What a Jewish-Muslim bond can do
The only Muslim country that openly cherishes its Jewish minority did something very helpful on Wednesday. Azerbaijan mediated talks between Israel and Turkey. The aim: to prevent the two Middle East giants from a military clash over a dangerous competition to influence neighboring Syria, newly liberated from a dictator and still in disarray.
Azerbaijan’s long friendship with both Turkey and Israel “has been proven in difficult times,” said President Ilham Aliyev. The talks were necessary, he added, to calm tensions that are “very troubling.”
Most people in Azerbaijan are close to Turks in language, religion, and culture. Yet their centurieslong embrace of a thriving Jewish community – less than 1% of the population – has stood out in the Islamic world as a model of religious tolerance. Muslims and Jews respect each other’s traditions. They enjoy frequent interfaith celebrations. Jews, who first migrated to Azerbaijan centuries ago, are active in political life.
“Azerbaijan may be the only country in the world where the synagogues don’t have to lock their doors at night,” wrote Ayoob Kara of Israel’s Economic Peace Center in 2022 for The Jerusalem Post.
The talks in Baku this week help put a new spotlight on what the country can offer a troubled Middle East. “The Azerbaijan model is showing us that there is a possibility to live another way, to live together and to grow and to develop together,” Zamir Isayev, a rabbi in the capital, Baku, told The Jerusalem Post in March.
This example of religious coexistence – a result of bonds between Muslims and Jews over their Abrahamic roots – helps explain why Israel and Azerbaijan remain close in economic ties and diplomacy. Since Azerbaijan’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, its government has been the most secular of Muslim nations. In 2023, it became the first mainly Shiite country to open an embassy in Israel. That move was made possible by a people with a long history of harmony – rooted in faith.
