Muhammad, the founder of Islam, traveled to Medina in 622 A.D. to attract followers to his new faith. When the Jews of Medina refused to convert and rejected Muhammad, two of the major Jewish tribes were expelled; in 627, Muhammad's followers killed between 600 and 900 of the men, and divided the surviving Jewish women and children amongst themselves.
The Muslim attitude toward Jews is reflected in various verses throughout the Koran, the holy book of the Islamic faith. They [the Children of Israel] were consigned to humiliation and wretchedness. They brought the wrath of God upon themselves, and this because they used to deny God's signs and kill His Prophets unjustly and because they disobeyed and were transgressors (Sura 2:61). According to the Koran, the Jews try to introduce corruption (5:64), have always been disobedient (5:78), and are enemies of Allah, the Prophet and the angels (2:9798).
The attitude of the Muslims toward the Christians and the Jews is that of a master towards slaves, whom he treats with a certain lordly tolerance so long as they keep their place. Any sign of pretension to equality is promptly repressed.(11)The danger for Jews became even greater as a showdown approached in the UN over partition in 1947. The Syrian delegate, Faris el-Khouri, warned: Unless the Palestine problem is settled, we shall have difficulty in protecting and safeguarding the Jews in the Arab world.(12)More than a thousand Jews were killed in anti-Jewish rioting during the 1940s in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Yemen.(13) This helped trigger the mass exodus of Jews from Arab countries.
