Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are forms of racism.

On January 15th, 2004, at the inaugural Robert Burns Memorial Lecture at UN headquarters, the former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a speech titled 'State of the World, Brotherhood of Man' called on the 191-members of the United Nations and individuals to oppose "two of the world's most dangerous hatreds: Islamophobia and anti-Semitism" . He argued that, it isn't just the Jews who are being discriminated against. Hate is a double sided sword aimed at the heart of both Jews and Muslims. 2001 Nobel Prize winner Annan condemned all hatred and discrimination. Just as anti-Semitism is increasing, Islamophobia is also on the rise in the West, especially since September 11th. Firstly, the essay will focus on Anti-Semitism by going through different explanation given by various writers such as Adorno, Mosse, Bauman and postmodernists’ writers in order to argue it is indeed a form of racism. In doing so, it will try to draw back some similarities between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. And then it will explain islamophobia as a form of racism. Before going through the main arguments, the essay will first look at some definitions of racism.

Different theorists have defined racism in different ways. Todorov has argued that the word ‘racism’, in its usual sense, actually designates two very different things. On the one hand, it is a matter of behaviour, usually a manifestation of hatred or contempt for individuals who have well-defined physical characteristics different from our own; on the other hand, it is a matter of ideology, a doctrine concerning human races. He has used ‘racism’ as a term designating behaviour; alternatively, he used ‘racialism’ for doctrines. He has argued that the form of racism that is rooted in racialism produces particularly catastrophic results: this is precisely the case of Nazism.

“Racism is an ancient form of behaviour that is probably formed worldwide; racialism is a movement of ideas born in Western Europe whose period of flowering extends from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid twentieth.” (Back & Solomos, 2000)

Miles has also explained ‘racism’ as ideology. The original definition and use of the word arose from the coincidence of two processes. The first was the growing body of scientific evidence which undermined the idea of ‘races’ as natural, discrete and fixed subdivisions of the human species. The second was the reaction to the rise of Fascism in Germany and the use of the ‘race’ idea , legitimated partly by reference to science, by Hitler and the German Nazi party in their identification of Jews as an alien and inferior ‘race’ in Germany. As the Nazi campaign against the Jews in Germany unfolded , there developed elsewhere in Europe and North America an increasing awareness of the way in which the discourse of ‘race’ was being used to legitimate the exclusion and genocide of the Jews and other sections of the German population. It became an imperative for some academics and scientists, as well as political activities, to formulate a coherent rejection of the way in which the ‘race’ idea was utilised in Nazi Germany. (Miles, 1989)
In We Europeans : A survey of ‘Racial’ Problems, Huxley and Haddon (1935) argued that the term ‘race’ , like many other pseudo-scientific terms, could be used to ‘rationalise emotion’ and that science had a responsibility to identify the truth value of ideas employed in political life . They made reference to the then contemporary situation in Germany , specifically denying that Nordic or Jewish ‘races’ existed and identified Nazi theories of ‘race’ as a ‘creed of passionate racialism’. They continued, ‘Racialism is a myth, and a dangerous myth at that. It is a cloak for selfish economic aims which in their unlocked nakedness would look ugly enough’. The myth of racialism was explained as an attempt to justify nationalism. (Miles, 1989)

In addition with that, Jacques Barzun, in his book, ‘Race, A Study in Modern Superstition’ (1938) made specific reference to Nazi Germany, identifying the Third Reich as ‘the most blatant apostle of racialism’. Ashley Montagu in his text ‘Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race’ defined race as an ideology which alleged that something called ‘race ‘is the prime determiner of all the important traits of body and soul, of character and personality, of human beings and nations. And it is further alleged that this something called ‘race’ is a fixed generation to generation, unfolds in each people as a typical expression of personality and culture.’ (Miles, 1989)

Les and Solomos (2000) argued that one of the most consistent themes that run through racist thinking and the values articulated by racist and fascist movements throughout this century has been anti-Semitism.

