Jewish Persecution: 1 CE – Today, part 86

Thomas of Monmouth was a Benedictine monk who moved to the Norwich monastery in 1150. Thomas was dedicated to establishing the cult of William of Norwich. Most of the contemporary documents we have about William were written by Thomas, trying to argue for miracles or sainthood or martyrdom of the murdered boy. To say the accounts in The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich are biased is putting it mildly. In addition to interviewing surviving witnesses, Thomas interviewed “converted Jews”, who may have included Christian pretenders simply slandering the neighbors the feared. Norwich’s Jewish community had only existed for nine years at that point, nestled against Norwich castle and highly socially dependent on the Norman conquerors for protection. 

Theobold of Cambridge was one such converted Jew, who gave the most salacious, outrageous testimony. He told Thomas of Monmouth that that there was an ancient prophecy that the Jews could return to Israel, but only if they sacrificed and crucified a Christian child each year. Furthermore, a global Jewish community was all in on the conspiracy: each year they met in Narbonne to decide which Jewish community had the responsibility of killing a Christian child, and the year of 1144 the lot had fallen to the Jews of Norwich. 

Theobold tied in themes of Easter – an excuse for violence since the 2nd century – with the violation of innocents, and with Christian prejudice against “Jewish superstition” or prophecy. He used identity politics in the 12th century to discredit an entire religion and race of people, and the effects of that still reverberate in the 21st century today. Theobold did lasting harm. Blood libel was born out of custom made sore spots, tailored to get the most reaction. Blood libel has anti Zionism built in. It has globalism built in. It predates New York, yet somehow has “New York values” and other codes for Jewish built in. 

Modern historians have tried to solve the murder of William of Norwich. Up through the Enlightenment, the blood libel charge was the most commonly accepted answer in academic and lay circles outside of the Jewish community. Various proposed theories include that William’s family, possibly with the assistance of Theobold, sought purity through the crucifixion of the boy which they later blamed on Jews; the unnamed cook was a sex criminal (William was described as dressed in “jacket and shoes”); or William was simply a victim of roadside banditry and the general lawlessness of the Anarchy. Whatever the true cause, the imagined one of blood sacrifice was easier for hateful, fearful, Medieval minds to embrace. 

Further Reading

Thomas of Monmouth. The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich, 1173. Fordham University, Medieval Sourcebook. 

Jewish Encyclopedia – William of Norwich 

Jewish Persecution: 1 CE – Today, part 85

When William the Conqueror became the first Norman King of England in 1066 CE, he welcomed Jews to the island for banking and money lending services. The new Norman aristocracy and Jewish financial class both spoke Anglo-Norman, a French dialect, while the native Anglo-Saxon nobility and peasantry spoke Old English. Pockets of resistance to King William’s rule persisted for years after he defeated Harold Godwinson, and he had to build castles around the country to reclaim his territory and hold onto it. Wood construction gave way to stone, and the first lasting Norman structures that still stand today began to be erected. Jewries or Jewish quarters were tucked in alongside Norman areas for protection.

During his grandson King Stephen’s reign (1135-1154), Jews and Normans were still distrusted foreigners. William I had been succeeded as English king by his second born son William II (1087-1100) and fourth born son Henry I (1100-1135). Henry had a great many illegitimate children with mistresses but only one legitimate son and heir with his wife and queen, William Adelin. In 1120, the White Ship vessel went down overloaded with dignitaries and all but two aboard drowned. The future king of England was lost, and the country was thrown into a succession crisis. Henry, bless him, tried to get the country to accept his daughter Empress Matilda as regent in 1120 CE. He gathered grudging oaths of loyalty but could not get papal support. Upon his death in 1135, his nephew Stephen seized the throne, setting off a civil war and period of lawlessness known as “The Anarchy” that would last until 1152. 

