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Anti-semitism Essay

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For more than two thousand years anti-Semitism has plagued the Jews, however, the term has only been around for about thirty years (Strack 594). Due to the hateful accusations and of those who did not understand their religion, Jews, as a scorned people, gradually became more exclusive and intolerant of other religions. Because of Judaism’s strict adherence to their own beliefs and unwillingness to consider any alternatives, Muslims and Christians have scorned and persecuted Jews.
First, the Muslim’s basis for anti-Judaism rests primarily on religious beliefs. Islam teaches that Allah, the Muslim god, requires that a good Muslim pray a ritual prayer five times per day, give a token of their income to charity, …show more content…

“Forced out of agriculture by the discriminating land tax, many Jews…undertook an active role in the expanding international trade and finance” (Rivkin 25) because they needed a means of making money in order to survive. However Muslim merchants were granted privileges over others therefore the merchants who were discriminated against had to work extra hard, be extra shrewd, and even more importantly charge interest in order to survive and get ahead. In consequence, the Jews got stereotyped as being ruthless, money-hungry, and even unethical. One well-known ethnologist Friedrich Von Hellwald says, “No means are too wicked for them to use in order to secure a material advantage.” He also sums up the general hate for the Jews when he says, “We cannot do otherwise than designate the Jews the very canker from which the lands of Eastern Europe suffer” (Strack 549). To conclude, Muslims rejected the Jews for their religious beliefs and rejection of Islam, but, further, they hated them for their roles in the merchant world.
Like the Muslims the Christians persecuted the Jews for not conforming Christianity, but even more so because they blamed the Jews for the death of their savior Jesus Christ. Because of this prejudice, the Jews were blamed for causing the troubles of society (Levanon 559). In other words, so scorned were the Jews that they became scapegoats

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