by 
You
venture
to
call
Ferdinand
a
wise
ruler,
he
who
has
impoverished
his
own
country
and
enriched
mine!”
The
Ottoman
sultan
Bayezid
II
is
said
to
have
made
this
disparaging
remark
about
Spain’s
Catholic
king
upon
the
latter’s
expulsion
of
Jews
and
Muslims
in
1492.
Knowing
what
an
asset
the
Jewish
community
of
al-Andalus
had
been
to
the
Arab
kingdoms
there,
the
sultan
was
astonished
at
Ferdinand’s
edict
and
welcomed
the
Jewish
refugees
from
his
Christian
foe.
Jewish
history
has
been
defined
in
large
part
by
expulsions,
and
the
search
for
places
that
accept
them.
In
the
past
this
included
Muslim
rulers.
In
1940,
Mohammed
V
of
Morocco
famously
refused
to
implement
the
antisemitic
edicts
of
the
French
Vichy
regime
allied
with
Nazi
Germany.
Considering
himself
Amir
al-Mu’minin
(Commander
of
the
Faithful)
like
his
namesake
the
prophet,
Mohammed
V
saw
the
Jews
not
as
the
wandering
people
as
portrayed
in
Christian
legend,
but
as
People
of
the
Book
deserving
of
protection.
“There
are
no
Jews
in
Morocco.
There
are
only
Moroccan
subjects.”
His
firm
act
of
defiance — understood
by
scholars
today
to
have
been
on
political
as
well
as
religious
grounds — in
support
of
his
country’s
quarter
of
a
million
Jews
stood
in
starkly
heroic
contrast
to
the
impotence
and
inaction
(at
best)
of
Pope
Pius
XII,
later
nicknamed
“Hitler’s
Pope”
for
his
secret
back
channels
of
communication
with
the
Nazi
regime.
Sadly,
more
recent
history
has
been
one
of
ever
fewer
safe
places
for
Jews.
The
Middle
East,
once
a
haven,
has
become
largely
Jewless
(Israel
excepted).
Through
a
mixture
of
expulsions,
voluntary
and
semi-voluntary
emigrations,
and
everything
in
between,
the
Jewish
population
of
Muslim-majority
countries
in
the
Middle
East
has
gone
from
a
million
in
1948
to
an
estimated
15,000
today.
(Israel
currently
has
approximately
1.7
million
Muslim
citizens.)
The
recent
history
of
Christians
in
Muslim-majority
countries
hasn’t
been
much
better.
The
Christian
population
of
the
Middle
East
has
declined
precipitously
in
the
past
100
years
as
well.
In
1910,
Christians
made
up
13.6
percent
of
the
population.
Today
they
constitute
between
3
and
5
percent.
Europe
itself
is
becoming
less
and
less
Christian
over
time — 95
percent
in
1900,
projected
to
be
65
percent
by
2050 — and
more
Muslim.
Africa,
on
the
other
hand,
is
expected
to
be
home
to
40
percent
of
the
world’s
Christians
by
the
year
2060.
All
these
changes
in
the
monotheistic
world
suggest
that,
as
at
the
time
of
the
Spanish
Inquisition,
Jewish
demography
is
undergoing
enormous
changes.
What
distinguishes
the
Jews
from
other
monotheistic
faiths
in
this
massive
transformation
is
that
while
the
Christian
and
Muslim
worlds
are
becoming
geographically
more
diverse,
the
once
wildly
diverse
Jewish
Diaspora
has
become
dramatically
less
so.
Jewish
migration
in
recent
decades
has
been
almost
entirely
to
Israel
and
the
United
States,
such
that
90
percent
of
world
Jewry
today
are
American
or
Israeli
citizens,
some
both.
Over
70
percent
of
the
Jewish
Diaspora
resides
in
North
America,
the
vast
majority
in
the
United
States.
Read
the
rest
of
this
piece
at
Sapir.
Joel
Kotkin
is
the
author
of
The
Coming
of
Neo-Feudalism:
A
Warning
to
the
Global
Middle
Class.
He
is
the
Roger
Hobbs
Presidential
Fellow
in
Urban
Futures
at
Chapman
University
and
and
directs
the
Center
for
Demographics
and
Policy
there.
He
is
Senior
Research
Fellow
at
the
Civitas
Institute
at
the
University
of
Texas
in
Austin.
Learn
more
at
joelkotkin.com
and
follow
him
on
Twitter
@joelkotkin.
Map:
Wikimedia
under
CC
4.0
License.
Go to Source
Author: Joel Kotkin
