a fascinating article on the historical treatment of jews in muslim ruled lands. from 700k in 1948, their headcount is down to few 1000 now.
http://www.azure.org.il/article.php?id=581
The Muslims’ conduct toward the Jews was determined to a great extent by the guiding principles of their faith. Believers were required to humiliate non-Muslims living under their rule, as befits those who reject the divine truth. And yet, until modern times, the Islamic debasement of the Jews was distinct from the virulent hatred that characterized European Judeophobia. Bernard Lewis emphasizes that
in contrast to Christian antisemitism, the Muslim attitude toward non-Muslims is one not of hate or fear or envy but simply of contempt. This is expressed in various ways…. The negative attributes ascribed to the subject religions and their followers are usually expressed in religious and social terms, very rarely in ethnic or racial terms, though this does sometimes occur…. The conventional epithets are apes for Jews and pigs for Christians.10
As non-Muslim subjects of the Muslim state, Jews were assigned the inferior status of dhimmi (“dependent”). This position ensured the protection of their lives and property, the right to practice their religion, and a degree of internal communal autonomy. In exchange for all these, however, the Jews were required to submit to various forms of legal and social discrimination.11
There is no shortage of historical examples of this approach: In the fourteenth century, the Jews of Egypt and Syria were prohibited from living in tall buildings, raising their voices in prayer, burying their dead in graves more impressive than those of their Muslim neighbors, or filling clerical roles. If they wished to enter a public bathhouse, they had to hang a bell or copper coin around their necks.12 Until 1912, the Jews of Morocco were forced to walk barefoot or wear straw shoes outside the Jewish quarter as a sign of respect for the Arab nation.13 And the Shi’ite law introduced in Yemen by Zaydi imams determined that a Muslim who murdered a Jew should not be sentenced to death. Jews were obligated, moreover, to wear simple-looking clothes and to refrain from donning a headdress. And if this were not enough, many Jewish orphans were abducted by Yemen’s authorities and forced to convert.14
Jews in non-Arab Muslim lands hardly fared better. The rise of the Shi’ite-Iranian Safavid Empire in the sixteenth century led to a rapid and violent deterioration in the status of Persian Jewry. The Muslim population instigated brutal pogroms, while the authorities, who viewed the Jews as impure, attempted to convert them by force.15 From the end of the nineteenth century until the 1940s, Jews were forbidden to ride a horse, build a wall around their homes, own a store in the bazaar, or go out in the rain and snow, lest the water mix with their bodily fluids and defile their surroundings.16 Jews from Iran have told of relatives who were murdered by Muslims simply because they dared to drink from a cup in a public place.17
The rise of Arab nationalism, the Balfour Declaration, and the escalation of the Jewish-Arab conflict in Palestine led to a significant deterioration in the conditions of Jews living in Muslim societies. The threat to their safety and welfare reached its peak following the Partition Plan, adopted by the UN on November 29, 1947. In a discussion held by a political committee of the UN General Assembly five days before the resolution was passed, the representative from Egypt, Mohamed Hussein Heykal, explained how the plan would affect the future of Jews in the Arab world:
The United Nations… should not lose sight of the fact that the proposed solution might endanger a million Jews living in Muslim countries. Partition of Palestine might create antisemitism in those countries even more difficult to root out than the antisemitism which the Allies tried to eradicate in Germany…. If the United Nations decides to partition Palestine, it might be responsible for very grave disorders and for the massacre of a large number of Jews.… Riots would break out in Palestine, would spread through all the Arab states and might lead to a war between two races.18
The threat indeed came to pass: With the encouragement of the authorities, a tidal wave of antisemitism surged through the Arab countries. To be sure, the violence did not come as a complete surprise to the Jews living there: The hostility toward the Jews in Iraq, for example, had already exacted a bloody toll. In 1941, during the holiday of Shavuot, a pogrom known as the “Farhud” took place in Baghdad. During the riots, over 150 Jews, including infants, were brutally murdered, and many hundreds were injured; women were raped, homes were plundered, stores and businesses were looted, and thousands of families were left homeless.19
On May 15, 1948, immediately following Israel’s declaration of independence, Iraq went to war against the Jewish state; at home, the military regime began to systematically persecute its Jewish citizens. Hundreds were fired from public service, and draconian restrictions were placed on Jewish merchants, leading to severe deterioration in the economic state of the community. Jews were denied basic health and sanitation services, and required to “donate” money to the military struggle against Israel.20 Most gravely, over the next two years, hundreds of Jews were arrested on various pretexts and brought before military courts, which sentenced them to incarceration and heavy fines. Prisoners were sent to the Abu Ghraib jail south of Baghdad, where they were subjected to all manner of torture.21 One of the wealthiest Jews of Iraq, Shafiq Ades—himself hardly a supporter of Zionism—was charged with subversion; after a show trial, and despite international pressure to commute his sentence, Ades was hanged in September 1948 outside his home in the city of Basra. For many Iraqi Jews, the incident was a grim reminder of their situation, and a sign that they should seek a future elsewhere.22
In March 1950, Iraq allowed Jews to leave the country on condition that they relinquish their citizenship. Those who left were forced to sell their property for a negligible price, since they were forbidden to leave Iraq with more than 50 dinars (equivalent to about $200 at the time) and a few personal possessions. A year later, the Iraqi government confiscated the assets of tens of thousands of Jews who had applied for emigration to Israel but had not yet managed to leave. By the end of that year, approximately 90 percent of the 135,000 Jews living in Iraq had left, leaving behind a wealth of possessions and enormous capital.23
If not for some exemplary investigative work by the Saudi police, this could have turned out really ugly.