Paul’s Hagar allegory grounded Christian identification of Jews with Muslims.

Evidence

The Christian imagination proved more than willing to provide the help needed. Examples of repeated associations thus abound, perhaps enabled by Paul’s momentous, if figurative association of Hagar with the Jews and with Arabia (“Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One woman, in fact, is Hagar, from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem for she is in slavery with her children.” Gal. 4:24-25). Agobard (ca. 779-840), for example, would confirm that Muslims, too, are descendants of Abraham. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 214

Categorization

• XREF: The Hagar/Sinai/Arabia allegory as a scriptural root for conflating Jews and Muslims connects to the reader’s interest in how religious texts generate category systems.