"They are from Mars": the othering of Jews and Muslims in European legal debates

Taking the idea that the othering of Jews and Muslims remains intertwined, this chapter considers the role of prejudice toward Jews and Muslims in debates about the legal regulation of religious slaughter of animals. As the chapter shows, by the 19th century animal welfare campaigns became enmeshed with antisemitic agitation against Jewish slaughter techniques that presented Jews as backward and cruel. The chapter describes the remarkable similarities in contemporary European debates about banning Islamic forms of slaughter and shows how these debates continue to mobilize a civilizational discourse that casts Muslims alongside Jews as Europe’s Others.