ABSTRACT
A search of the WorldCat database (which lists books in libraries worldwide) under the subject of al-yahud (or Banu Isra'il) and the Qur'an gives twenty-five titles in Arabic, published since 1966. 1 While this listing is by no means exhaustive, it does provide an indication of the extent of recent literature addressing the subject of the Jews in the Qur'an, and the Qur'anic treatment of them. This chapter offers a detailed review of two examples of this literature first published during the second half of the 1960s, a decade characterized in the Arab world by the politics of Pan-Arabism and confrontation with Israel. By highlighting the contextual influences on these texts, it maintains that such writings represent a response to the Arab defeat in Palestine and the creation and consolidation of the state of Israel, and an effort to make sense out of this within the broader experience of the colonialist intrusion into Muslim lands.