This was the climate of xenophobia and danger Medieval English lived on the Saturday afternoon, March 26th, 1144 when a young boy’s uncle, brother, and father found his body dead in Thorpe Wood and covered with sand. He was dead, and he had been murdered. His body bore the unmistakeable signs of violence. William of Norwich was a 12-year-old tanner’s apprentice. A man claiming to be a cook of the Archdeacon paid his mother three shillings to take William as a scullion or kitchen servant. The man and William encountered William’s aunt in the course of the day. William’s aunt felt suspicious and asked her daughter to follow the pair. She reported last seeing William and the man entering the home of a Jew on Holy Tuesday. His body was found five days later. 

He was initially reburied in the same place by his relatives. William’s uncle was the first to accuse Jews of the boy’s murder, in an ecclesiastical court. The sheriff of Norwich John de Chesney advised the Jewish community that they were not bound to appear before that religious court, and offered them protection in the castle while Christian tempers flared. William’s body, meanwhile, was reburied again and again in increasingly honored locations. The first accusations surrounding the murder of William of Norwich are simply that: murder. As clergy members tried to develop a cult of martyrdom around William, the horrors of his death grew more specific, religious, occultic, and demonic to the Christian imagination. Simultaneously the Jewish villains of the story became more monstrous. The cook who enticed William away disappeared from the story, replaced by the sinister Jew. 

Further Reading

Thomas of Monmouth. The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich, 1173. Fordham University, Medieval Sourcebook. 

Jewish Encyclopedia – William of Norwich 

Jewish Persecution: 1 CE – Today, part 84

Medieval Jewish communities were the property of the monarch they had a charter with. They were not “free” men and women like the nobility, but they were not bonded servants or slaves either. Because of their important financial role in early medieval life, Jews were usually afforded more freedoms of movement and association than others. This generated some jealousy from the peasant class. Wealthier classes took out substantial loans from Jewish creditors. Strongbow’s 1170 invasion of Ireland was financed by a Jew named Josce.  Some Jews became very wealthy. Aaron of Lincoln was the wealthiest person in England at the time of his death in 1186, and a special exchequer was appointed by the king to collect all the debts owed to his estate, now royal property. 

Jews were a source of tax revenue kings could pull from without increasing the odds of popular revolt. King Richard I of England (1189 – 1199) needed a large influx of gold for the Third Crusade, against Saladin. He taxed his Christians subjects a tithe, but the Jews he taxed a quarter. In this way the Jewish minority contributed half the total war chest. Anti Jewish violence began on the very evening of Richard “the Lionheart”‘s coronation. He barred Jews and womem from attending the ceremony. When some Jewish scholars, rabbis, and community leaders came to present gifts on behalf of their coreligionists, they were stripped, beaten, and flogged. A rumor quickly spread that the new king had ordered the Jews to be killed, and Christians set about lighting Jewish homes aflame and trying to forcibly baptize unwilling Jews. 

The French King Philip Augustus came to the throne in March of 1181 and immediately made a naked grab for Jewish wealth. Philip Augustus was more devoutly Catholic and embraced the Church’s hard stance against usury as any loan a Jew was involved in. He had all Jews arrested in their synagogues the Saturday of his coronation, and ordered them to sell their small property and leave France Proper within three months’ time. King Philip Augustus took possession of their homes, lands, and businesses with no compensation. The Jewish community appealed to members of the French nobility, but those Christians were due to profit from abetting their king in his theft. 

The worst antisemitic massacre in English history took place in 1190 at York. A fire had broken out in the city while the sheriff was away on Crusade, leading to looting. Jewish homes were the first targets of looters. The debt chests recording Norman and Anglo debts to Jewish creditors were kept in the wooden constructed Clifford’s Tower, on top of a human constructed hill called a motte, typical Norman castle design of the era. All of the Jews took refuge in the Tower from the angry Christian mob. But they were outnumbered and had no escape. Richard Melabisse, a Christian leader of the mob, promised to spare their lives if they would convert. Some Jews came out a back door to take him up on it, only to be immediately murdered. The other Jewish families in the tower, like the Jews of the Rhineland massacres, chose to kill themselves rather than fall to Christian hands or be forcibly baptized. Every Jew died. Christians wiped out their debts. 

