Please join us for a special CJS event featuring a conversation with Santiago Slabodsky on contesting the narrative of "eternal Jewish-Muslim enmity" and its relation to coloniality.

"Contesting Eternal Enmity": How Decolonial Theory Can Help to Re-Evaluate Jewish-Muslim Relations

In the current heated political context, it is commonplace to observe governmental officials, media outlets, social media platforms and even some academics perpetuating a narrative of an ‘eternal Jewish-Muslim enmity.’ While critical scholarship has been proven this eternity cannot resist the historical record, the question is why it is so difficult to contest it in the public square. In this presentation, Santiago Slabodsky will argue that this difficulty does not stem from mere “ignorance” but rather from the perpetuation of coloniality—or patterns of domination originating in colonial contexts that were reproduced globally into the present day. This narrative asserts the existence of two clearly demarcated opposed sides and an independent, objective and neutral arbitrary (a side that is ‘too big to be seen’) as the only capable of mediating. Paradoxically, this mediation is posited as the sole human solution to a problem that the same party has created.