The Critical Difference Between Islamophobia and Antisemitism

One term identifies a threat from outside. The other creates a condition of untouchability from within.

photo: Artin Bakhan/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay by Zain de Ville, a writer.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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There are forms of political identity built on principle, and others on shared interest.

Increasingly, however, we see identities built around shared injury — where the wound becomes not something to heal, but something to protect and sustain. In these cases, grievance does not simply describe an experience; it becomes the foundation of belonging.

Islamophobia, in contemporary activist and political discourse, now functions primarily as a protective membrane around grievance‑based identity. It no longer simply names discrimination against Muslims; instead it often operates to prevent examination of how grievance itself is being used to organise political meaning.

This is not about Islam as religion, or Muslims as people. It is about how the wound is being used, rather than healed.

In some political formations, the wound becomes not: a memory of harm, a trauma to be resolved, or injury that seeks repair. But rather: injury as identity, injury as moral authority, and injury as the basis of solidarity

Once identity is anchored in the wound, healing becomes betrayal. Clarity is treated as threat, and reconciliation as abandonment of the “flawless cause.” The wound is kept open deliberately, because closure would dissolve the solidarity — and the continued conflict — that depend upon it.

At this point, the question arises: Does this not apply equally to the charge of antisemitism?

The answer is that it does not, not structurally.

Antisemitism names a pattern of externally imposed hostility directed toward Jews across societies and eras. It identifies a continuing vulnerability: aggression from outside that has historically sought to erase or exclude Jewish existence. Its defining feature is externality: Jews are targeted by others, regardless of their own mobilisation.

By contrast, Islamophobia, in its current activist application, often functions inwardly. It does not simply describe danger or discrimination against Muslims. Instead, it reframes critique as aggression, converts examination into proof of persecution, and ensures grievance remains central by forbidding scrutiny.

One term identifies a threat from outside. The other creates a condition of untouchability from within.

Consider how the October 7th attack was euphemised by some as “resistance.” The atrocity itself, and even its celebration, were enveloped in grievance rhetoric. The “Palestinian wound” became a force field shielding both the violence and its justification from scrutiny. Any demand for clarity or moral accounting was reframed as “Islamophobia.”

This illustrates the difference: Antisemitism exposes Jews to external hostility they cannot control, while Islamophobia, as rhetorically deployed, is used to protect grievance from examination — even when grievance is mobilised to sanctify violence.

In this usage, Islamophobia functions less as a description of danger than as a device to keep grievance untouchable. Criticism of political rhetoric is reframed as violence, demands for clarity become proof of persecution, and the wound is kept central by ensuring it cannot be questioned.

The wound becomes the source of belonging, legitimacy, and mobilisation. To challenge it is to threaten identity itself.

This dynamic appears clearly in the emotional rhythm of New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani’s public speeches: He starts with charm, then moves to injury, then to solidarity, then to threat, then back to charm. The smile disarms. The grievance binds. The threat galvanises. The smile returns to seal the bond.

This does not persuade through argument; it persuades through affect. Solidarity is invited not through shared principle, but through shared injury.

The same emotional logic appeared in Algerian-Palestinian Mahmoud Khalil’s leadership of the Columbia University anti-Israel encampments. His tone was gentle, sweet, and even tender. Yet the movement he animated was confrontational and grievance‑driven.

The softness did not counterbalance the aggression; it legitimised it. The sweetness framed the grievance as moral, and once grievance is moral, escalation appears righteous. What seemed like gentleness was not a corrective to hostility, but a way of sanctifying it.

There was also Austrian-German activist and heiress Marlene Engelhorn’s alignment with the Gaza flotilla, yet another variation of grievance politics. Here, the wound is not personally experienced, yet it is adopted as if it were.

Why? Because the wound offers something powerful: absolution, belonging, and “moral clarity.” To take on the wound is to inherit its moral authority without bearing its responsibility.

Injury, in this sense, travels more easily than responsibility. It can be transferred, borrowed, and worn as identity currency — a portable badge of solidarity, available even to those who did not suffer it directly.

Across these cases, the underlying formation is the same: Identity is organised around harm, solidarity forms through shared grievance, and political legitimacy is drawn from the wound. The term “Islamophobia” protects the wound from closure. This is not about policy at all; it is about the emotional logic that turns injury into belonging and ensures the wound is never allowed to close.

A politics built on grievance does not seek repair. It cannot survive without an adversary, a threat, and a wound that is never allowed to close. From within, this feels like “justice” — the solidarity of shared injury, the righteousness of “resistance.” From outside, however, it looks like a system that depends on conflict in order to continue.

A wound can be cared for and still kept open. The danger lies in mistaking the preservation of grievance for the actual pursuit of justice. The question is whether we can tell the difference, and whether we are willing to.

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