King John of England (1205-1216), who you may recall as the thumb-sucking lion from the Disney cartoon Robin Hood, demanded a large tallage or arbitrary tax from the Jewish community to fund his war with Ireland. In order for the Jews to produce the cash in hand, they had to call in their debts, upsetting a great many Christian nobles. But it was Medieval Jews who felt the pain of a treasury squeeze. One Jew who said he couldn’t and wouldn’t pay 10,000 silver marks, Abraham of Bristol, was imprisoned and had one tooth extracted by the executioner each day until his family could raise the money to ransom him. It took them a week. The estimated value of this extortion today would be about US$9,180,000.

Further Reading

Arbesman, Samuel. “The Long Data of European Jewish Expulsions”. WIRED Magazine, 06 March 2013. Accessed 26 October 2017. 
Anderson, Robert Warren. “Jewish Persecution and Weather Shocks: 1100-1800”. University of Michigan, Dearborn. 30 December 2013. 

Levin, Sala. “The Biggest Jewish Genetic Myths of All Time”. Moment Magazine. 28 July 2012. Accessed 26 October 2017.

Schlesinger, Alex. “The Jews of Bristol”. JewishGen.org. Accessed 28 October 2017. 

Jewish Persecution: 1 CE – Today, part 83

A Golden Horde of Mongolian warriors came from the East in 1236. They first attacked the Rus and Kiev principalities united by the Christian ruler Vladimir I. After making those regions and Belarus into vassals by 1240, the Mongols moved onto Poland. They heavily raided that Jewish friendly country and were victors in battle, but did not subjugate the kingdom. Poland kept its independence. In 1241 the Golden Horde raided parts of Moravia and Silesia, before Czech defenders at Bulgaria were able to turn them away. 

Medieval Hungary was decimated in 1242, and parts of the conquered nation were incorporated into the Mongolian empire. The powerful eastern army failed to subdue guerrilla resistance in Croatia (1241) and Austria (1242), despite superior military force. The Horde could not take either territory. In 1242, however, the Mongolians did force Bulgaria to become vassals. They likely would have continued westward through the lands of the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal States if they had not been recalled to Mongolia. Their national leader had died of binge drinking, and now all the princes of the blood needed to gather so one could be elected as the new Khan. This politically important death probably altered the course of history. 

In October 1347 a Genoese trade ship arrived in Sicily from a journey to the Black Sea. All the sailors aboard were dying or already dead of some mysterious and horrifying ailment, most likely the bubonic and pneumonic plagues. From those sailors, the disease spread outward across North Africa, the Middle East, and Western Europe. More than one in three who were exposed died, though some seemed to have a natural immunity. This immunity appeared to be more common in Jews. Christians were jealous, and suspicious. Why were all their loved ones dying while the Jews stayed healthy? 

It may have been the fact that Jews were somewhat segregated, living in Jewish Quarters separated from the main Christian residential centers. Or it could have been due to the better hygiene practices of Medieval Jews, who had religious and cultural commandments to wash their hands, avoid unclean food, and bathe the bodies of the deceased before burial – all practices considered unnecessary and foreign to the Christians they lived amongst. Jewish plague resistance may have been genetic. The most common gene mutation causing cystic fibrosis among non-Jewish European descendants is DeltaF501. It protects against cholera. The cystic fibrosis mutation among Jews and Arabs is W1282X. 

All across Europe, mourning and anguished Christians blamed Hebrews for the plague. They didn’t understand germ theory, and they certainly did not understand complex genetics: they claimed Jews were poisoning Christian water wells. Pogroms and riots erupted wherever tensions and fears exceeded the capacity and quality of local leadership. Pope Clement VI (1342-1352) issued two papal bulls, on July 6th and September 26th, 1348, asserting the innocence of Jewish communities in plague, condemning violence against them, and calling upon clergy to protect them. The September 26th papal bull is one of the most pro Jewish documents to ever be produced by the predominantly anti Jewish Catholic Church. 