The term anti-Semitism came into popular usage at the end of the nineteenth century, but it is widely accepted that as a term it captures the long history of resentment and hatred for Jews. Anti-Semitism can be seen, therefore, as referring to the conception of Jews as an alien, hostile and undesirable group and the practices that derive from and support such a conception. In the late nineteenth century the arrival of sizeable numbers of Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe became a focus of political anti-Semitism in particular localities. As Wilson has argued, the political influence of anti-Semitism in France towards the end of the nineteenth century can also be seen as related to the changing political and social relations in French society at the time.

However, the main focus of research on political anti-Semitism has been on the history of Germany. Although the history of Germany was by no means unique, it is certainly the case that in the aftermath of the Holocaust the German experience has been at the heart of the most research. Various researches on the social and political context within which different kind of anti-Semitism developed in Germany has provided some important insights into the ways in which racial ideologies and practices are constructed by and through specific political movements. (Solomos & Back, 1996)

Theodre Adorno’s and Max Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment provided a valuable early account of the role that anti-Semitism played in the politics of fascism. Although they locate anti-Semitism in the broader framework of capitalist society they also highlighted the murderous consequences of the fascist construction of the Jews as a ‘degenerate race’.
“The fascist do not view the Jews as a minority but as an opposing race, the embodiment of the negative principle. They must be exterminated to secure the happiness of the world” ( Solomos & Back, 1996)

The usages of racial theories by the Nazis thus provided not only a basis for the articulation of anti-Semitism but a means to justifying the ‘final solution to the Jewish question’ and the inevitability of a ‘race war’. From this perspective the political consequences of Nazi racial theories, with their emphasis on race as a total criterion, provided the basis for the extermination of Jews. (Solomos & Back, 1996)

Adorno and his colleagues have developed the theory of the authoritarian personality which refers to a particular personality type that is extremely obedient to and gives uncritical and unquestioning support to authority. Such a person is very uncomfortable with ambiguity and prefers to believe in absolute certainties. Therefore, fascist leaders such as Hitler, Mussolini can attract such people and create a mass following who would follow them obediently. (Lecture by Ramadani, 2004)

George Mosse has provided a brief overview of the ways in which myths and counter myths about ‘the Jew’ emerged and evolved. Drawing on a variety of historical sources, Mosse attempts to situate what he sees as the main elements of myths about Jews and the way these myths evolved and changed over time. He has argued that the evolving racial mythologies about Jews helped to construct them as a kind of ‘race apart’. He has used the image of ‘wandering Jew’ in order to show that such myths helped to construct Jews as the ‘eternal foreigner’ who would be unable to become a part of the ‘people’.

Historically, the mystery of race transformed the Jew into an evil principle. However, in late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, the traditional legends about the Jews in the past were revived as instruments of political mobilization. Among the myths, accusations of ritual murder, the curse of Ahasverus the wandering Jew, and fantasies about the universal Jewish world conspiracy are well-known one. (Back & Solomos, 2000) At that time, the myths have strengthened the anti-Semitism in Europe. For example, the blood libel remained alive chiefly in the underdeveloped countries of Eastern Europe and the Russian empire. Within the Russian Empire the government shrewdly exploited the belief in order to provoke pogroms, and every lost Christian child was a menace to the local Jewish community, one of whose members might be accused of murder. (Back & Solomos, 2000)

George Mosse’s study on ‘The Crisis of German Ideology’ provides one of the best insights into the variety of factors that helped to shape the articulation between anti-Semitism and racism in the period from the second half of the nineteenth century to the rise of Adolf Hitler. He has focused on Volkish thought which was popular in the nineteenth century. It is one of the powerful accounts of the social and political roots of German anti-Semitism. Mosse’s study highlights the contrast in images of ‘the uprootedness of the Jew’ with those of the ‘rootedness of the Volk’. (Solomos and Back, 1996, 52) In German society, the Jews were regarded as outsider for their different culture. Mosse tried to explain why millions of people followed the Nazis through an analysis of the growth of anti-Semitism and the rise of the Nazi party and its campaigns to attract mass following. (Lecture, 2004)

Zygmunt Bauman in his book ‘Modernity and the Holocaust’ has argued that the holocaust was not an eccentricity but an integral feature of modernity.
‘The Holocaust was born and executed in our modern society, at the high stage of our civilisation and at the peak of human cultural achievement.’From this perspective he argues that a key feature of Nazism was its view of the need for ‘social engineering’ through its racial policies. The use of genocide by the Nazis was a means to an end, an element in the construction of the ‘perfect society’. (Solomos & Back, 1996)

