Reply #56: The One Has Seniority, Sir [View All]

[The Magistrate]

Christianity itself was founded on disparagement of Jews, as anyone familiar with its earliest writings, and the political situation surrounding them, may attest. It was necessary for this particular Messianic sect to seperate itself from the nationalist Zealots and others engaged in rebellion against Rome, and later, for the western strains of that sect, that became predominant but departed somewhat from the original orthodoxies, to disparage rival strains that harkened back to Jewish roots and ways in their teachings. These theological squabbles hardened into a habit of persecution that marked all subsequent European history, and played a leading feature in its politics and social thought well into the modern era.

Disparaging hate of Arabs does not begin to feature in Christendom until a half millenia later, when under the impetus of Muslim belief these commenced a campaign of conquest that swept over the old Roman littoral of North Africa, as well as the Levant, and from occupation of Spain bid fair to conquer Europe itself. Through further centuries of war, these were maintained, and indeed produced a deeply ingrained hatred. We tend to forget that Muslim expansion into Europe by force of arms remained a live issue well into the seventeenth century. The containment and reversal of this robbed the hate of Muslims of any real sense they posed a danger. This never happened with the hatred of Jews, nor, really could it: the Moslem danger was real, but the Jewish danger, never being anything but a mental construct false to fact, could never be demonstrated to have been met and broken.