Huntington’s anti-Islam rhetoric recycled earlier tropes against Catholics and Jews

Evidence

Three years later, in 1993, Harvard professor, Samuel Huntington, penned his provocatively titled article in Foreign Affairs, “The Clash of Civilizations?,” arguing that the next global conflict would be between the West and Islamic states. Building on the chorus of American Zionists claiming Muslims were a growing security threat, Huntington rebuked post–Cold War optimistic visions of a peaceful world order based on multilateral internationalism and universal values. Instead, he essentialized Islam as possessing an unchangeable core that made its followers incapable of accepting modernity and democracy, in contrast to Protestantism’s democratic ideals. Not coincidentally, these were the same racial tropes deployed against Catholics and Jews to justify restricting their immigration earlier in the twentieth century. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 695 (#expands, via linked claim)

Some of the stereotypes of Jews, Catholics, and Mormons in the early twentieth century apply today to the Racial Muslim: disloyal, antidemocratic, and unfit for self-governance. The material consequences, however, differ, depending on the historical context and predominance of certain stereotypes associated with a particular faith community. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 875 (#expands, 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)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Huntington’s clash thesis erases power asymmetries among Muslims and fuels racism. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 241; The Obama secret-Muslim campaign replicated 1928 anti-Catholic conspiracy narratives; Huntington attributed all Muslim-world conflict to Islam’s innate character (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Huntington’s Islam essentialism reused earlier tropes aimed at Catholics and Jews #expands (0.98) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 695
• Historic anti-Jewish anti-Catholic stereotypes now target Muslims #expands (0.92) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 875
• Historical forms of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hatred vary fundamentally across time #complicates (0.72) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 72