Historians have neglected the causal link between hostile ideology and actual persecution.
Evidence
It is not always clear what the relationship is between the ideological or textual denigration of Muslims, Jews, and others and the legal and social restrictions and violence imposed on them. Does an increasingly intolerant ideology cause increasing persecution? Or does the reality of social subjugation call for an ideology to justify it? Or are the two independent phenomena with little direct connection? From a perusal of work by modern historians, one could suppose that the latter was the case: social historians, legal historians, and historians of religious polemic have for the most part avoided the thorny problem of the connection between ideology and social practice. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1367
Categorization
Category: Craft and Method
- QUESTION: Are there historical case studies that isolate ideology’s causal role in persecution versus social subjugation as the driver? The question deserves a deep dive.
- SEED: Article angle: the three rival models — ideology-driven, practice-driven, or independent — for how prejudice produces policy, and why disciplinary silos have left it unexamined.