BackChannels may have hit this general topic area — i.e., the relationship between the promotion of anti-Semitism and the experience of fascistic and feudal political cultures. Nonetheless, if one may get a complex of thoughts into a very small box, well all the better in our harried Internet Age.
Discrimination has been part of Islam — and in some ways defines Islam — since Muhammad chose to divide the world in the black-and-white differentiation between believers and unbelievers with Christians and Jews made to occupy a lesser but middle space, just one up from infidels (I’m really an amateur at this, so please forgive any over-simplifications nonetheless suited for discussion. That ability to smear competition has long been part of the medieval mentality and may well define it considering the “enthusiasm” for religious warfare not so long ago.
It may interest Muslims reading this thread to know that in Christian states, well, at least Hungary, 12th Century, laws designed to discriminate against Jews were upon activation applied equally to Muslims.
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I think Edward Said published _Orientalism_ in 1972, and the same has become a staple in higher education representing politics on the Left / Far Left / Far Out Left.
I have it “on deck” today in my own library, so I’ll reserve comment on it but to convey two related URLs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book)
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/enough-said-false-scholarship-edward-said
The Russian Soviet Era effort to “pick up” difficult undeveloped states and exploit them by way of a “liberation theology” — as with the Palestinians — that produced sweet promises — as with the contemplated destruction of Israel, or the elimination of whites from states like Zimbabwe (now Zuma in South Africa is using the same ploy) — that would in fact install dictatorship (absolute power) and exploit The People has been accompanied in “Active Measures” fashion by way of inserting the poison into the intellectual assets of foreign states.
I write long enough as is, but any reading may pick up on the questions that develop from my assertions.
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BackChannels 