Further Reading

Arbesman, Samuel. “The Long Data of European Jewish Expulsions”. WIRED Magazine, 06 March 2013. Accessed 26 October 2017. 

Anderson, Robert Warren. “Jewish Persecution and Weather Shocks: 1100-1800”. University of Michigan, Dearborn. 30 December 2013. 

Levin, Sala. “The Biggest Jewish Genetic Myths of All Time”. Moment Magazine. 28 July 2012. Accessed 26 October 2017.

Jewish Persecution: 1 CE – Today, part 82

The 11th to 16th centuries witnessed a steady increase of anti Jewish sentiment and violence against Jewish communities. There were a number of factors contributing to this rise, each of which we will explore in the coming posts. Religion was obviously a major motivation. Cold weather and poor harvests could increase antisemitism, too. A Mongolian invasion into Europe disturbed the peace and a Black Plague ravaged the continent; Jews were blamed for both. An unscrupulous or weak monarch who could not or would not protect minorities could make or break the short-term fate of Jews or similar groups like Roma. 

Religious power grew under the stewardship of Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085). He was driven to reform the Church from within; Gregory ended the practice of simony, or buying a Bishop post for oneself or son. He also strictly imposed formerly lax celibacy rules forbidding clergy from keeping wives, mistresses, or same sex lovers. Gregory reformed the Church outside as well, asserting a new dominance over secular monarchs – and excommunicating Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV three times. Charles eventually retaliated by electing his own Pope and starting a new line, which historians (and Catholics) refer to as the Antipopes. In 1205 Pope Innocent III issued a papal ruling that Jews were doomed to perpetual servitude for the crime of killing Jesus. (Author’s note: Romans killed Jesus.) 

Piety was greatest at the Easter season, as was antisemitism. Christians in sermons at that time of year were told that Jews were committing spiritual atrocities against their sacred objects. In the Catholic ritual of sacrament, a bread or wafer is prayed over by a priest. It then literally transubstantiates into the Body of Jesus to be consumed by his following as instructed. This bread or wafer is called the Host. In 1243 the Jewish community of Berlitz, Germany was accused of kidnapping and torturing the Host from the local church. Every single Jew – from oldest Bubbe to youngest babe – was burned alive. 

Anxious, imaginative Medieval Christians believed Jews were literally bloodthirsty: that the Hebrews used the hearts of children in religious rites, and mixed blood into the dough for matza. The fact that Jewish law specifically forbids consuming blood, even animal blood, didn’t matter. Neither did the fact that the verb koshering means removing blood to purify. In 1144 in Norwich, England Jews were charged with buying a boy slave William, and torturing him like Jesus was in the Gospels before crucifying him. This blood libel charge would be laid against Jews all across Christian Europe any time children went missing. They were almost always found later, died of childhood misadventures by drowning or falling or cave exploration. 

Life was so tenuous for European peasants in the Medieval age that there was very little capacity to absorb a bad turn. While the Mayans, Egyptians, and Chinese all had grain storage for the masses figured out centuries beforehand, Europe didn’t. Peasants didn’t have any long term grain storage. Running out of food was not a gradual process. And having a bad harvest was not something they could last unlimited years through. Jewish communities were the targets of that disaffection. “Jewish Persecution and Weather Shocks” (cited) found that cold weather increased the odds of a pogrom or expulsion, but that good soil quality could dampen that increase amount. 

(Continue…)

Further Reading

Arbesman, Samuel. “The Long Data of European Jewish Expulsions”. WIRED Magazine, 06 March 2013. Accessed 26 October 2017. 

Anderson, Robert Warren. “Jewish Persecution and Weather Shocks: 1100-1800”. University of Michigan, Dearborn. 30 December 2013. 

Levin, Sala. “The Biggest Jewish Genetic Myths of All Time”. Moment Magazine. 28 July 2012. Accessed 26 October 2017.

