One of the bases of Western anti-semitism (which used to mean hatred of “Semites”—that is, both Jews and Muslims) was the strong moral aversion in Medieval Western societies to commercial activity. The Church and the aristocracy believed that there was a natural class order, where benevolent aristocrats ruled over a dependent peasantry. Trafficking in commerce and money was seen as “dirty.” This is in part why Medieval European princes often had to invite immigrants—Jewish merchants—to kickstart economic growth in their domains. These immigrants were segregated from the rest of the population in order to avoid disrupting the feudal balance of power in the majority Christian population. This segregation and the perception that Jews had privileges that Christian peasants didn’t have of course nurtured a lot of prejudice and resentment. Simultaneously, Jews were often barred from owning land or working in agriculture—activities that were designated for Christian landlords and serfs, the classes who were supposedly part of the “natural order.”

The “bourgeois revolution” in Europe—the commercial revolution that generated capitalism, beginning in the Renaissance—was in this sense a genuine cultural revolution against the static and segregated worldview of feudalism. The European merchant classes needed to fight to emancipate themselves from both Church and State. This was not the case in Islamic-majority societies, where commercial activity was already well established, extending back to ancient Mesopotamian and Levantine commercial traditions.