The mafia-as-conspiracy view dates back to nineteenth-century disputes

Evidence

“The suggestion that Sharia threatens American security is disturbingly reminiscent of the accusation, in nineteenth-century Europe, that Jewish religious law was seditious,” wrote Yale University Professor Eliyahu Stern in an opinion piece for the New York Times bluntly titled “Don’t Fear Islamic Law in America.” Professor Stern noted that the conspiratorial fear that Jewish law bred disloyalty was not limited to political elites in Western societies either. He noted that leading mainstream European philosophers propagated these fears at the time with their noxious anti-Semitic personal views. For instance, the famous German philosopher Immanuel Kant had once argued that the particularistic nature of “Jewish legislation” made Jews “hostile to all other peoples.” Fellow German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel similarly contended that Jewish kosher dietary rules and other Mosaic laws barred Jewish people from identifying with their fellow Prussians and called into question their ability to be loyal civil servants in government. — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 610 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A legendary 1282 rape incident links the word mafia to anti-French rebellion; Church-state conflict after 1861 pushed the church toward local mafia alliances; Anti-Sharia hysteria mirrors nineteenth-century European claims that Jewish law bred disloyalty — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 610

Related

• Anti-Sharia hysteria mirrors nineteenth-century European claims that Jewish law bred disloyalty (similarity 0.92)
• Religious anti-Semitism need not enter the state-racism genealogy until the nineteenth century (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Anti-Sharia hysteria mirrors nineteenth-century European claims that Jewish law bred disloyalty #expands (0.72) — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 610