Persecution-driven assimilation explains lower present-day antisemitism than Islamophobia

Evidence

Like most of our Jewish respondents, he suggested that what the Muslim communities, which represent mostly relatively recent immigrants, were going through in the UK now was what Jewish people had experienced in the past, and that the reason why the levels of overt antisemitism in the UK, in his view, were comparatively lower than those of anti-Muslim prejudice was because Jews had already been forced to assimilate. ‘If you’re getting a lot of hassle, if you can’t live in a society because of the way you look, sometimes that can force people to abandon things quicker’, he said. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1735

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: ‘Assimilation as the price of acceptance’ — how forced cultural abandonment before the law’s protection produces visible normalcy at hidden cost. Could compare to legal scholarwork on minority legal strategies.