Anti-Muslim polemics and anti-Jewish polemics were fused together

Evidence

Others have suggested a link between the growing association between the various enemies of Christendom (or of those who were perceived as such) and the increasing violence and repression exercised against them. Many historians of Judaism in northern Europe have seen the anti-Jewish violence of the first Crusade as a watershed between the early Middle Ages, when Jews were accepted in Christian society, and the later Middle Ages, when they were subject to increasing persecution. For Jeremy Cohen, it is the missionary efforts of the thirteenth-century mendicant friars that marks the rise of intolerance, leading to an intensification of violence against Jews and to a sharp decline in their legal and social status; for him the “Muslim connection,” the increasing link between the anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish polemics of mendicants and others, may be in part responsible for this change. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1368 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Yet the limitation of this kind of approach to studying the conceptual ties between antisemitism and Islamophobia across time is that we lose the critical importance of change over time—of an unfolding chronology. The relationship between Christian notions of Jews and Muslims is not the same today as it was one hundred, three hundred, or one thousand years ago—just as the Islamophobia of the war on terror is not the only historical form of anti-Muslim hatred, and genocidal Nazi antisemitism is not the only historical form of antisemitism. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 72 (#complicates, via linked claim)

The reason for this is not too difficult to find. These two religions are both in a sense offshoots of the Jewish religious tradition and have considerable affinities both with one another and with Judaism. When throughout the Mid­ dle Ages and into early modern times Christendom and Islam were engaged in what Gibbon called “the Great Debate” and denounced each other as infidels, by the mere fact of so doing they were revealing their essential kinship. The Jews, like the rabbi in the story, agreed tactfully with both. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 317 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Protestant-Catholic-Islamic parallels in polemic relied on incredibly thin points; Anti-Semitic ideology fused contradictory charges into a single universalist enemy image — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1696; A famous anti-Muslim polemic was in fact aimed chiefly at Jews and philosophers (+15 more)

Broader Connections

• Medieval anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim polemics became increasingly linked #corroborates (0.95) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1368
• Historical forms of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hatred vary fundamentally across time #complicates (0.80) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 72
• Christian and Muslim mutual denunciations paradoxically revealed their shared Jewish roots #complicates (0.72) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 317