Islamophobia in France by Abdellali Hajjat;Marwan Mohammed;

Author:Abdellali Hajjat;Marwan Mohammed;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 3)
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Reactions of Majority Population to the Integration of a Minority

The second comparative approach focuses specifically on the economic and political position of Jewish and Muslim minorities in European societies. It stresses the distinction between Christian anti-Judaism and modern anti-Semitism, revealed in the pioneering work of Abraham Léon, James Parks, Jules Isaac, and Hannah Arendt.63 This distinction is based on two elements, which are as much overall factors explaining modern anti-Semitism in Europe. First, the birth of anti-Semitism can be explained by the transformations of the position occupied by the Jews in European economic systems, which were overturned by the development of industrial capitalism in the twentieth century. Under the feudal system, the Jews held a position in which they were both privileged and discriminated against. While most Jews were poor and part of the working class, some of them were bankers to monarchical states, moneylenders to the aristocracy and peasantry, and merchants in international trade. These groups were indispensable to the smooth running of the precapitalist economy and state enterprises. The capital they had accumulated was enough to fuel state activities and they monopolized a form of knowledge that was unique to the trade and finance sector, in which other social groups, especially the aristocracy, refused to invest, for various historical reasons, such as religious bans and the allegedly low yield from investment in state enterprises, etc. The Jews therefore enjoyed a quasi monopoly of the trade and credit sectors in that economic system. Every court and every landed aristocrat had their own “court Jew,” who would enter into a relationship of dependency with the state on their behalf. Despite prejudices about them, Jews were tolerated because they occupied a specific niche in the structures of the feudal economy and fulfilled a particular relationship with the state and its authorities.

However, the Jews suffered social discrimination due to specific laws and segregationist allocations of space (the establishment of ghettos), which shows how ambiguous and precarious the position of the Jews in the feudal system actually was. Aristocratic and monarchic authorities had a stake in protecting the Jews, but these authorities were also the major debtors. It was always possible for kings and aristocrats to deploy their power of coercion to shut down claims for repayment and free themselves from debts. Using this frame, we can see an explanation for the persecutions targeted on the Jews in the feudal system, illustrated in the statutory shakedowns (e.g., collective fines for fictitious acts such as poisoning the wells or the “ritual murder” of Christians), massacres, expulsions, and confiscation of goods.64

This precarious position was eliminated altogether by the birth of industrial capitalism and the construction (followed by the decline) of European nation-states. The emergence of a new social class, the bourgeoisie, plus industrial development, ended the Jewish monopoly over international trade: “Because the Jews represented a primitive form of capitalism (trade and money-lending), the development of modern capitalism dealt a death blow to their social situation.”65 From this point, Jews’ economic activities filtered into the banking sector, but only via loans to the state and consumer credit.

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