According to the Koran, Jews (and Christians) are considered to be "People of the book," or to have a similar heritage. (Goldschmidt, 2006, p. 35) As a result of this belief, many Muslim kingdoms and empires maintained a certain amount of respect for the Jews. However, Jews were still forced to pay a special tax in order to practice their religion without any official persecution. (Goldschmidt, 2006, p. 67) Later, during the Ottoman Empire, Jews were still treated as official second class citizens, or "re'ayas." Goldschmidt, 2006, p. 131) While there may not have been outright persecution of the Jews under Muslim domination, Jews were still not afforded the same rights as Muslims.
While the Muslims treated the Jews with a certain amount of respect, the European Christians did not. Throughout European history Jews were forced to live separated from European society, denied basic rights, outright persecuted, and often the subject of physical violence; with the wholesale slaughter of Jews a common occurrence. From the...
(Moss) The Germans, under the leadership of the Nazis, engaged in the "final solution" to what they called "the Jewish problem" by ordering the extermination of every Jewish man, woman, and child. The Holocaust, as this attempt has come to be called, resulted in the deaths of over 6 million European Jews.
References
Dosick, Wayne. (1995). "Living Judaism: the complete guide to Jewish belief, tradition, and practice." Google Books. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=bpXUYUO7cg8C
Goldschmidt, Arthur. (2006). A Concise History of the Middle East. Boulder, Co:
Westview Press. Print "Halakhah: Jewish Law." Judaism 101. Retrieved from http://www.jewfaq.org/halakhah.htm
Moss, Alexandra. "The History of Jewish Persecution." Retrieved from http://www.ic.arizona.edu/ic/mcbride/ws200/moss-jewc.htm
