The most violent American and European anti-Semites in the 21st century, including not only Jihadists but also white (and black) supremacist terrorist, made some reference to religion in their hatred of Jews. This is surprising. Religious antisemitism is often seen as a relic of the past. It is more associated with pre-modern societies where the role of religion was central to social and political order. However, at the end of the 19th century, animosity against Judaism gave way to nationalistic and racist motives. People, such as Wilhelm Marr, called themselves anti-Semites to distinguish themselves from those who despised Jews for religious reasons. Since then, antisemitism has gone through many mutations. However, today, it is not only the actions of extremely violent anti-Semites who might be an indication that religious antisemitism has come back in new forms. Some churches have been accused of disseminating antisemitic arguments related to ideas of replacement theology in modernized forms and applied to the Jewish State. Others, from the populist nationalist right, seem to use Christianity as an identity marker and thus exclude Jews (and Muslims) from the nation. Do religious motifs play a significant role in the resurgence of antisemitism in the 21st century?

This book systematically assesses the value systems of active Muslims around the globe. Based on a multivariate analysis of recent World Values Survey data, it sheds new light on Muslim opinions and values in countries such as Indonesia, Iran, Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey. Due to a lack of democratic traditions, sluggish economic growth, escalating religiously motivated violence, and dissatisfaction with ruling elites in many Muslim countries, the authors identify a crisis and return to conservative values in the Muslim world, including anti-Semitism, religious and sexual intolerance, and views on democracy and secularism, business and economic matters. Based on these observations, they offer recommendations for policymakers and civil societies in Muslim countries on how to move towards tolerance, greater democratization and more rapid economic growth.

This volume locates the contemporary study of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia squarely within the fields of race and racism. As such, it challenges the extent to which discussion of the racialization of these minorities remains unrelated to each other, or is explored in distinct silos as a series of internal debates. By harnessing the explanatory power of long-established organizing concepts within the study of race and racism, this collection of articles makes a historically informed, theoretical and empirical contribution to aligning these analytical pursuits. The collection brings together a range of perspectives on this subject, including a comparison between Islamophobia in early modern Spain and twenty-first century Europe, an examination of the ‘new anti-Semitism’, and an analysis of online anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic jokes. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

In the wake of the devastating First World War, leaders of the victorious powers reconfigured the European continent, resulting in new understandings of nation, state, and citizenship. Religious identity, symbols, and practice became tools for politicians and church leaders alike to appropriate as instruments to define national belonging, often to the detriment of those outside the faith tradition. Religion, Ethnonationalism, and Antisemitism in the Era of the Two World Wars places the interaction between religion and ethnonationalism – a particular articulation of nationalism based upon an imagined ethnic community – at the centre of its analysis, offering a new lens through which to analyze how nationalism, ethnicity, and race became markers of inclusion and exclusion. Those who did not embrace the same ethnonationalist vision faced ostracization and persecution, with Jews experiencing pervasive exclusion and violence as centuries of antisemitic Christian rhetoric intertwined with right-wing nationalist extremism. The thread of antisemitism as a manifestation of ethnonationalism is woven through each of the essays, along with the ways in which individuals sought to critique religious ethnonationalism and the violence it inspired. With case studies from the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Finland, Croatia, Ukraine, and Romania, Religion, Ethnonationalism, and Antisemitism in the Era of the Two World Wars thoroughly explores the confluence of religion, race, ethnicity, and antisemitism that led to the annihilative destruction of the Second World War and the Holocaust, challenging readers to identify and confront the inherent dangers of narrowly defined ideologies.

This book is a study of a community under attack, and its goal is to describe, analyze, and illuminate the response of that community to a series of unexpected and deeply threatening developments. Just a few years after achieving full civil emancipation in 1871, the Jews of Germany were confronted with a sudden surge of anti-Jewish hostility different from anything they had ever experienced before. The new "anti-Semitism" (the word was coined at this time) was complex movement emanating from diverse groups in German society and using a variety of tactics and ideological formulations. Dr. Ragins' study is an attempt to understand how the German Jewish community responded to anti-Semitism during the decades before World War I, and, especially, why it reacted as it did. The central argument of the book is that German Jewry defended itself against modern anti-Semitism with all the ideological, legal, and organizational weapons at its disposal, and that the liberal Jews of Germany mounted the best possible defenses which could be achieved in their historical circumstances. Among the topics treated are the emergence of the Centralverein, the attempt to form a common front with the Orthodox community against the anti-Semites, and the responses of Jewish spokesmen to the racial ideologies which made their first appearance in public discussion during this period. Just as Jewish liberation reached what may have been its culmination, however, a serious dissent from the position of the established community was created by the young people of Herzl's Zionist movement, and this dramatically new development is studied in some detail. In analyzing the way in which the first German Zionists responded to anti-Semitism, we understand something about the power as well as the limitations of Jewish liberalism, and we also comprehend the rise of an ideology that was to have great significance in the Jewish future.

