CaptainExplosion said:
I never understood where anti-Semitism came from before the Nazis. To me Islamophobia's source makes sense, since some of history's greatest scumbags happened to be Muslim. |
Islamophobia doesn't make sense. Some of the worst people happened to be catholics and protestant and Shinto and hindu and Buddhist but they never got the hate. It doesn't make sense. The easier definition which explains both Islamophobia and anti Semitism is that the people following those beliefs got in the way of super powers and the global hegemons. Islamophobia increased dramatically when the US and UK started meddling in the affairs of the Middle east and that created a lot of tensions. Those tensions and mass migrations due to instability created the Islamophobia, not the actions of scumbags like Bin Ladin.
Similarly jews have always lived closely to the dominant order in Europe, Christianity and also somewhat closely to the dominant order in the middle east, Islam. They were not the dominant group and it was thus easier to ostracize and hate them. Since the Christian nations became the hegemon, the antisemitism became a big issue globally.
Fear of the other, someone different from you and a feeling of your group being superior than the other groups you interact with create this dynamic. And the marginalized people get the short end of the stick. That is why if you look at it locally, Hindus get a lot of bigotry thrown at them in Pakistan, Sikhs and Muslims get the same in India, Uighurs in China, the Chinese and Malaysians in Japan, etc.
Antisemitism and Islamophobia are more pronounced because jews and muslims crossed paths with the global hegemon of the modern world, Christian catholic Europe and protestant US.
Just a guy who doesn't want to be bored. Also
