The position of the Jew in Islam can be simply defined. In Islam he is treated with less method and therefore with less continued oppression than in Christendom, but always and permanently as something base and inferior, save in a few rare moments when he has the favour of particular rulers or is necessary to some special society, or is admired in a moment of intellectual brilliance.
Normally the Jew in Islam is an outcast. I know very well that the game is played of pretending that Islam is in some way kinder to him than we are. It is but a game: the playing of one party against another—of Islam against Christendom—by Israel, which is of neither. In Islam his superior position in Christendom is equally famed. History is too strong for such pretences. All the history of Islam, all the social spirit of Islam, to which there are countless witnesses to-day, give the same verdict about the general treatment of the Jew in that society.
So it was in independent Islam. But Islam, politically controlled to-day by the Western Christian powers, is another matter. Under that unstable state of affairs (no one can say how long it will last; the conflict between Islam and Christendom seems eternal and the rise and fall of that tide is indefinitely successive) the problem takes on quite another shape. France and England appear in Islam as the artificial supporters of the Jew.
Until quite lately it was the French who bore the worst odium of this in the eyes of the Mohammedans. Under the French the Jews in North Africa were often given a special, a superior position, which was an insult to every Mohammedan and which is still an insult to him. It is the weakest point of the French regime. In Algeria the Ghetto Jew may vote. The Arab may not. Even in Morocco, where things have been done more wisely than in Algiers, the difficulty is felt. How are you to treat a Jew differently in Morocco from the way in which he is treated in France? He is common to the two countries. If you treat him as if he were French, and therefore a member of the governing power, what of the pride of those lords of the Atlas and of Fez?