This project engages with scholarship on Paul by philosophers, psychoanalysts, and historians to reveal the assumptions and prejudices that determine the messiah in secularism and its association with the exception.

Democratic polities continue to be faced with politics of resentment. Along with resurgent counter-cosmopolitanism and anti-immigrant prejudice, various political agents have mobilized old and modernized antisemitism in European democracies. The first comparative study of its kind, this book rigorously examines the contemporary relevance of antisemitism and other politicized resentments in the context of the European Union and beyond. Presenting new approaches and state-of-the-art research by leading authorities in the field, the volume combines comparative work and political theorizing with ten single country studies using qualitative and quantitative data from Eastern and Western Europe. The result is a new and sober set of arguments and findings, demonstrating that antisemitism and counter-cosmopolitan resentment are still all too present human rights challenges in today’s cosmopolitan Europe.

This book explores the ways in which the Jewish backgrounds of leading Frankfurt School Critical Theorists shaped their lives, work, and ideas.

In Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate, Professor William Nicholls, a former minister in the Anglican Church and the founder of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, presents his stunning research, stating that Christian teaching is primarily responsible for antisemitism. As Nicholls states, these conclusions 'can now be fully justified by the most up-to-date scholarship, Christian as well as Jewish.' Nicholls writes, 'Many Jewish writers have said, quite simply, that the Nazis chose the Jews as the target of their hate because two thousand years of Christian teaching had accustomed the world to do so. Few Christian historians and theologians have been sufficiently open to the painful truth to accept this explanation without considerable qualification. Nevertheless, it is correct.' Christian Antisemitism traces, over two millennia, the growing domination of Western culture by the Christian 'myth' (as Nicholls calls it) about the Jews, and shows how it still exerts a major influence even on the secularized 'post-Christian world.' Nicholls shows, through scrupulous research and documentation, that the myth of the Jews as Christ-killers has powered anti-Judaism and antisemitism throughout the centuries. Nicholls clearly illustrates that this myth is present in the New Testament and that 'it has not yet died under the impact of modern critical history.' Also included in this remarkable volume is Nicholls' research regarding the Jewishness of Jesus. He writes, 'Historical scholarship now permits us to affirm with confidence that Jesus of Nazareth was a faithful and observant Jew who lived by the Torah and taught nothing against his own people and their faith...the Romans, not the Jews, were the Christ-killers.' In Part I, 'Before the Myth,' Nicholls explores the life of Jesus and his teachings as found in the New Testament. Was Jesus the founder of Christianity? Did he offer teachings against his people? Did he believe himself?

Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović (1881–1956) is arguably one the most controversial figures in contemporary Serbian national culture. Having been vilified by the former Yugoslav Communist authorities as a fascist and an antisemite, this Orthodox Christian thinker has over the past two decades come to be regarded in Serbian society as the most important religious person since medieval times and an embodiment of the authentic Serbian national spirit. Velimirović was formally canonised by the Serbian Orthodox Church in 2003. In this book, Jovan Byford charts the posthumous transformation of Velimirović from 'traitor' to 'saint' and examines the dynamics of repression and denial that were used to divert public attention from the controversies surrounding the bishop's life, the most important of which is his antisemitism. Byford offers the first detailed examination of the way in which an Eastern Orthodox Church manages controversy surrounding the presence of antisemitism within its ranks and he considers the implications of the continuing reverence of Nikolaj Velimirović for the persistence of antisemitism in Serbian Orthodox culture and in Serbian society as a whole. This book is based on a detailed examination of the changing representation of Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović in the Serbian media and in commemorative discourse devoted to him. The book also makes extensive use of exclusive interviews with a number of Serbian public figures who have been actively involved in the bishop’s rehabilitation over the past two decades.