'Introduction: The Shared Story of Europe's Idea of the Muslim and the Jew-- A Diachronic Framework.'

This article provides a new framework for studying the relationship between antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe from the Crusades to the 21st Century. It rejects the argument that we should compare antisemitism in the past with Islamophobia in the present. Instead, the essay argues for a relational diachronic paradigm, in which careful attention is paid to the complex evolution of the relationship between the two racisms across time and space. Only through this approach can we begin to explain the Enlightenment notion of the Semites, and the current opposition between the figures of the Jew and the Arab in the War on Terror. Renton and Gidley also emphasise the significance of Christian theology and empire in the last millenium of the history of the antisemitism-Islamophobia nexus.