Bad Girls and Consequences

(WordPress ate two days of JP1CE work. I’m going to reconstruct it but I need to purge some emotions first. If you’re in this just for the history, feel free to skip the personal trauma drama. Content warning for child molestation.)

I had a breakthough in therapy, and it wrecked me. And it made me realize that since I was 8 years old I’ve thought of myself as “not a good girl”. Cause of a victim blaming state’s attorney who practically called me as much. While exercising his prosecutorial discretion. And no matter how many other girls and women and others I’d told ” It’s not your fault” since then, a part of me had believed “my” lawyer when he said it was my fault, and a jury of adults would all blame me, just like he was. 

I wish they’d spared me the medical exam. It proved abuse. Abuse he blamed me for. That honestly fucked me up as much as the rape itself.

My first defense was not to be a girl, to hate everything about girls. To cut off my hair and change to a boy’s name and call myself “the man of the house” I lived in with my mom and sister. I thought – because I was told – that the reason I was victimized was because I was a girl. Because I was wearing a dress. So I butched up. I’m grateful my mom didn’t resist that process, or if she did I can’t remember it.  

What I tried being a girl again in junior high, it was still too fraught with issues. I couldn’t be a good girl. I could be a bad girl though. There was a power and a confidence, a strength and an armor in a femme fatale or self destructive party girl. 

Reflecting back, the only person who called me good and made me feel good was my grandma the cult leader. I wanted to be a good girl for her, and left my shoulder chip and sluttiness and drugs outside when I came to see her. She was a terrible person, but she brought out the best in me. Maybe that’s part of why I love her. 

I’m trying to learn to identity old labels so I can decide if I want to keep them. I’m not sure how much “bad girl” is serving me these days. Or the sadness around the belief that I’m not capable of being good. Maybe it’s time to let that one go. 

Jewish Persecution: 1 CE – Today, part 81

The First Crusade reached Jerusalem and began to besiege it on June 7th, 1099. An estimated 5,000 knights and 30,000 foot soldiers left Europe in the fall of 1096 on vows to journey to the Holy City and take it from the Muslim Seljuk Turks for Christianity. In the three years it had taken them, their numbers had dwindled to a scant 1,500 knights and 12,000 foot soldiers, and the Egyptian Fatimid Muslims had captured Jerusalem from their Turkish rivals. The Fatimid governor Iftikhar ad-Daula had evicted the Christian inhabitants in advance of their arrival, probably to prevent the kind of collusion that occurred at Antioch. He didn’t evict the Jewish residents, who fought on the side of the Shi’a Muslims against the Christian invaders. 

Adhemar the deceased bishop and papal legate began to visit the knights in visions; this was a new Battle of Jericho and they must bring down Jerusalem’s might walls by shouting the Lord’s praises with Hosannas to the heavens! For about three days they circled the city barefoot, singing and chanting. Then Peter the Hermit, leader of the People’s Crusade, began a preaching circuit at some of the Holy City’s landmarks featured in the Gospels. He spoke at the Valley of Jehoshaphat, the Garden of Gethsemane, and on the Mount of Olives. Peter’s sermons ignited their passions and on June 13th the Crusaders attempted a direct assault. It failed.  

Time was running out. Hunger and thirst had killed far more of their soldiers and animals than battle, and this siege was no exception. The people in the city were better prepared to wait things out than the Crusaders camped outside. The Christians started gathering wood from Samaria to build siege engines and two Genoese supply ships arrived in Jaffa. They constructed two 50-foot high siege towers, a battering ram, and a number of catapults. Scouts brought intelligence reports that hastened the urgency of building: a Fatimid army was coming from Egypt to reinforce Jerusalem. If the Christians didn’t take the city soon, they would be slaughtered. 

