Coexistence isn’t a medieval memory. Ask the rabbis of the Muslim world

By&nbspRabbi Mendy Chitrik, Chairman and Founder of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States and rabbi of the Ashkenazi Jewish Community of Türkiye. Published on 23/07/2026 - 18:36 GMT+2 Share Comments Add Euronews on Google Share Facebook Twitter Flipboard Send Reddit Linkedin Messenger Telegram VK Bluesky Threads Whatsapp The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews. Rabbi Mendy Chitrik argues that Europe should engage more with Jewish communities in Muslim-majority countries, viewing them as living bridges for dialogue, coexistence and cooperation rather than relics of the past.

Last week in Brussels, I sat at a table with the chief rabbi of Iran, rabbis serving communities from Morocco to Kazakhstan to Nigeria, three European commissioners, and the ambassadors of Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Kazakhstan. Some of those rabbis lead tens of thousands; some serve a few families. That three Muslim-majority governments sent envoys to sit with rabbis is itself part of my argument.

ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT I had come to convene the board of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States, which we founded in 2019. The EU appoints envoys, funds civil society and negotiates agreements across the Muslim world; it debates migration, security, radicalisation and trade. What it almost never does is talk to the Jews who have lived in those societies for centuries.

For many Europeans, Jewish life there belongs in a museum, when it should be part of the conversation. The rabbis in that room carry something no report can supply: experience. For generations, Jews in Muslim-majority societies have learned to remain visible minorities while keeping working relationships with governments, clerics and neighbours.

Iran’s chief rabbi, Yehuda Gerami, told the commissioners his community has lived there for more than 2,500 years, numbers close to 20,000, and asks not for politics but for understanding and practical support. We are loyal citizens, deeply rooted in the countries we call home — and that is what Europe should understand. The Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States (ARIS) held its Executive Board Meeting in Brussels in mid-July.

Photo Gabriel Lelièvre It would be dishonest to romanticise this world. Across the region, ancient communities were devastated in the twentieth century; the 1941 Farhud pogrom foreshadowed the collapse of Iraqi Jewry, and hundreds of thousands left amid expulsion, persecution and seizure of property. Their descendants form a large part of Jewish life in France today.

But collapse is not the whole story. Morocco has woven Jewish heritage into its national story more than any other Muslim-majority state; in Brussels this week, a rabbi from Casablanca recited a prayer for its king. Azerbaijan, one of Israel’s closest partners in the Muslim world, honours a fallen Jewish soldier as a national hero.

In the Gulf, new communities have taken root since the 2020 Abraham Accords. Jewish life in the Muslim world is neither a tale of unbroken continuity nor of complete disappearance; it is loss, resilience and renewal at once. That renewal is now under strain.

Since October 2023, public Jewish life has grown more discreet. In the UAE it retreated after the murder of Chabad’s Rabbi Zvi Kogan in late 2024; in Dagestan, a mob stormed Makhachkala airport hunting for arriving Jews; in Tunisia, a guardsman opened fire near the Ghriba synagogue on Djerba, killing five. And yet Djerba’s community — one of the last strongholds of indigenous Jewish life in the Arab world — keeps building, and we have just rebuilt a mikvah in Tunis.

None of these communities had any hand in the events that now endanger them. Endurance is unglamorous work: kosher supervision, marriages, burials and schooling in places with almost no Jews left. In 2021 it meant getting Zebulon Simentov, long called the last openly practising Jew in Afghanistan, safely out.

It has meant welcoming more than a hundred Muslim theology students into an Istanbul synagogue and answering every question honestly. They did not all leave agreeing with us — that was never the point. They left having met Jews, rather than ideas about Jews.

And it means answering the phone when governments stop speaking. Trust cannot be improvised once a crisis begins; it has to exist already. Europe can help sustain that trust with tools it already has, and the requests we brought are modest: recognise synagogue registrations, grant visas so rabbis can reach communities too small to have their own, protect cemeteries, let religious articles cross borders safely.

None of it requires new machinery. The EU already runs interfaith work in Syria and trains scholars in Egypt to counter extremism. Extend that same effort to the Jews of the Muslim world.

Then go further. Europe rightly teaches the Holocaust and funds the fight against antisemitism; it should also introduce young Europeans — including you