Arab population, because of their Jewish cultural tradition, their common past, and the Judeo-arabic language - all of them separated them from the Arabs. And the Arabs saw the Jews, even the ones who spoke only Judeo-Arabic, as members of a socio-linguistic religious cultural community, different from theirs. The Jews in Tunisia were able to maintain and reproduce their autonomous administrative, cultural and religious institutions, preserving intact their religious and communal identity. ... a cohesive, well-organized and structured Jewish community, who remained a separate entity from the Arabs and the French.” For the generation born under the protectorate, the French language replaced Judeo-Arabic as the Tunisian Jews' mother tongue, causing, maybe, Memmi's daughter to ponder her own and her parents' identity when asking, "are you Arab father? Your mother speaks Arabic. And I, am I Arab, or French, or Jewish? Clearly reflecting the Tunisian reality of three distinct social identity groups— les Français, les Arabes, les Juifs— which are, at the same time, national and religious. In 1975, Albert Memmi wrote: "The term "Arab Jews" is obviously not a good one. I have adopted it for convenience. I simply wish to underline that as natives of those countries called Arab and indigenous to those lands well before the arrival of the Arabs, we shared with them, to a great extent, languages, traditions and cultures ... We would have liked to be Arab Jews. If we abandoned the idea, it is because over the centuries the Moslem Arabs systematically prevented its realization by their contempt and cruelty. It is now too late for us to become Arab Jews." Proponents of the argument against "Arab Jews" include most Jews from Arab lands. Jews of Arabia before Islam Jewish populations have existed in the Arabian Peninsula since before Islam; in the north where they were connected to the Jewish populations of the Levant and Iraq, in the Ihsaa' coastal plains, and in the south, i.e. in Yemen. There were three main Jewish tribes in Medina before the rise of Islam in Arabia: the Banu Nadir, the Banu Qainuqa, and the Banu Qurayza. Banu Nadir was hostile to Muhammad's new religion. Other Jewish tribes lived relatively peacefully under Muslim rule. Banu Nadir, the Banu Qainuqa, and the Banu Qurayza lived in northern Arabia, at the oasis of Yathribu until the 7th century, when the men were sentenced to death and women and children enslaved