Comment by reissbaker
1 year ago
I don't think you can excuse anti-Semitism in the last 200 years because 1000 years ago there was less anti-Semitism, or conclude that because 1000 years ago was less anti-Semitic that "racism is not the most useful lens to view this relationship through;" after all, European anti-Black racism was much better 1000 years ago, too (a Black military commander was not even particularly unusual in the 1600s, as evidenced by Shakespeare!), and your Louisiana example is from the same time period that the Muslim world's anti-Semitism was running rampant, too. Your theory of economic decline being the reason for anti-Semitism doesn't hold water for the examples I gave of the Ottoman Empire, whose precipitous decline came in the 20th century, yet whose anti-Semitism arose in the 19th century. [1] Scholars don't blame the Ottoman anti-Semitism on economic malaise, but instead point to it being imported by Christian Arabs from Europe:
Historian Martin Gilbert writes that it was in the 19th century that the position of Jews worsened in Muslim countries.[38] According to Mark Cohen in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, most scholars conclude that Arab anti-Semitism in the modern world arose in the nineteenth century, against the backdrop of conflicting Jewish and Arab nationalism, and was imported into the Arab world primarily by nationalistically minded Christian Arabs (and only subsequently was it "Islamized").
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Ott...
You realize that the evidence you bring up actually proves the argument I've been making, don't you?
>Scholars don't blame the Ottoman anti-Semitism on economic malaise, but instead point to it being imported by Christian Arabs from Europe
So this was not a latent feature of Islam or Muslim culture, but an import from a more anti-Semitic culture (of course, the word Semitic here is not quite correct, given that Arabs are also Semites - I don't know why that word is preferred when the actual meaning being conveyed is anti-Jewish). The original poster I was responding to said this;
>the issue of anti-Semitism long pre-dates the establishment of Israel
Perhaps that poster only meant that anti-Jewish sentiment rose in the region a few decades previous, but the most common way I have heard of that belief, it comes from a "clash of civilizations" mindset that holds that the region has been rabidly anti-Jewish for many centuries.
Also, to your point that the Ottoman Empire only began declining in the 20th century, see https://www.britannica.com/topic/decline-of-the-Ottoman-Empi...: "But the grandeur of the Ottoman Empire did not last, and Süleyman’s rule was followed by a slow and arduous decline that spanned nearly four centuries."
Anti-Semitic refers specifically to anti-Jewish racism [1], "Arabs are also Semites so..." isn't an accurate understanding. English isn't Latin, combining roots can form a word with new meaning.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say things about "latent feature of Islam or Muslim culture." I do not think cultures are predetermined by hidden latent variables unique to them and are unrelated to their environments, and so that if something was introduced to the culture environmentally it somehow doesn't count. Similarly, European culture was once much less anti-Black a thousand years ago, and so anti-Black racism isn't a "latent feature" by the same standard. Nonetheless we can look at how cultures are
1. today, and
2. in the recent past
And see that anti-Black racism is now endemic. Similarly, anti-Semitism has been common for hundreds of years in Muslim societies, and blaming it on Israeli statehood is a non-sequitur since it has existed for less than a hundred.
If you insist on searching for hidden variables that are independent, I will point out that the Quran says that Jews are majority treacherous and "you will always find deceit on their part, except for a few" [2]. But of course, much of the Quran is simply a reference to the Christian Bible (e.g. references to the Jews killing Jesus [3], who Islam considers a prophet), so is it truly "latent" or is it an import from Christianity? Ultimately cultures are not machine learning models trained independently from each other on separate hardware; everyone steals from everyone else, so I think the distinction isn't meaningful. There has been significant anti-Semitism in the Muslim world for a long time, and it was endemic long before Israel existed. I reject victim-blaming the Jews for Muslim anti-Semitism due to the Jews creating Israel.
1: https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority...
2: https://quran.com/en/al-maidah/13
3: https://quran.com/en/al-baqarah/61
And this is exactly why the point about Semites comes into play; Arabs and (Middle-Eastern) Jews are functionally the same race. A Jewish person who converted to Islam would no longer be dhimmi, and would no longer pay the jizya or any other tax levied against non-Muslim populations. None of the discrimination noted would legally apply to him or her. It is not a status built on the race of the individual, but on their religion. Hence, it is literally not racist in the most basic way imaginable - it is not based on race! It's like calling ancient Spartan oppression of helots racism, or the British discrimination against the Irish sexism, or South African apartheid transphobia; it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what those words mean. This is why I said that racism is not the most useful lens to view the relationship between the groups through. They are the same race, with differing religions.
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