A common narrative claims that before 1948, the Middle East was an interfaith paradise where religious minorities enjoyed full equality. This argument exists mainly to frame Israel’s founding as the single cause of sectarian strife across the region. By depicting the pre-modern Middle East as an idyllic garden of mutual respect, critics present Jewish statehood not as an act of historical self-defense, but as an unnatural rupture that destroyed an organic peace.

The historical record tells a very different story. Non-Muslims lived under Islamic rule as “dhimmis,” second-class subjects whose safety was always conditional and purchased through submission. Under the Pact of Umar and centuries of Ottoman rule, Jews paid the extortionate jizya poll tax. They were forbidden to bear arms, their legal testimony carried little weight against a Muslim’s, and strict sumptuary laws enforced their lower social caste. Jews were barred from riding horses, building synagogues taller than mosques, or speaking in ways that offended Islamic sensibilities. In Yemen, the Orphans’ Decree mandated the abduction and forced conversion of Jewish orphans. Tolerance was never an unalienable right; it was a revocable lease held at the whim of the ruler.