Western racism originated in fifteenth-century anti-Islamic and anti-Jewish animus

Evidence

For some time, scholars of race have argued that the modern form of Western racism emerged out of the fifteenth century fear of Islam and Judaism. This did much to consolidate European ideas of Christian civilization against the peoples of North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Race and racism have shifted a great deal since that time, yet the genealogy remains an important source of historical reference. As geographies of racism shifted from religion to race, Europe went from Christian to white, and the so-called Mohammedan went from Muslim to brown. … Hence, moral panics surrounding notions of an Islamic threat collapse the terms of the Muslim, the terrorist, brownness, illegality, and criminality into one rubric. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 334

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to scholarship on race genealogy — echoes my existing knowledge of racial formation theory and how religion-to-race shifts track Europe going Christian-to-white. — connects to: An established anti-Islamic literature existed in the West by 1350
• SEED: Could be an essay angle: how the modern conflation of Muslim-terrorist-brown-illegal-criminal has a five-century genealogy rather than a post-9/11 origin.