Official gestures pairing Jews with Muslims can mask an asymmetry of concern.

Evidence

The location of the speech was meant to illustrate the same point of a shared story: Créteil in Le Val-de-Marne, which, the official government summary explained, possessed ‘the most important Jewish community of the region and, at the same time, one of the most important mosques in France’. But—and this is the most revealing point—the town was also the location where, on 1 December 2014, three men broke into the home of a couple who, it was widely reported, were believed to be wealthy because they were Jewish. While one of the robbers stole money from a cashpoint, another sexually assaulted the woman. Valls described this as ‘One more trauma, one trauma too many’. The selection of the site was, therefore, a nod to thinking about Muslims alongside Jews, and diversity in general. Yet it was only a nod. The present violence to be noted is against Jews. Muslims merely risked shame—the shame of being themselves. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 60

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘shared story’ thesis the book itself is built on — the surface inclusion of Muslims alongside Jews while the real concern targets Jews.