Religious conversion confirmed rather than dispelled antisemitic suspicion

Evidence

Becoming a Christian had backfired in the end, therefore. Instead of doing away with the suspicion that Jews suffered as an alien element in a Christian society, it only added to it, confirming the inauthenticity that was presumed to be inherent in the Jewish mind. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1667 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The conspiracy theory of medical murder stands as a case in point. A comparison of the fears of medical murder by crypto-Jews and crypto-Muslims that existed in early modern Spain and Portugal unambiguously demonstrates the extent to which the anxieties relating to doctors and medical knowledge can generate a potent conspiracy theory when they are combined with xenophobic suspicions about the place and role of religious/ethnic minorities. Yet it also reveals the limits of the notion of a ‘shared history’, since it was focused almost exclusively on the judeoconversos rather than the moriscos. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 419 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: So-called converts of Jewish origin were still deported and killed — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 444; Conversion stopped shielding converted Jews from discrimination by the late fourteenth century. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 116; Heine’s conversion failed to erase antisemitic suspicion of inauthenticity (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Conversion reinforced rather than reduced antisemitic suspicion of Jews #corroborates (1.00) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1667
• Medical-murder conspiracies targeted Jewish converts far more than Muslim converts #complicates (0.72) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 419