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Finland Jewish and Muslim Communities
In the 1980s, there were about 1,300 Jews in Finland,
800 of
whom lived in Helsinki and most of the remainder of whom
lived in
Turku. During the period of Swedish rule, Jews had been
forbidden
to live in Finland. Once the country became part of the
Russian
Empire, however, Jewish veterans of the tsarist army had
the
right to settle anywhere they wished within the empire.
Although
constrained by law to follow certain occupations, mainly
those
connected with the sale of clothes, the Jewish community
in
Finland was able to prosper, and 1890 it numbered about
1,000.
Finnish independence brought complete civil rights, and
during
the interwar period there were some 2,000 Jews in Finland,
most
of them living in urban areas in the south. During World
War II,
Finnish authorities refused to deliver Jews to the Nazis,
and the
country's Jewish community survived the war virtually
intact. By
the 1980s, assimilation and emigration had significantly
reduced
the size of the community, and it was only with some
difficulty
that it maintained synagogues, schools, libraries, and
other
pertinent institutions.
The Muslim community in Finland was even smaller than
the
Jewish community; it numbered only about 900, most of whom
were
found in Helsinki. The Muslims first came to Finland from
Turkey
in the mid-nineteenth century and have remained there ever
since,
active in commerce. Like their Jewish counterparts,
Finnish
Muslims have had difficulty maintaining all the
institutions
needed by a social group because of their small number.
Data as of December 1988
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