By Mendel Kranz
Mendel Kranz is the Samuel W. and Goldye Marian Spain Postdoctoral Fellow in the Program in Jewish Studies. In September, Kranz gave one of the three lectures at our annual Rice lecture series at the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center. He is currently teaching a class, Antisemitism and Islamophobia, at Rice.
For many years, historians of antisemitism have tended to understand it as a singular phenomenon targeting Jews and Jewish communities. They brought to light the diverse ways it operated, from Christian anti-Judaism to conspiracy theories, but they generally did not situate it within a broader history of racial, religious and ethnic discrimination. This has begun to change in recent years, and we have become increasingly attuned to the ways antisemitism is intimately entangled with other forms of oppression. This is the premise of a course I’m teaching this semester, Antisemitism and Islamophobia, which explores the historical and ideological ties that link these two histories together. While these forms of discrimination are often treated as separate phenomena, examining them together reveals surprising historical connections, similar structural forms and hateful ideas that, unfortunately, continue to shape our world today.
Both antisemitism and Islamophobia emerged within a European context dominated by Christian ideas and practices of colonial and imperial expansion. In medieval and early modern Spain, for example, both Jews and Muslims were cast as threatening outsiders to Christian European civilization. Laws prevented them from constructing new synagogues and mosques, from keeping Christian servants, and of being with and marrying Christian women. Both communities confronted forced conversion under the Inquisition and were ultimately expelled from Spain if they refused.
With the expansion of European empires and the rise of Orientalist ideas and frameworks, both Jews and Muslims were viewed as backward, hierarchically inferior and incapable of becoming civilized. This racialized framework provided intellectual scaffolding for various forms of discrimination and violence against both communities. In the 19th century, linguistic ideas about semitic and Aryan languages further entrenched these ideas. According to scholars at the time, semitic languages and people — a category that comprised both Jews and Muslims — lacked creativity, fluidity and any capacity for intellectual achievement. Only Aryan languages could achieve prominence in philosophy, science and the arts. The notion of semitism conflated religious, racial, scientific and linguistic categories to systematically discriminate against both Jews and Muslims and to enshrine the supremacy of the white Christian majority. In the modern era, both groups were targeted by the rise in scientific racism, Orientalist stereotyping and nationalist forms of exclusion.
Today, antisemitism and Islamophobia continue to reinforce each other in dangerous ways. This becomes especially evident when we turn our attention to the global rise in far-right parties and ideas. Conspiracy theories are commonplace in these circles, and Jews feature prominently as a shadowy cabal threatening to upend the Christian order. The racist Great Replacement theory, for instance, suggests that Jews, Muslims, Black people and other immigrants threaten to replace white Christian society. These ideas have material, tangible effects, and often interchange ideas about Jews and Muslims. For example, one white nationalist who attempted a mass shooting against a synagogue in Germany described how he had originally planned to storm a mosque. Just days before he attacked the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the shooter complained online that Jews were helping bring Muslims into the country. Jews and Muslims are both central objects of fear and loathing within white nationalist ideology.
Even in mainstream liberal discourse, both Jews and Muslims face scrutiny and restrictions of their religious practices in the name of secular liberalism. In France, it is illegal for Muslim students to wear the hijab in public schools and for Jewish students to wear a kipah. France’s commitment to secular ideas comes at the expense of denying groups their religious freedoms. In Germany, despite its often-lauded role in addressing its past, there have been successful campaigns to ban circumcision — something which affects both Jewish and Muslim communities.
Foregrounding these connections is crucial for both understanding the deeply entangled histories of antisemitism and Islamophobia and for focusing our attention on how to fight back against them. It helps us recognize how bigotry against different groups often stems from shared roots in Christian European supremacy. It also reveals that to effectively combat either antisemitism or Islamophobia requires challenging the broader frameworks that target both groups. If we isolate one from the other, we risk missing these important connections.
This intersectional analysis also highlights why Jewish and Muslim communities have often found common cause in struggles for justice. After Trump’s election in 2016, many Jewish and Muslim groups joined together to fight for equality and to combat the rise of hatred against both communities. From anticolonial movements to contemporary activism against white supremacy, there is a rich history of Jewish-Muslim solidarity that offers lessons for today. As both communities face rising hatred and violence, understanding the deep links between antisemitism and Islamophobia can help forge the alliances needed to combat both.
We should not ignore the fact that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has created tensions between some Jewish and Muslim communities, particularly in more mainstream institutions. But we should be attentive to how right-wing actors seek to exploit these divisions and turn the communities against each other while promoting both antisemitism and Islamophobia. Moving forward requires holding multiple truths: recognizing the distinct histories and experiences of both communities while understanding how their oppressions interconnect; acknowledging real tensions while not letting them prevent solidarity; and remaining clear that the primary beneficiaries of Jewish-Muslim division are the very forces that threaten both groups.
By studying antisemitism and Islamophobia together, we can learn to appreciate their shared roots, to understand the indelible ways that they have each defined and contributed to each other, and to work toward the forms of solidarity needed to combat both.