It is important to know that Muslim-Jewish rivalry is less than hundred years old. Jews were in fact protected in Muslim societies, and they enjoyed relatively good living in Muslims countries for more than a thousand years.
Earlier for almost two thousand years, Christians were the staunch enemies of Jews. The rivalry between Jews and Christians began with the beginning of Christianity.
The most significant event of Crucifixion of Jesus Christ is blamed on Jews of the time in Roman empire. Jews charged that Jesus Christ of being a false prophet and of blasphemy who challenged the authority of Jewish religious leaders.
Throughout the history, Jews were treated as subhuman in Christian world including in Europe who suffered most severe atrocities at the hands of Christian Europe.
For more than one thousand years under long and vast Muslim rule, Jews were allowed to practice their religion and to administer their religious affairs with full freedom.
Jewish scholars and scientists were among the leading scientists who contributed to mathematics, astronomy, philosophy during the golden age of Islam from 8th to 13th century.
They were largely free in their choice of residence and profession. Many Jewish scholars were influenced by Islamic legal thought.
On the other hand, Christians persecuted Jews throughout the history. During first crusade, Jews in Palestine, along with Muslims, were indiscriminately massacred and sold into slavery by the Crusaders.
Relief for the Jewish population of Palestine came when the Ayyubid dynasty defeated the Crusaders and conquered Palestine to establish Muslim rule there.
Also, in much of Europe during the Middle Ages, Jews were denied citizenship, barred from holding posts in government and the military, and excluded from membership the guilds and any public role.
Many instances of massacres such as in 1096, knights of the First Crusade unleashed a wave of anti-Semitic violence in France and multiple massacres in Germany.
As European commerce grew in the late Middle Ages, some Jews became prominent in trade, banking, and moneylending which locals did not like. This economic resentment and traditional religious prejudice, prompted the forced expulsion of Jews from several countries and regions, including England (1290), France (14th century), Germany (1350s), Portugal (1496).
Intensifying persecution in Spain culminated in 1492 in the forced expulsion of that country’s large and long-established Jewish population. Only Jews who had converted to Christianity were allowed to remain there.
As a result of these mass expulsions, the centres of Jewish life shifted from the Western Europe and Germany to Muslim countries like Turkey and other Middle Eastern areas under Ottoman empire.
The end of the Middle Ages brought little change in Jews’ position in Europe. Catholic reformation renewed anti-Jewish legislation and reinforced the system of ghettoized segregation in Catholic countries.
Periodic persecutions of Jews in western Europe continued until the late 18th century. Anti-Semitism became a powerful political tool, an organized movement with its own political parties.
The storm of anti-Semitic violence under the leadership of Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1944 not only reached a terrifying intensity in Germany itself but also inspired anti-Jewish movements in France, Hungary, England and the United States.
In Nazi Germany, anti-Semitism reached a racial dimension experienced never before. Christianity had sought the conversion of the Jews, and political leaders from Spain to England had sought their expulsion and the Nazis, who regarded Jews not only as members of a subhuman race but as a dangerous cancer that would destroy the German people.
They sought the murder of all Jews, men, women, and children and their eradication from the planet. In Nazi ideology, that perceived Jewishness to be biological, the elimination of the Jews was essential to the purification and even the salvation of the German people.
In Germany, anti-Semitism became official government policy—taught in the schools, elaborated in “scientific” journals and research institutes, and promoted by a huge, highly effective organization for international propaganda. In 1941 the liquidation of European Jewry became official party policy.
The mistrust in Catholic Church against Jews was such that Vatican moved to improve relations with Jews as late as in 1965, although it did not formally recognize Israel until 1993.
Basically, Jews were hated so much in Europe that after second world war, Britain and US developed a strategy to evacuate Jews from Europe by promoting the ideology of Zionism.
In creation of Israel, US and UK successfully turned attention of Jews away from Christians. Jews now found a new enemy in Palestine whom they would subjugate for next hundred years.
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