European Jews and Muslims were jointly racialized as Semites until 1917
Evidence
In the 19th century Jews and Muslims were jointly conceived as Semites, bound by a linguistic and racial heritage as well as by Abrahamic monotheism. Arabs were Jews on horseback, as Disraeli wrote. It was only in the 20th century, Renton argues, following the alliance in 1917 between the British Empire and Zionism, that European notions of Muslims and Jews entered a new period in which Jews ceased to be ‘Oriental’ and Islam was reconceived as a political problem — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 699
Categorization
- SHARE: A compact, striking historical claim — ‘Arabs were Jews on horseback’ — that a scholar of race or Middle East history would savor.
- XREF: The 1917 Balfour/Zionism pivot explains how the two groups’ racial fates diverge — directly relevant to the reader’s antisemitism-parallel analysis. — connects to: Modern Semites could never outdistance the claims of their primitive origins; Both Jews and Muslims have been racialized by majority populations in modern Europe. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 100; Orientalist scholarship conflates Muslims and Jews into one racial type (+10 more)
Related
- Modern Semites could never outdistance the claims of their primitive origins (similarity 0.86)
- Anti-Muslim racism is analytically parallel to European antisemitism against Jews as Jews. (similarity 0.84)
- Both Jews and Muslims have been racialized by majority populations in modern Europe. (similarity 0.84)
- The vilification of Jews and Muslims is one continuous historical process (similarity 0.82)
- Orientalist scholarship conflates Muslims and Jews into one racial type (similarity 0.82)
- Parallel racialization logics target Jews and Muslims across eras. (similarity 0.82)
- Jewish racialization varies with historical stability and splits along West-East rather than unified lines (similarity 0.81)
- Jews were racially Whitened while Arabs were raced as non-White threats (similarity 0.81)
- Pre-1914 Europeans saw the Arab as frozen outside contemporary history (similarity 0.81)
- Orientalism imagined Muslims as a monolithic Arab or Middle Eastern racial bloc. (similarity 0.80)
- Islamophobia and racial prejudice are entangled in distinct ways across Western contexts (similarity 0.80)
- Anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish stereotyping operates through racialization rather than mere religious prejudice. (similarity 0.80)
- Identity politics structurally separates Muslim and Jewish anti-racism despite shared experience of denigration. (similarity 0.80)
- Europe’s racial anxieties about blackness paired the Muslim with the Jew (similarity 0.80)
- Debates on antisemitism and Islamophobia have developed largely apart from race scholarship. (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Both Jews and Muslims have been racialized by majority populations in modern Europe.
#corroborates(0.80) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 100 - Orientalist scholarship conflates Muslims and Jews into one racial type
#corroborates(0.75) - Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are parallel projects of majority exclusion
#corroborates(0.75) — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 482 - The racialized content of the Muslim category persisted across changing labels
#corroborates(0.72) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 163 - European anti-Semitism and Islamophobia mirror each other in structure.
#corroborates(0.72) — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 465 - Anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish stereotyping operates through racialization rather than mere religious prejudice.
#expands(0.72) — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 700 - The vilification of Jews and Muslims is one continuous historical process
#expands(0.70) - Hostility to British Muslims predates modern biological racism and parallels antisemitism
#expands(0.70) — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 167 - Anti-Muslim racism is analytically parallel to European antisemitism against Jews as Jews.
#corroborates(0.70) — Nasar Meer, Tariq Modood, Refutations of Racism in the ‘Muslim…, 28 - Arabs gained whiteness-status in 1943 while Muslims generally remained excluded because Islam signified non-whiteness.
#qualifies(0.70) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 123