Expanding the Judeo-Christian label to include Islam re-emphasises rather than defuses its Christian bias

Evidence

It is the seeming closeness of these ‘Abrahamic’ religions and their joint history that draw attention to the real or imagined differences from the majority religion and its new form: secular society. ‘The “Abrahamic” religions’ is the newest PC phrase: the ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’ was the catchword for common aspects shared between Judaism and Christianity after the Holocaust made this an acceptable notion, whereas ‘the Abrahamic religions’ is the new buzzword including Islam in the Judeo-Christian fold that has become current only after 9/11. Both phrases attempt to defuse the clearly Christian aspects of modern Western secular society by expanding it, but, of course, only re-emphasise it. Here Jonathan Sacks’ notion of difference is helpful: in creating categories that elide difference and stress superficial similarities, one believes that one is bridging ‘differences’. Actually, one is submerging them. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 888

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Connects directly to the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ essay’s theme of how majority-cultural categories absorb or redefine minority practice — the same mechanism of sublimating difference into the dominant frame.
• XREF: connects to: Nineteenth-century Christians already framed Islam as a preparation for Christian truth; The Judeo-Christian category is a mid-twentieth-century construct that erases Islam from the West — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 229; The Judeo-Christian concept emerged around WWII partly to expel Islam from the West — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 229