Cousin trouble: Jewish and Muslim ideas of the Other

Gidley, Ben (2012) Cousin trouble: Jewish and Muslim ideas of the Other. Critical Muslim 02 , pp. 123-136. ISSN 2048-8475.

Abstract

Judaism and Islam are in many ways the closest of cousins. Sharing a rigorously monotheistic faith as articulated by a shared canon of prophets in related Semitic tongues, tracing their common origins to the patriarch Abraham, their destinies have been inextricably intertwined. In dispersal in western countries such as Britain or France, Jews and Muslims have together occupied the ambiguous position of being constructed as both “ethnic communities” and “faith communities” at odds with their normatively Christian wider societies; both have suffered forms of racism and persecution, been accused of dual loyalties, condemned for refusing to integrate, stereotyped as terrorists. The kinship of Judaism and Islam is most concisely evoked (and it has become clichéd to do so) in the bearnear-homonymy of the Hebrew and Arabic words for peace: shalom and salaam. And yet, today more than ever, Jews and Muslims live largely in a state of enmity, characterised by mutual distrust. Hearing more about each other than perhaps ever before, it seems that Jews and Muslims might know less about each other than at any time in their histories. There is widespread Islamophobia amongst Jews, widespread antisemitism amongst Muslims. Arguably, though, it is not each other that they fear, but the idea of the other. How do these ideas form? This article looks at this question, focusing especially on the Jewish idea – or, rather, ideas – of Islam.

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