Antisemitism in Islam

There is considerable debate about the nature of antisemitism in Islam, including Muslim attitudes towards Jews, Islamic teachings on Jews and Judaism, and the treatment of Jews in Islamic societies throughout the history of Islam. Islamic literary sources have described Jewish groups in negative terms and have also called for acceptance of them. Some of these descriptions overlap with Islamic remarks on non-Muslim religious groups in general.

With the rise of Islam in Arabia in the 7th century CE and its subsequent spread during the early Muslim conquests, Jews, alongside many other peoples, became subject to the rule of Islamic polities. Their quality of life under Muslim rule varied considerably in different periods, as did the attitudes of the rulers, government officials, the clergy, and the general population towards Jews, ranging from tolerance to persecution.

An antisemitic trope found in some Islamic discourse is the accusation of Jews as the "killers of prophets".

Jews are not mentioned at all in verses dating from the Meccan period. According to Bernard Lewis, the attention given to Jews is relatively insignificant.

The Quran makes 44 specific references to the Banū Isrāʾīl (the Children of Israel). although the term might refer to both Jews and Christians as a single religious lineage. In the Quran (2:140), Jews (Yahūdi) are considered a religious group, while Banū Isrāʾīl are an ethnic group.^{[citation needed]}

The Arabic term Yahūd and Yahūdi (Jew, Jews), occur 11 times, and the verb hāda (meaning "to be a Jew/Jewish") occurs 10 times.^{[full citation needed]} According to Khalid Durán, the negative passages use Yahūd, while the positive references speak mainly of the Banū Isrāʾīl.

The references in the Quran to Jews are interpreted in different ways. According to Frederick M. Schweitzer and Marvin Perry, these references are "mostly negative". According to Tahir Abbas, the general references to Jews are favorable, with only those addressed to particular groups of Jews containing harsh criticism.

According to Bernard Lewis and some other scholars, the earliest verses of the Quran were largely sympathetic to Jews. Muhammad admired them as monotheists and saw them as natural adherents to the new faith, and Jewish practices were similar to early Islamic behavior, such as midday prayer, Friday prayer, Ramadan fasting (like Yom Kippur), and most famously the fact that until 623 CE Muslims prayed toward Jerusalem, not Mecca. This was changed after according to islam, God directed their qibla for a more pleasing to Muslims.