Orientalism invented the Semite as a merged Jew-Arab defined by abstract religion

Evidence

Continuing a practice launched most forcefully perhaps by Hegel (as we will see in Chapter 5, “Muslims”), Orientalists all but equate Jew and Arab and credit them, the “Semites,” with nothing but the most abstract invention of religion. A people devoid of political history, their cultural sterility akin to a monotheistic desert, the Semites constitute the clearest site of a distinction produced by the only century that genuinely believed itself “secularized.” When religion is thoroughly distanced from politics, the Jew and the Arab can finally merge, one people at last (valued positive, as in Disraeli, or negative, as in Renan). — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 970

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the Orientalist ‘Semites’ category as the merging of Jew and Arab, key to the bridge argument.