The Antisemitism of Ernest Renan and European Nations
Summary: According to Renan, Semites are intellectually inferior to Aryans (Europeans), which is why they had to invent monotheism and prophecy because they are incapable of, higher civilisation, deep religiosity and spirituality which comprises, in the view of Renan, mysticism and mythology. He had deep hatred of Islām and saw it as something to be destroyed completely. He spoke of destruction of its “theocratic power” because it is a “most total negation of Europe.” In the view of Renan, Islām is the essence of Semitism. This helps to explain hatred of Islām and Muslims in European nations, particularly in France, as a rabid form of antisemitism.[1] Later, in his life, Renan is said to have repudiated his antisemitism in relation to Jews, where he took a more sympathetic and accommodating tone. Not so, however, for his antisemitism towards Islām and Arabs.
According to Wikipedia:[2]
Joseph Ernest Renan (French pronunciation: [ʒozɛf ɛʁnɛst ʁənɑ̃]; 27 February 1823 – 2 October 1892) was a French Orientalist and Semitic scholar, writing on Semitic languages and civilizations, historian of religion, philologist, philosopher, biblical scholar, and critic... He ... espoused popular political theories especially concerning nationalism, national identity, and the alleged superiority of White people over other human "races".
Renan, as a European (Aryan) Christian sees Judaism and Islām (and Jews and Muslims) as inferior “Semitic” religions and races respectively.
While mention is made of his racism in the Wikipedia entry, which is his claim of superiority of the Aryan race over the Semitic, this mention is only in the context of Jews and Judaism, despite the fact that his most rabid antisemitism was against Arabs and Islām.
In his book, “The Idea of Semitic Monotheism” (Oxford University Press, 2021) Guy Stroumsa discusses the views of Renan with respect to race and religion (p. 141) :
When dealing with Islam and Muslims, however, Renan’s characteristic ambivalence all but evaporated. Like most of his contemporaries, Renan despised Islam—although he tried hard to understand it as a religion. His view of Islam is deeply deprecatory: “Islam is indeed the product of a lower, or mediocre combination of human elements.”
Markus Messling has cogently observed that Renan’s anti-Semitism is, in fact, anti-Islamism. His striking identification of Islam with the essence of Semitic religion appears early, in his essay on Muhammad and the origins of Islam.
In this text, he claimed that Arabia was entirely devoid of mysticism and mythology, immediately adding that Semitic peoples were never able to imagine complexity in God’s personality.
This identification of Islam and “Semitism” was further accentuated in his inaugural lecture (or Discours d’ouverture) at the Collège de France, on February 21, 1862, when he maintained that today, the necessary condition for the propagation of European civilization is “the destruction of the Semitic thing par excellence, the destruction of the theocratic power of Islam, hence the destruction of Islam […] Islam is the most total negation of Europe. Islam is fanaticism.”
In order to appreciate such views, one must recall that France had since 1830 been deeply involved in the conquest of Algeria. After Emir Abdelkader’s surrender (1847) and the annexation of Algeria to the French Republic in 1848, colonization and constant military campaigns of “pacification” against Arab and Berber revolts were carried hand in hand, and would go on throughout the century, and beyond.
Stroumsa writes a little later (p. 143):
For Renan, Muslim peoples (among whom he includes the Ottoman Turks, who, he noted, were not racially Semites) were incapable of either science or progress. Using caustic words, he alleged the contemporary inferiority of Muslim countries, explaining it by the “intellectual nullity” of the “races” whose culture and education was essentially Islamic. For him, Islam was “the heaviest chain humanity has ever borne.”
And a page later, Stroumsa sums up:
Renan’s attitudes to both Judaism and Islam must be understood against the backdrop of his notion of the two main races of humankind, the Semitic and the Indo-European, an idea which he had already developed in his early work on the Semitic languages and which continued to inform his thought throughout his life.
In Renan’s view, the Semites represented a lower combination of human nature. As we have seen, they had for him no mythology, no epics, no science, no philosophy, no fiction, no plastic arts, no civil life…
In other words, the Semites did not develop any of the fields that the Europeans understand as integral to a true living culture. In religion, the lack of myths (due to the monotony of their native deserts) meant a paucity of gods.
Hence, the Semitic cults “never really overgrew simple patriarchal religion, a religion without mysticism, without a refined theology, which is almost, among the Bedouins, an absence of faith.”
There remained one thing, and only one, for the Semites to invent, and to uphold: monotheism, and its corollary, prophecy. Prophecy and monotheism reflect an essentially revolutionary character and are the fruit of an original intuition.
Renan’s perception of monotheism, the purest example of which is expressed in Islam and is quite lacking in sophistication, reflects an oversimplification of the richness of deep religiosity: “the Semitic nations…never understood variety, plurality and gender in God.”
Essentially, polytheism, mysticism, mythology, variety and plurality in God, these are signs of higher civilisation and intelligence. And "Semitism" is a lack of myths and a paucity of gods.
Later in his life, Renan took a more sympathetic view towards Jews and some assert that he repudiated his antisemitism with respect to them.[3]
Note:
According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Arabs are the most preserved of Semitic people present today both in race and language. Under the entry of Semites and the subtitle of The Arabs and Abyssinians, the 1906 edition states:[4]
The Arabs in the desert fastnesses of central and northern Arabia have, on account of their isolated position, preserved unchanged more features of primitive Semitic character, custom, and language than any other Semitic nation; the conditions of life have always been too hard to permit the development of any high state of civilization. But Arabia from time immemorial has poured forth wave upon wave of Semites over the surrounding lands; and finally, under the influence of Mohammed in the seventh century of the current era, Arabia became for a time a great world-power.
Footnotes
1. There is some discussion regarding the words "antisemitism" and "anti-Semitism", but they are used here interchangeably, and include both race and religion.2. Wikipedia has useful information, however, many topics have gatekeeping editors who ensure a particular narrative is maintained. It is used in these areas as a propaganda tool and most likely is an instrument of intelligence agencies similar to other large networks such as Facebook.
3. "Despite his repudiation of antisemitism, Renan influenced the development of antisemitic ideologies in both France and Germany. His typology of ‘Semite’ and ‘Aryan’ was adopted especially in Germany and and combined with biological concepts of race to become the foundation of the concepts of ‘Semitism’ and ‘Antisemitism’." Paul Lawrence Rose in "Renan versus Gobineau: Semitism and Antisemitism, Ancient Races and Modern Liberal Nations" History of European Ideas 39(4):528-540, July 2013.
4. The 1906 edition of the Jewish Encyclopedia, (Funk and Wagnels) 11/184.