Postmodernist and poststructuralist writers reject the rationalist and universalist mode of thinking, including Humanist approaches to equality, that become dominant in the eighteenth centuries. (Lecture, 2004) For postmodernist, the enlightenment project of pursuing a rational, scientific understanding of the natural and social world, and of creating a universal outlook from fragmented experience has failed. It has failed because no one can grasp society as a whole. The world is too complex and too varied to be subsumed under a single, totalising theory. As Kobena Mercer argues, ’Everybody intuitively knows that everyday life is so complex, that no singular belief system or big story can hope to explain it all’. There can be no single theoretical discourse, say postmodernists, which can encompass all forms of social relations and every mode of political practice. Indeed some reject the idea of theory altogether: ‘Theory is simply that which is labelled theory by institutions that empower themselves to do so.’ Not only are the totalising theories a fantasy, they are a dangerous fantasy. They argue that Universalism is a ‘Eurocentric’ viewpoint, a means of imposing Euro-American ideas of rationality and objectivity on other peoples. Universalism is racist because it denies the possibility of non-European viewpoints. The intellectual arrogance of universalism, argue such critics, has led to the attempt to eliminate not just non-European thought, but also non-Aryan people. The science and technology that flowed from Enlightenment rationalism was inevitably contaminated with the spirit of savagery. Not just for postmodernists, but for many post war social theories, the road that began with Enlightenment rationalism ends in Nazi death camps. As Herbert Marcuse states, ‘Concentration camps, mass exterminations, world wars , and atom bombs are no replace into barbarism but the unrepressed implementation of the achievements of modern science, technology and domination’.( Malik, 1996, 218)

Now the essay will try to focus on Islamophobia in order to explain it as a form of racism. The term ‘Islamophobia’ refers to unfounded hostility towards Islam. It refers also to the practical consequences of such hostility in unfair discrimination against Muslim individuals and communities, and to the exclusion of Muslims from mainstream political and social affairs. “The word ‘Islamophobia’ has been coined because there is a new reality which needs naming – anti-Muslim prejudice has grown so considerably and so rapidly in recent years that a new item in the vocabulary is needed so that it can be identified and acted against. In a similar way there was a time in European history when a new word, anti-Semitism, was needed and coined to highlight the growing dangers of anti-Jewish hostility.”(http://www.runnymedetrust.org/)


For many, Islamophobia is a phenomenon similar to anti-Semitism.
Indeed, once it became accepted (in the European Union) that Islamophobia is a phenomena akin to anti-Semitism, the definition of racial discrimination was enlarged to include discrimination on religious grounds and the changes were incorporated in the European Convention on Human Rights. There is no doubt that these developments were a result of concern over Islamophobia . For example the work of the Commission for Racial Equality in the United Kingdom (http://www.cre.gov.uk), as well as the work of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (http://eumc.eu.in/) manifest the increasing level of islamophobia in recent years in Europeand America.

So entrenched has the phenomenon, ‘Islamophobia’ become in the last 10 years or so, that the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (http://eumc.eu.int/ ) has been monitoring racist incidents and public and political attitudes in all EU member states. It has produced a number of reports documenting the rise of Islamophobia, generally understood to be racism against Muslim populations akin to anti-Semitism:

“Islamophobia has fed racist hostility against people of Middle Eastern,
Arab and South Asian origin and has in turn be bolstered by racial prejudice and xenophobia” (www.anu.edu.au/NEC/bloul_paper.pdf)

Britain's UK 2001 census confirms that, with more than 1.6 million UK Muslims (2.7% of the population), Islam is now this country's second largest faith after Christianity. British Muslims are a diverse and a vibrant community and they form an essential part of Britain’s multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society. Despite their contributions, however, British Muslims suffer significantly from various forms of alienation, discrimination, harassment and violence rooted in misinformed and stereotyped representations of Islam and its adherents - the irrational phenomenon of Islamophobia. It has now become a recognised form of racism. (www.fairuk.org/introduction.htm) As with the inaccuracy of such terms as ‘anti-Semitism’, to describe the anti-Jewish hostility that developed in the late nineteenth century, ‘Islamophobia’ bears many similar hallmarks. This intolerance and stereotypical views of Islam manifest themselves in a number of ways from verbal/written abuse, discrimination at schools and workplaces, psychological harassment/pressure and outright violent attacks on mosques and individuals.

