Genealogies of ‘Jews’ and ‘Muslims’: social imaginaries in the race–religion nexus

Academic article on race-religion nexus (2020)

Genealogies of ‘Jews’ and ‘Muslims’: social imaginaries in the race–religion nexus is a 2020 scholarly introduction by Yolande Jansen and Nasar Meer published in the journal Patterns of Prejudice (Vol. 54, Nos. 1-2).

Summary

The article introduces a special issue exploring how Jews and Muslims have been constructed as racialized religious categories in Western modernity. It traces genealogies of the race-religion nexus, examining how religious difference became racialized and how social imaginaries of Jews and Muslims continue to shape contemporary debates on antisemitism, Islamophobia, secularism and European identity. The authors emphasise the need to move beyond simple analogies between antisemitism and Islamophobia and to understand the intertwined histories of these categories in European thought and politics.

Key quotations

"Among all the fascist impostures, anti-Semitism is not the one that reaches the greatest number of victims, but it is the most monstrous. Perhaps for the first time men are officially tracked down *not for what they do, but for what they are*." (p. 1, quoting Vladimir Jankélévitch)

"The race–religion nexus is not a new phenomenon but has deep historical roots." (p. 2)

"The figure of the Jew and the Muslim have been central to the formation of European modernity." (p. 3)

"Social imaginaries of Jews and Muslims are not fixed but are constantly reconfigured in response to political and social crises." (p. 5)

"Whether the Jews are a religion or a nation, a people or a race, a state or a tribe, depends on the special opinion non-Jews—in whose midst Jews live—have about themselves." (p. 4, quoting Hannah Arendt)

"The ‘Jew’ towards whom the antisemite feels hostile is not a *real* Jew at all. Thinking that Jews are really ‘Jews’ is precisely the core of antisemitism." (p. 8, quoting Brian Klug)