The night of July 14th, the Crusaders took one tower to the south wall and another to the northwest. Getting a siege engine to a city wall takes time. You can’t build it right outside: you’ll get pelted with defensive weaponry or harried in construction. Siege weapons were usually constructed nearby but not literally on site. The Muslim defenders aimed flaming arrows and pots of oil at the first siege engine as it was rolled forward. It was engulfed in fire and destroyed. Duke Godfrey was in command of the second north western tower. It took two hours for the siege engine to reach the weak point in the walls. Two Flemish brothers were the first Crusaders over the walls, and then a stream of knights followed after. They opened the gates and the massacring began. 

Muslims took to the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque for shelter while Jews of the city fled to the synagogue. The Christians were bloodthirsty, by all accounts, including their own.  Raymond of Aguilers wrote of the Temple Mount killings, “in the Temple and porch of Solomon men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins.” The anonymous eyewitness author of the Gesta Francorum describes this same scene with the phrase, “the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles.” An Arabic account states that all the Jews were burned alive in their synagogue, though Jewish records only record the destruction of the synagogue and suggest some of the Jews were ransomed by a nearby Jewish community in Ascalon. 

Godfrey of Bouillon was made Advocatus Sanctus Sepulchri or Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre on July 22nd of the newly minted Kingdom of Jerusalem. He led his troops on August 12th against the Fatimid army reinforcements from Egypt at the Battle of Ascalon. The Crusaders had discovered the location of the True Cross from talking to Christian residents of Jerusalem, and that most holy of relics inspired them on to their final victory. The Crusade was a success. The Holy City had been reclaimed. The original Byzantine focus on dealing with a Turkish foe was of no concern to these zealous knights. They had fulfilled their spiritual obligations and their vows. Nearly all of them returned to Europe. 

Jewish Persecution: 1 CE – Today, part 80

Pope Urban II chose the French Bishop of Le Puy Adhemar as his papal legate for the First Crusade, at the Council of Clermont in 1095. By the summer of 1098 when they had captured Antioch, he had proven himself on the battlefield and was the clear spiritual inspiration of the Crusaders. Adhemar held skepticism about the Holy Lance prophecied and then discovered by Peter Bartholomew; he had seen the real one in Constantinople. But when it was needed to boost morale of starving troops, he allowed faith in the “relic” to grow. Adhemar led the Christians to victory, holding the “Holy Lance” out before them all, letting them draw courage from it. 

He planned to put a stop to the heresy. Soon. Ish. But shortly after the the fight ended in victory, Adhemar fell to the epidemic that hit Antioch (probably typhus). On August 1, 1098 he shuffled off his mortal coil – and became legendary in the status of Crusaders and bards. However, this left a power vacuum for the ecclesiastical Crusade leader. Accusations of deception and false prophecy were laid against Peter Bartholomew after the Crusaders made their way, through a success at the fortress of Maarat in January, 1099. The battle at Maarat was won by Raymond of Toulouse’s army. The Crusaders were so starved by this time, they ate the cooked flesh of their felled enemies. Raymond was a staunch supporter of the French priest and supposed prophet who predicted military successes which raised morale. He started a siege at Arqa, hoping to have it subdued before conquering Tripoli for himself.

The lack of true Crusade leadership was a problem. Peter Bartholomew claimed the ghost of Adhemar had visited him, confirming the Holy Lance was a sacred relic. This was too much for some of the common knights, who still considered Adhemar their leader even in death. His critics challenged Peter Bartholomew to prove himself, and thus the Holy Lance, legitimate through a Biblical trial. In the ultimate case of playing chicken and not blinking, Peter Bartholomew agreed of his own will (according to the chroniclers) to a trial by fire that April 8th. He was severely burned; however,  he contended that he was not burned until people rushed into the fire to save him. Jesus had been protecting him until then. Peter Bartholomew died of his burns. Raymond of Toulouse was discredited, as the main knight backing him and claiming the Lance’s truth. 

