Twentieth Century
By the late 1940s, conditions of the Arab Jews in many Muslim countries were rapidly worsening through a combination of growing Arab nationalism due to European occupation; Nazi influence in the Axis controlled parts of North Africa; and the conflict in the British Mandate of Palestine. The situation came to a head after 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Many Arab states instituted formal discriminatory laws against their Jewish populations. Within a few decades, most Jews fled Muslim lands, most for the newly created Jewish state, but others went to France, the United States, Great Britain and other Commonwealth nations. In 1945 there were between 758,000 and 866,000 Jews living in communities throughout the Arab world. Today, there are fewer than 8,000. In some Arab states, such as Libya which was once around 3 percent Jewish, the Jewish community no longer exists; in other Arab countries, only a few hundred Jews remain. The largest communities of Jews in a Muslim land exist in the non-Arab countries of Iran and Turkey; both, however, are much smaller than they historically have been. Among Arab countries, the largest Jewish community exists in Morocco.
Jewish ethnic groups that have lived in the majority-Muslim world include Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Temani.
Read more about this topic: History Of The Jews Under Muslim Rule
Famous quotes related to twentieth century:
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—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
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