Is Judaism a Good Model for Islamic Reform?
Mustafa Akyol‘s recent New York Times column, “What Jesus Can Teach Today’s Muslims,” bravely broaches one of the most important issues today: reform in Islam. The separation of church and state, the position of women, the role of violence— all of these factors and more must be addressed for the Muslim world to experience its own form of “modernity,” characterized by freedom of individual conscience and movement.
Akyol points to two pivotal experiences in Jewish history, the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and territorial dispossession and the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) of the 18th and 19th centuries, as offering guidance for Islam. These are useful points of reference, but are only starting points.
What came in between suggests why Jewish models may, or may not, be useful for Islamic reformers. Jews, both before and after the fall of the Jewish Commonwealth, were always a minority in the larger Greco-Roman world. This forced adaptability as a cultural trait, a continual process of weighing concepts and innovations of others, looking outward and inward, all around Rabbinic leadership that was at once conservative and progressive.
Jews being a minority in the Greco-Roman world forced adaptability as a cultural trait.
Halacha (Jewish law) has always been a simultaneous process of redefining the boundaries of Judaism, balancing both reason and tradition. It is both philosophical and legal, and was influenced by a plethora of outside thinkers: Greeks, Christians, Muslims, and Europeans in turn.
Read more: http://www.yonkerstribune.com/2017/02/is-judaism-a-good-model-for-islamic-reform-by-alexander-h-joffee
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This is one of the only articles I've read on DU that I wished was longer. 
I don't know a lot about Jewish history but this is fascinating.
Maybe consider cross posting in GD and the Jewish group?
