Anti-Jewish animus drew more popular violence than anti-Muslim animus despite Muslim demographics

Evidence

Prior to World War II, Islam was a distant threat. With Muslimmajority lands occupied by European powers, the US government’s interactions with them were limited to deploying ambassadors whose reports reified the Orientalist view that “history does not record a single instance of successful constitutional government in a country where the Mussulman religion is the state religion.” Although such derogatory portrayals circulated among the intellectual elite, the average American was preoccupied with more pressing domestic economic concerns in the first half of the twentieth century. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 608 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Like most of our Jewish respondents, he suggested that what the Muslim communities, which represent mostly relatively recent immigrants, were going through in the UK now was what Jewish people had experienced in the past, and that the reason why the levels of overt antisemitism in the UK, in his view, were comparatively lower than those of anti-Muslim prejudice was because Jews had already been forced to assimilate. ‘If you’re getting a lot of hassle, if you can’t live in a society because of the way you look, sometimes that can force people to abandon things quicker’, he said. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1735 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Historical forms of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hatred vary fundamentally across time — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in…, 72; Anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim imagery differed in frequency because of political threat levels; Anti-Muslim hostility is older than race as a modern category (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Anti-Islam animus was elite-driven before World War II, not populist #complicates (0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 608
• Persecution-driven assimilation explains lower present-day antisemitism than Islamophobia #complicates (0.78) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1735
• Anti-Muslim hostility is older than race as a modern category #complicates (0.72)