"Anti-Semitism is one of the world’s most powerful and enduring ideologies—and, in the current century, it is more pervasive than ever. Earlier in the postwar era, this would have seemed doubtful given that the Holocaust raised anti-Jewish prejudice and practice to seemingly unsurpassable levels. But anti-Semitic worldviews are now more universal, and more inextricably part of global culture, than they were during the Holocaust itself. Fantasies of Jewish power and evil are found nearly everywhere—from Egypt to Pakistan, Indonesia to Malaysia, Russia to France, Argentina to Canada.
Islamic supremacism is sometimes called the key to global anti-Semitism, but in fact anti-Jewish sentiments are also common in realms where Catholicism, Protestantism, and Greek and Russian Orthodoxy hold sway. Even Japan, which has almost no history of direct contact with Jews and no obvious cultural ground for anti-Jewish sentiment, has become a hub of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, with a prolific source of best-selling books alleging Jewish domination over the non-Jewish world.
Contemporary events sustain and spread this worldview. Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and simmering controversies over the meaning and truth of the Holocaust exert wide influence, keeping Jews in the global limelight. But the roots of anti-Semitism stretch far into the past. Generations of historians and social scientists have sought to explain how this sentiment crystallized and how, over time, it acquired its unique features and dimensions. The answer lies in history, which this entry reviews." Read more...
Smith, D. N. (2008). ANTI-SEMITISM. In R. Schaefer (Author), Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society. Sage Publications. Retrieved October 31, 2023, from https://search.credoreference.com/articles/Qm9va0FydGljbGU6Mzc1MTQ4?aid=256853.
"Islamophobia refers to irrational, unjustified, or excessive fear or hatred of Islam and of Muslims. Its more obvious manifestations include negative attitudes such as intolerance and prejudice; negative actions such as discrimination, harassment, and social and economic exclusion; verbal and physical abuse and hate crimes against Muslims and their places of worship; and the vilification of Islam as a religion and a way of life. It may also refer to the negative stereotyping of Muslims as extremist, barbaric, treacherous, violent, uncivilized, and sexist and to assumptions about the inferiority of Islamic culture and values. The term Islamophobia is a neologism, constructed in the same form as more familiar terms like agoraphobia and homophobia, and its first significant usage was recorded in the 1990s. Most research so far has focused on Islamophobia as a Western phenomenon, but there is growing recognition that the term has global significance.
The relation between Islamophobia and racism is a complex one. There is much in common between the two concepts (including stereotyping, intolerance, and the denial of a sense of shared humanity), though of course Muslims are not a racial group but a multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural group united by a set of religious beliefs and practices. Both Islamophobia and racism often involve an expression of the wish that “they” should be more like “us,” whether in appearance, behavior, or values. Few people call themselves either racist or Islamophobic, and Islamophobic attitudes are often rationalized as justifiable criticism of Islamic beliefs and Muslim practices. Any discrimination and social exclusion experienced by Muslims is often blamed on the victims themselves for not integrating or fully accepting Western values. Islamophobia may be considered a kind of cultural racism, where the term racism is used metaphorically to imply a comparison between the kind of prejudice and discrimination experienced by people as a result of their race or skin color and that experienced by Muslims as a result of their religious beliefs and culture. However, since most Muslims in the West belong to ethnic minority groups, they may suffer from multiple forms of racism at the same time."
Halstead, J. M. (2013). Islamophobia. In P. Mason (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Race and Racism. Gale. Retrieved November 2, 2023, from https://search.credoreference.com/articles/Qm9va0FydGljbGU6NDIzMzQwNQ==?aid=256853.
Anti-Arab racism: "Prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behaviors toward human groups based on their alleged racial traits are certainly not new in American society. Indeed, they lie at the foundation of American society and characterize the historic experiences of Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos. Receiving such treatment, however, was relatively new for Arab Americans, who had spent more than half a century in the United States as a comparatively advantaged group. When one compares the Arab American experience in the first half of the twentieth century to that of the second half, one finds that Arab Americans have been racialized in a process similar in form but different in pretext and timing from that of other historically racialized groups. Arab Americans have historically been afforded some of the benefits and protections of whiteness, and their exclusion from the social and political perquesttes of whiteness postdates the historic experiences of other negatively racialized groups. It is therefore not perfectly tied in its genesis to ideas about race and the superiority of whiteness that have existed since the founding of the United States. Instead, the racialization of Arabs emerged from the rise of the United States as a global superpower, and particularly from its perceived foreign policy interests."
Cainkar, L. (2013). Arab Americans. In P. Mason (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Race and Racism. Gale. Retrieved November 2, 2023, from https://search.credoreference.com/articles/Qm9va0FydGljbGU6NDIzMzIwNQ==?aid=256853.