In April, the Kantor Center in Tel Aviv released a report highlighting that 2014 was one of the worst years for anti-Semitism in the last decade. This coincided with Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas. Many of the anti-Semitic incidents that took place, and especially some of the more violent ones, took place in Western Europe. And as a result of this increase, many have been drawing comparisons between the world today and the world in the 1930s.

Just like back then, Jewish communities are being urged in some places to hide their Jewishness. They walk the streets in fear, knowing that an attack is more and more likely. And much of these attacks stem from a large immigrant Arab Muslim population, especially in France, which has seen the highest number of violent incidents for a consecutive number of years. It makes for pretty grim reading for Jews living in countries with an increasing Muslim population.

And yet, despite all the negative reports we see, there is a remarkable exception to this trend.

Azerbaijan, a small country lying in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia, has a population of a little less than 10 million, predominantly Muslim. And yet, unlike Western Europe or the Arab world, Azerbaijan has almost no anti-Semitism directed against the roughly 30,000 Jews living there. Any anti-Semitic incidents are dealt with swiftly by the government, which adopts a zero-tolerance attitude.

Read the article “The Curious Case of Azerbaijan and Its Jew-Loving Muslims” on forward.com.