On May 13th the Crusaders abandoned the siege of Arqa and moved on to Tripoli. They had gained nothing. The emir of Tripoli Jalal al-Mulk Abu’l Hasan ruled an independent emirate, not loyal to the Seljuk, Abbasid, or Fatimid. He paid the Crusaders to bypass his city in their march toward Jerusalem with 300 Christian slaves and horses for their army. The Crusaders accepted the terms. They kept moving, and by May 19th proceeded through Beirut. The Christians reached a mostly abandoned Ramlah and established a church before advancing the final steps of their journey. On June 6th they captured Bethlehem. The next day they finally arrived at the outer walls of Jerusalem. Many of the Crusaders wept with joy. They had given years to make it here. Starved, nearly died, resorted to cannibalism. But now their sacrifices were nearly worthwhile, their Crusader vows almost fulfilled. 

The siege for the Holy City began at last. 

Jewish Persecution: 1 CE – Today, part 79

The Eastern Mediterranean of the 11th century was an Islamic world in flux. Muslim prophecy foretold of a series of imams who would follow after the Prophet Muhammad. The last of these would fight alongside with ‘Īsā ibn Miryam (Jesus) against the Antichrist in an apocalyptic battle at the end of days, before creating paradise on Earth. In Sunni Islam, an imam is a cleric who reads the Qur’an and leads prayer, largely analogous to a Christian priest or minister or to a Jewish rabbi. In the Shi’a tradition, however, they must come from the House of the Prophet and be pure in word and deed. An imam is infallible, guided by God, and must be obeyed. 

Shi’a Muslims, those who believe Ali (Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, husband of his daughter Fatima) was the rightful successor of the Prophet, consider Ali to be not just the Fourth Caliph, but also the First Imam. Each subsequent Shi’a imam was a descendant of Ali, and of Muhammad through his daughter Fatima. The majority of the world’s Shi’a population, then and today, believed that the Twelfth Imam would be the one to overthrow corrupt governments and establish peace. These Twelver Shi’a broke away from the Sunni Abbasid in the early 900s to form the Fatimid dynasty. Shi’a believe this messianic Twelfth Imam has already been born, as Muhammad al-Mahdi in 868 CE, and that God has hidden him away to protect him and prolong his life. This hidden period is known as “Occulation”.

The 10th century revival of 8th century succession disputes did not help Muslim unity. The Sunni caliphate in Baghdad was weakened, broken into small provincial rulings held by separate emirs with nominal loyalty to the central government. The Shi’a in northern Africa were initially strong, though ever splintering religious sects caused internecine warfare. However, when the Seljuk Turks swooped down from Central Asia in the 1050s, they completely upended the balance of power. These Sunni warriors conquered swaths of the Byzantine empire by the 1071 Battle of Manzikert. They went to war with the Abbasid caliphate, and in 1077 they captured Jerusalem from the Fatimid rulers. Adding to the chaos, a Fatimid prince had rebelled against his brother’s rule. 

“Although Nizar was the rightful claimant to the throne after his father’s death, his younger brother Ahmad al-Musta’lī, supported by his father-in-law, the chief Vizier Badr al-Jamali, usurped all the power… Mustaali, feeling insecure during Nizar’s existence, plotted against Imam Nizar and finally succeeded in making him a prisoner along with his two sons.” – A.S. Picklay, History of the Ismailis 

Furthermore, between 1092 and 1094 several key rulers died. These included the Sunni caliph of Baghdad, the founder of the Seljuk Empire, Malik Shah I, and the Vizier and strategic ruler of the Seljuks. Each of the three largest Muslim dynasties was reckoning with its own internal succession disputes and questions of rule, as well as engaging in border wars with one another, when the Crusaders stumbled into the Mediterranean. The Europeans imagined they were fighting a holy war, a religious war between Christianity and Islam. The Muslims they fought against did not conceive of the battles that way at all; if they had, they might have sought alliances with other Muslim states against the Crusaders. But each Muslim dynasty approached the Crusaders as simply another army on the map. The Crusaders benefited from a “divide and conquer” strategy because the Muslim was already fragmented. 

