Currently in many European countries Muslim communities and their European neighbors are in conflict over many issues. My question is during pre20th century Europe were their conflicts between jewish communities and their European neighbors similar to the tensions we see now with muslims?

by Thearab2403
Hezekiah_the_Judean

Short answer: to a certain extent yes, although the similarities aren't exact.

Long answer: Jews in pre 20th century Europe lived in many different countries, from Spain in the west to Russia in the East. In some areas they were treated well and some become quite wealthy and influential. But in other areas they were savagely persecuted and expelled, and in almost all areas they were subject to discrimination.

To give just a few examples: at the time of the First Crusade anti Semitic mobs attacked Jewish communities in the Rhineland and massacred them. Over two hundred years later during the 1300s Europeans frequently blamed Jews for the spread of bubonic plague and attacked them. And in 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain forcibly expelled all the Jews and Muslims living in their kingdom. While there were periods of tolerance when Jews did well in medieval, early modern, and enlightenment Europe, there was also a lot of tension, discrimination, and anti-Semitism (at first mostly religious, but gradually becoming more racial as you get closer to the twentieth century).

The tensions with modern day Muslim communities in Europe aren't exactly the same, but in many cases you have a minority that has very different customs from the majority, the two groups don't get along, and people in the majority discriminate against members of the minority community. In that sense, the conflicts between say, Christian Germans and German Jews are somewhat similar to conflicts between white Germans and Germans who are Muslim. But there are also important differences, so you shouldn't think of the current conflicts as exactly the same as the older ones.

Source: Simon Schama's "The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC-1492 AD".