The end of the Semites

dc.contributor.authorRENTON, James
dc.date.accessioned2017-04-19T13:45:03Z
dc.date.available2017-04-19T13:45:03Z
dc.date.issued2017
dc.description.abstractBy the end of the nineteenth century, the idea of the Semites had become the principal manifestation in Western European thought of the Christian tradition of linking Judaism and Islam, the Jew and the Muslim. This concept posited that both religions belonged to a single race, which was bound by its own family of languages and the product of a unique geographical space: Western Asia. Since Edward Said described ‘the Islamic branch of Orientalism’ as the ‘strange secret sharer of Western anti-Semitism’ in 1978, a significant body of scholarship has been produced on the idea of the Semites—though it pales in comparison to the explosion of writing on Orientalism more broadly. Yet even within the specialised field of post-semitic studies, as we might call it, few have examined precisely when and why the idea ceased to be common currency in Western thought—for fallen from grace it surely has. The end of the explicit use and naming of the Semitic category, however, is of enormous significance for understanding the trajectory of the relationship between Islamophobia and antisemitism; it is the start of the story in which the European ideas of the Jew and the Muslim splintered into two separate sides of global politics: the West versus the Islamic East.
dc.identifier.citationJames RENTON and Ben GIDLEY (eds), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe : a shared story?, London : Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 99-140en
dc.identifier.doi10.1057/978-1-137-41302-4_5
dc.identifier.isbn9781137412997
dc.identifier.isbn9781137413024
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1814/46110
dc.language.isoenen
dc.relation.ispartofseries[Global Governance Programme]en
dc.relation.ispartofseries[Cultural Pluralism]en
dc.subjectRacism and discrimination
dc.subjectIslam
dc.subjectEuropean identities and culture
dc.titleThe end of the Semitesen
dc.typeContribution to booken
dspace.entity.typePublication
person.identifier.other41122
relation.isAuthorOfPublication39877d7e-2085-426a-8af3-3e086040a675
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery39877d7e-2085-426a-8af3-3e086040a675
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