Editing Antisemitism in Islam (section)

===Contrast to antisemitism in Christian Europe===
{{main|Antisemitism in Europe|History of the Jews in Europe}}
Lewis states that in contrast to [[Antisemitism in Christianity|Christian antisemitism]], the attitude of Muslims towards non-Muslims is not one of hate, fear, or envy, but rather contempt. This contempt is expressed in various ways, such as an abundance of [[polemic]] literature which attacks the Christians and occasionally, it also attacks the Jews. "The negative attributes ascribed to the subject religions and their followers are usually expressed in religious and social terms, very rarely are they expressed in [[ethnic]] or [[Race (classification of human beings)|racial]] terms, though this sometimes does occur." The language of abuse is often quite strong. The conventional epithets are apes for Jews, and pigs for Christians. Lewis continues with several examples of regulations which symbolize the inferiority that non-Muslims who lived under Muslim rule had to live with, such as different formulae of greetings when addressing Jews and Christians than when addressing Muslims (both in conversations or correspondences), and forbidding Jews and Christians from choosing names that Muslims chose for their children during [[Ottoman Empire|Ottoman]] rule.<ref>Lewis (1984) p. 33</ref>

Schweitzer and Perry argue that there are two general views of the status of Jews under Islam, the traditional "golden age" and the [[Historical revisionism|revisionist]] "persecution and pogrom" interpretations. The former was first promulgated by Jewish historians in the 19th century as a rebuke of the Christian treatment of Jews, and it was taken up by [[Arab Muslims]] after 1948 as "an Arab-Islamist weapon in what is primarily an ideological and political struggle against Israel". The revisionists argue that this idealized view ignores "a catalog of lesser-known hatred and massacres".<ref name="Schweitzer267-268" /> Mark Cohen concurs with this view, arguing that the "myth of an interfaith utopia" went unchallenged until it was adopted by Arabs as a "propaganda weapon against Zionism",<ref>Cohen (1995) p. 6.</ref> and that this "Arab polemical exploitation" was met with the "counter-myth" of the "neo-lachrymose conception of Jewish-Arab history",<ref>Cohen (1995) p. 9.</ref> which also "cannot be maintained in the light of historical reality".<ref>{{cite journal|jstor=1455066|author= Daniel J. Lasker|title= Review of Under Crescent and Cross. The Jews in the Middle Ages by Mark R. Cohen|journal= The Jewish Quarterly Review|volume=88|issue= 1/2 |year=1997|pages=76–78|doi=10.2307/1455066|last2=Cohen|first2=Mark R.}}</ref><ref>Cohen (1995) p.xvii: According to Cohen, both the views equally distort the past.</ref>