What I Was Wearing

Harvey Weinstein was made a public pariah this month for the sex crimes he committed for at least 30 years. Rowan Farrow, the estranged son of open-secret Hollywood child rapist Woody Allen, exposed the man by securing testimony from dozens of actresses, former assistants, and women who left Hollywood after Weinstein’s assaults traumatized them away from their lifelong dreams. It took a chorus of voices all giving stunningly similar reports, from all of the most famous and powerful women in Hollywood at once, to take down one man. And all he lost was his studio job which served as his rape aide. He’s not in jail or facing charges. It’s just going to be harder for him to keep raping, for now. 

And for a few days, there was a national conversation about the right things: about men in power and how they abuse, about all the other men who stay silent so long as there is money to be made. About the bravery of coming forward, and the prevalence of harassment in all fields. There was discussion about how rarely men do face justice, or even consequences. Bill Cosby. Bill O’Reilly. President Trump. President Clinton. The internet exploded with the sound of women’s voices and then, when Twitter suspended the account of actress and director Rose McGowan for daring to speak out, that platform was plunged into silence as #WomenBoycottTwitter took off. Twitter took notice, and promises (for all that’s worth) to address harassment at last. 

But this culture shelters men, and it is uncomfortable with discussions that hold them accountable, even in theory. And so actress Mayim Bialik took to The New York Times to write an op-ed on “Being a Feminist in Harvey Weinstein’s World.” It’s her own story, of not being sexually harassed or assaulted, and her own narrative for why that never happened to her. Bialik posits a half dozen explanations for why she (and apparently she alone) made it to age 41 in Hollywood without being chased around a hotel room by a fat man in a bathrobe: 

• “I didn’t look or act like other girls in my industry” – children who she describes as “young girls with doe eyes and pouty lips who spoke in a high register.”
• “I always made conservative choices as a young actress”
• “My mom didn’t let me wear makeup or get manicures”
• “I followed my mother’s strong example to not put up with anyone calling me ‘baby’ or demanding hugs on set.” 
• “I craved being around people who valued me more for what was inside my brain than what was inside my bra.” 
• “The upside of not being a ‘perfect ten’.”
• “Little desire to diet, get plastic surgery or hire a personal trainer”

Bialik concludes that she continues to “make choices every day as a 41-year-old actress that I think of as self-protecting and wise. I have decided that my sexual self is best reserved for private situations with those I am most intimate with.” There are several nasty things to work through here. First is the story she’s been telling herself. Mayim has been living with this comforting lie her whole life: that she had control over whether or not she was sexually harassed or abused. That conservative choices in dress and manners, that an insistence on formality in place of familiarity, that not making doe eyes or pouty lips could protect her. And since she’s made it to the far side of female huntedness to the decrepit Hollywood woman age of 41, she probably feels like it worked and she’s in the clear now. 

Yet there’s another, petty, mean layer to this. A vindictive pleasure in the “just comeuppance” of all those pretty girls and “perfect tens” who Bialik felt inferior in comparison to. She gloats at their rapes and her pious chaste safety. There is nothing feminist about that. I think this is what has angered so many survivors, far more than her inaccuracies. She isn’t just dangerously wrong. She’s angry at the wrong parties, and turning the focus from rapists and sexual harassers to women and what we wear. When I was a child, I reported the elderly man who was sexually abusing me. I went through the trauma of gathering evidence in a rape kit. (No DNA back then, but evidence of damage to the tissue.) I was willing to go through anything to make sure no other girl had to endure what I did. 

But the state prosecutor decided not to press charges. He decided I wasn’t a very good victim, in part based on what I was wearing. Dresses are such easy access you know. I still hate to wear dresses. It was light blue and white pin striped, a pinafore dress with a square white lace collar that had a tiny red rose in the middle. A seven-year-old’s dress. The end result of shifting the focus from the actions of bad men to the clothing of good girls is a prosecutor deciding a victim must have been a bad girl; after all, she was victimized. And goodness knows bad girls make bad witnesses, and we can’t give them their day in court.