Contrasting Ideas In Mark Chohen's Myth And Countermyth

Myth and Countermyth

In Mark Chohen’s chapter “Myth and Countermyth”, his argument consists of two contrasting ideas. The first idea is the myth of the interfaith utopia. People called that time a literary golden age during which Jews and Arab people lived peaceful under Islamic rules. Islam people at that time did not discriminate against the Jews and they tolerated the Jews. Jews received both political and cultural toleration. As a result, the Jewish culture started to integrate into the gentile culture. Many books written about the Jews, Arabs, and Christians show that the Jews were persecuted by Christians. The second idea in this chapter is the coutermyth of the interfaith utopia. The countermyth shows that the Arabs and anti-Zionists had an anti-Semitic attitude toward the Jews. Mark thinks that the countermyth occurred because of the conflict between Arab-Jewish and Arab-Israeli. Zionists in the land of Arab began to oppress the Islamic rule. The Jewish had worse life under Islam than under the Christianity. Oriental Jews were the refugees from the persecution and they distorted the people in the Arab society. f …show more content…
He quoted a paragraph or a section from the book to support his viewpoints. After his quotations he always explained the content in the quotation and why he used it as the evidence. For example, the first evidence he used was the section from the book which was written by Heinrich. He chose this section to show that Jews had a wonderful life in the land of Arab, but not under the persecution of Christianity. He not only quoted the paragraphs, but also summarized the content of the book as the evidence. For instance, he summarized the book, From Time Immemorial, to show that the countermyth of the interfaith