Jews’ placelessness blocked climate-based racial explanations applied to Muslims

Evidence

Medieval Europeans believed that the nature of the eastern and southeastern climates created men who were overemotional, irrational, and given to lascivious behavior; their darker skin and hair were attributed to the heat of the sun. The Oriental body, rather than Islamic theology, increasingly came to be the focus of Western perceptions of the Muslim. Because the Jews, unlike the Muslims, were seen as permanently in exile, belonging nowhere yet found everywhere, the climate-based explanation of the nature of the Oriental body could not simply be transferred to the Jewish body. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 228 (#expands, via linked claim)

To those inclined to see the problem through a more scientific lens, on the other hand, it was also clear that Muslims and Jews shared the burden of being stamped with immutable physical and moral deficiencies. If none of this were bad enough, they were, each in their own way, sexual deviants and, with their large families and rapid population growth, a demographic threat to boot. They were, in short, dangerous, a threat to the solidity of the autocracy, to the empire, and to the pre-eminent position of the Russian people and their Orthodox Christian faith within it. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 506 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The shared underlying logic of racialization persists across Jew and Muslim targets — Nasar Meer, Racialization and Religion: Race,…, 40; Scientific racism assigned Jews and Muslims immutable deficiencies and demographic threat — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in…, 506; Climate-based accounts of the Oriental body could not apply to wandering Jews — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 228 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Climate-based accounts of the Oriental body could not apply to wandering Jews #expands (0.95) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 228
• Scientific racism assigned Jews and Muslims immutable deficiencies and demographic threat #complicates (0.72) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 506