Though, the report on Islamophobia by the Runnymede Trust in 1997 is a good illustration of the growing magnitude of the problem, the problem was again highlighted in January 2000 by the Interim Report of the Research Project on Religious Discrimination, commissioned by the Home Office and based at the University of Derby and by the Parekh Report on The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain in October 2000. There is no shortage of studies on the existence of Islamophobia in British society and recommendations on how to tackle this problem, but, bar a few exceptions, these recommendations are yet to be implemented by the Government. As a consequence this has resulted in social unease and disturbances as can be seen in some Northern cities and towns, and increase in incitement to racial and religious hatred. In the wake of September 11, in the UK alone, within a space of two weeks, there were more than 600 cases of Islamophobic harassment, violence and criminal damage. (www.fairuk.org/introduction.htm)
The negative media coverage of Muslims has strengthened the notion of islamophobia. Recent examples in the British press are not hard to find. Especially the tabloid newspapers such as the Daily Mail, the Sun etc have produced and still producing substantial number of islamophobic articles and news which creates negative effect in public mind increasingly. Elsewhere we can see similar trends: in Denmark the People’s Party has made such hostility central to its programme; in 1998 Hollywood produced an alarmist film, The Siege, focusing on Islamic terrorism. Nor is this specific to the Christian or Jewish world: perhaps the most striking instance of hostility to Muslims today is to be found in India. The BJP ran for re-election in 1997 on three anti-Muslim issues: rebuilding the Temple at Ayodhya, removing separate legal codes for Muslims, and ending the special status of Kashmir.Other BJP policies renaming Bombay after a Hindu goddess, rewriting history book follow a similar logic.

Whereas in the Nazi era publishers were active in promoting anti-Semitism, in this era promoting anti-Muslim racism has become very popular. An Italian journalist named Oriana Fallaci just published a book, “Anger and Pride”. This book hits records of sale in Italy and Spain. Ms. Fallaci carries out a strongly grotesque amalgam between Muslims, delinquent immigrants, and terrorists and pretends to uncover the real face of Islam. She exploits all hypermediatic themes of our sad era: terrorism, insecurity in Europe, prostitution, and fundamentalism. In this way, Muslims are facing a great challenge especially in western world. Even politicians and theorists perpetuate the threat. Mr. Silvio Berlusconi, the present chief of the Italian State declared that “Muslim civilization is inferior to Europe and its history”. Berlusconi is occupying now the seat that half a century ago was Mussolini’s. And honorable American professor Samuel P. Huntington states Islam as a rival to the western world in his “clash of civilizations”. (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/)

Besides, the notion of ‘the west and its others’ has contributed to the rise of islamophobia and also in the rise of anti-Semitism. The central argument in contemporary theories of difference is the idea that Enlightenment discourse, by establishing universal norms and by equating such norms with European societies and cultures, has ensured the silence of non-European peoples and cultures. Western science and philosophy have established a form of knowledge whereby non-Western societies and cultures are represented solely in terms of the categories of Western thought, and in which Western society acts as a standard against which all other societies are judged. This inevitably leads to the silencing of other voices. At the same time the difference between the Western and non-Western cultures are rationalised through non-Western peoples being defined as the ‘Others’. This notion of others has resulted in the acquisition of an aura of superiority for Western cultures and an imposition of a sense of inferiority upon non-Western ones. (Malik, 1996, 220)

In the contemporary world, Muslims has become the ‘others’ whereas in the late 19th and twentieth century Jewish people were seen as ‘others’. Some writers have argued that society requires an Other without which there can be no sense of self. (Lecture, 2004)It can be concluded that, anti-Semitism and Islamophoiba are forms of racism. It is very worrying that both of these phenomena especially Islamophobia are on rise which can end up with a catastrophic result.