there are countless contemporary stories of non-Arab Jews and non-Jewish Arabs living in harmony with each other today, even in Israel, in defiance of fear-based assumptions.
See below for a brief overview of this topic…
quick overview
Israel-Palestine through 2015: Crash Course in World History (12min. video)
“Christian Anti Semitism in the Ottoman Empire” by Stanford Shaw, Professor of Turkish History at UCLA
Read the two-paragraph synopsis in footnote #10 (2min. read)
Or, if you’re an over-achiever, you can find the full article here.
An animated introduction to Israel and Palestine by Jewish Voice for Peace (6min. video)
especially for Christians
A Japanese tourist talks to a Palestinian Christian at a pub in Bethlehem (5min. video, start at 04:30)
Salim Munayer's Story. The founder of Musalaha, a faith-based organization that facilitates reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. (11min. video)
…and if you have lots of time on your hands, scroll down a little more.
optional deep dive for the curious
Jews in the Ottoman Empire (Wikipedia article)
Past Precedents for Muslim and Jewish Peace (short article on History Today)
Antisemitism: Holding Jews responsible for the State of Israel's actions by the World Jewish Congress (short article)
Jewish exodus from the Muslim world (Wikipedia article)
Zionist role in 1950s attacks on Iraqi Jews (short article on Middle East Eye)
books for the readers
Rashid Khalidi. The Hundred Years War on Palestine.
Abigail Jacobson. From Empire to Empire: Jerusalem between Ottoman and British Rule. Book summary here.
NOTE: We use a variety of sources for the weblinks and include primary sources where possible. We try to select sources that are not annoyingly biased, while also avoiding a false (and boring) sense of balance. Our primary goal is to provide information and perspectives that are interesting, thought provoking, reliable, and unfamiliar to most Americans. We do not link to information that is already well known to our audience or reinforce perspectives that do not lead to a positive outcome. The opinions espoused in the linked resources are not necessarily our own.
Be wary of sources claiming to promote a “balanced” perspective…
—"A dangerous balancing act" by David Robert Grimes, EMBO Reports
—"Lies, Misinformation Play Key Role in Israel-Hamas Fight" by Todd C. Helmus and William Marcellino, RAND
Footnotes
Aladdin’s story was actually not part of the original collection of One Thousand and One Nights but was added later by a French translator, who heard the tale from the Syrian writer Hanna Diyab, an 18th century Maronite Christian. (Wikipedia)
“History of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire” (Wikipedia)
“Muslim Anti-Semitism Partly Imported from Europe”, MENA Research Center, 18 December 2023.
“Yousef al-Khalidi” (Wikipedia)
For more about Political Zionism and Zionism, in general, see part 3 of this series.
For more on the 1948 War see the next article in this series
“Jewish exodus from the Muslim world” (Wikipedia)
Martin Gilbert, “Past Precedents for Muslim and Jewish Peace”. History Today, Vol. 60 No. 8, August 2010.
Joel Beinin and Lisa Hajjar, “Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Primer”. Washington, DC: Middle East Research and Information Project, 2014. An excerpt:
Until the beginning of the twentieth century, most Jews living in Palestine were concentrated in four cities with religious significance: Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias. Most of them observed traditional, orthodox religious practices. Many spent their time studying religious texts and depended on the charity of world Jewry for survival. Their attachment to the land was religious rather than national, and they were not involved in—or supportive of—the Zionist movement that began in Europe and was brought to Palestine by immigrants.
Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.
Lisa Taraki, "Urban Palestine: Divergent Trajectories of Spatial and Social Transformations". Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question.
Anne Irfan, “The sacred for the profane: How religion challenged secular politics in Israel & Palestine”. LSE Research (London School of Economics), 2 March 2018.
From “Christian Anti Semitism in the Ottoman Empire” by Stanford Shaw:
As a result of the tension now existing between Israel and the Muslim world, it long has been assumed that the anti Semitism to which Jews of the Ottoman Empire were subjected over the centuries was the result of Muslim antipathy for Judaism and Jews, and that it was carried out largely by Muslims. This idea was spread by Christian nationalist groups within and outside the Ottoman Empire for the purpose of gaining the support of world Jewry for their causes. At times, moreover, these groups even stimulated Muslim attacks on their own people to gain the support of the Christian nations of Europe.
The fact, however, was quite different. It was the Muslim Turks who invited Jews to the Ottoman Empire as they were driven out of westem Europe and Russia by massacres, blood libels, and persecutions of all sorts. It was the Muslim Turks who provided Ottoman Jewry with the kind of opportunities and protection which enabled them to prosper during four centuries of Ottoman rule. During the centuries of Ottoman decline which began in the seventeenth century, it was the Ottoman Turks who provided Jews with what protection they could against the advancing anti Semitism of Christians both within and outside the Empire. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in particular it was Christian armies invading the Ottoman empire as well as Christian national movements arising within that carried out most of the mass attacks, persecution and massacres which decimated much of Ottoman Jewry before World War I despite the continued protection provided by the Ottoman government.