When prophet muhammad supposedly revealed his revelation from the angel Gabriel that he is supposed to be the last of the prophets in the early six hundreds, he started preaching in his own City Mecca, he tried to recruit friends and followers to be able to spread his religion. And he tried for 12 years and failed. And after 12 years he was only able to recruit his immediate family and friends.
So he decided if I go to Medina which was the Jewish hub of Arabia, the business hub, where the Jews lived. If I go there and preach my religion to them. If they accept me that will buy me a respect and stature between my own people and they will accept me.
So Prophet Muhammad started borrowing a lot from the Old Testament to make his religion more palatable to the Jews, to make it a lot similar. This is why you see a lot of similarities between Judaism and Islam, for example Jews not eat pigs, Muslims don't eat pigs, Jews pray a few times a day, Muslims pray few times a day. Jews fast on Yom Kippur, Muslims fast on Ramadan.
And this is why when you started seeing a lot of good writing and the beginning of the Quran when Prophet Muhammad was saying all the good things about the people of the book. He took his message and went to Medina trying to recruit the Jews, talking about the people of the book, talking about how similar that two religions are.
When they refused to accept him and follow him as the last of the Prophet that's when he turned against them and started killing them and started expelling them. That's when Islam went from a spiritual movement for the first 12 years of Islam into a political movement cloaked in religion after the year of the Hijra, after muhammad went to medina and the Jews did not accept him, he became a military warrior and declared war on them and started expelling them.
Jews and Christians became "Dhimmi" or second class citizens. They were only allowed to stay alive, and not be killed only by paying the jizya or the production tax. So they had a choice convert to Islam or if you want to stay alive you have to pay the jizya or protection tax, living as dhimmi in the Islamic nation. Jews could not blow the shofar. Christians could not ring church bells. They could not pray publicly.
Christians and Jews could not gather together and building new churches or new temples. And the way they paid the jizya or the protection tax was an a monthly ceremony, where they would get together downtown and the Jew would kneel on his knee and hand his goods to the Mullah, who would take the goods as the price for buying the protection. And in many areas Jews and Christians were given necklaces to wear as a receipt that they paid their jizya or their protection tax. So Christians and Jews were treated as second-class citizens.
Islam continued to grow. As Islam grew more people became Dhimmi or second-class citizens till Jews and Christians were given identifiable clothing. The yellow star which was given to the Jews that most people think is a German invention. It was actually an Islamic invention in the ninth century in Iraq by the second Caliph, Caliph al-Mutawakkil of Iraq who invented the yellow star for the Jews to be identified as they walked down the street.
Islam continued to grow. They went all the way to Jerusalem. They conquered Jerusalem. Christians couldn't ring their church bells in Jerusalem.
The Pope in Rome in 1090 told the Christians how could you sit idly by and allow your brethren to be suffered, to suffer like this in the Holy Land. You need to go liberate the Christians you need to go help the Christians. That's why the Crusaders were launched.
The Crusaders were not launched because they just felt like waking up in the morning and going and converting a bunch of Muslims or beheading them. The Crusaders were launched to liberate Jerusalem and they were able to liberate Jerusalem for less than 100 years before Saladin took it back and Jerusalem remained under Islamic control, until 1967 when the State of Israel liberated Jerusalem were Christians Jews and Muslims could pray under the same sky.
Source:
--- Thus Testimony From Brigitte Gabriel.
- Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. - (John 14:6).
- Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. - (2 Corinthians 5:17).
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