and Does Antisemitism Include More Than Jewish People?
The word Semitic originally referred primarily to a family of related languages, including Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Akkadian, Amharic and several others. It was later misused by nineteenth-century European writers as though it described a biological race.
In older racial and ethnographic classifications, both Jews and Arabs were frequently described as “Semites.” Some people called Moors were also placed within that category, particularly when they were understood to be Arab or Arabic-speaking. However, “Moor” was never the name of a single, clearly defined ethnic or linguistic population. It was a broad European label applied at different times to Muslim populations of North Africa and Iberia, including both Arabs and Amazigh, or Berber, peoples.
Despite the broader historical use of “Semitic,” the word antisemitism has never conventionally meant hostility toward every population that speaks a Semitic language. It was coined in nineteenth-century Germany specifically as a new name for hostility toward Jews. In historical scholarship, dictionaries and modern human-rights usage, antisemitism therefore means prejudice, discrimination or hatred directed at Jews.
Hostility toward Arabs, Palestinians, Amazigh people, Ethiopians or other populations may be racism, xenophobia, anti-Arab prejudice, anti-Palestinian racism or anti-Muslim bigotry, depending on its target and content. Those forms of prejudice are serious, but they are not normally called antisemitism merely because some of the people involved speak Semitic languages.
1. What does “Semitic” mean?
In contemporary scholarship, Semitic is principally a linguistic term.
The Semitic languages form one branch of the larger Afroasiatic language family. They include:
- Arabic
- Hebrew
- Aramaic
- Akkadian
- Phoenician
- Amharic
- Tigrinya
- Maltese
- Geʽez
- Several modern South Arabian and Ethiopian languages
Oxford defines Semitic as relating to a language family that includes Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic, along with ancient languages such as Phoenician and Akkadian.
The category describes historical relationships among languages. It does not identify a single religion, race, nationality or genetic population.
A person can speak a Semitic language without being Jewish, Arab or Muslim. For example, Amharic and Tigrinya are Semitic languages spoken by populations in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Maltese is also a Semitic language, although Malta is culturally and geographically European.
Likewise, not every Jewish person speaks a Semitic language, and not every Arab speaks Arabic as a first language.
2. Where did the term come from?
The word derives from Shem, one of Noah’s sons in the biblical Book of Genesis.
The German scholar August Ludwig von Schlözer used the term in 1781 to classify languages related to Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic. Johann Gottfried Eichhorn later helped popularize it.
The biblical genealogy was not a scientific description of language families. European scholars used its names as convenient labels while developing comparative linguistics.
Modern linguistics retains the term Semitic languages, but it does not treat all speakers of those languages as members of one biological race.
3. Was “Semitic” once considered a racial category?
Yes.
During the nineteenth century, European scholars and political writers increasingly confused language, culture, ancestry and race. They began speaking of an “Aryan race,” a “Semitic race” and other supposedly distinct human types.
These classifications were not scientifically valid. Language families do not correspond neatly to biological races. Populations can adopt new languages through conquest, migration, trade, education or cultural change without becoming one genetically uniform people.
The outdated word Semites was commonly applied to Jews, Arabs, ancient Assyrians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, Arameans and other groups that spoke Semitic languages. Oxford still records the historical sense as peoples who speak or spoke Semitic languages, “including in particular the Jews and Arabs.”
Modern scholars generally avoid treating “Semitic” as an ethnic or racial identity because the populations associated with Semitic languages are historically and genetically diverse.
4. Who were the Moors?
The term Moor was a broad and changing European label rather than the name of one uniform people.
It was commonly applied to Muslim inhabitants of North Africa and to Muslim populations who governed or lived in parts of the Iberian Peninsula after the eighth-century conquest. Depending on the time and source, it could refer to:
- Amazigh or Berber North Africans
- Arabs
- People of mixed Arab and Amazigh ancestry
- Muslims in medieval Iberia
- Occasionally Muslims more generally
- In some later European writing, dark-skinned people from Africa regardless of precise origin
Oxford Reference describes the Moors as Berbers from Northwest Africa who conquered the Iberian Peninsula, while another Oxford entry describes them as a Muslim population of mixed Arab and Berber descent. The variation itself demonstrates that “Moor” was not a precise ethnic category.
The armies and societies commonly called Moorish were internally diverse. They included Amazigh populations from North Africa, Arabs, local Iberian converts and people of several regional backgrounds.
5. Were the Moors considered Semitic?
Some were, but the statement requires qualification.
Arabs and Arabic speakers were commonly classified as Semitic in older linguistic and racial systems. Therefore, Moors understood as Arabs or Arabic-speaking North Africans were sometimes described as Semitic.
However, many of the people called Moors were Amazigh. Amazigh languages belong to the Afroasiatic family but are not part of its Semitic branch. They constitute a separate branch generally called Berber or Amazigh.
Therefore:
- An Arabic-speaking Moor could be called Semitic in a linguistic sense.
- An Arab Moor could be included among the historically labeled “Semitic peoples.”
- An Amazigh-speaking Moor would not linguistically be Semitic.
- A diverse medieval Moorish population cannot accurately be assigned wholesale to one linguistic or racial category.
The claim that “the Moors were Semites” is therefore too broad. A more accurate statement is:
Some people historically called Moors were Arabs or Arabic speakers and could therefore be described as Semitic-speaking, while many others were Amazigh and spoke non-Semitic Afroasiatic languages.
6. Does “Semitic” include Arabs?
In linguistic usage, yes.
Arabic is the most widely spoken living Semitic language. Hebrew, Aramaic, Amharic, Tigrinya and Maltese are also members of the Semitic language family.
Older books therefore commonly referred to both Arabs and Jews as Semites. Some dictionaries still preserve this historical usage.
However, scholars increasingly avoid calling individuals “Semites” because the term can falsely imply that language establishes a single race.
It is more precise to say:
- Arabic is a Semitic language.
- Hebrew is a Semitic language.
- Arabs are predominantly associated with Arabic.
- Jews are historically associated with Hebrew and Aramaic.
- Neither Arabs nor Jews constitute a biologically uniform “Semitic race.”
7. Why does antisemitism mean hostility toward Jews?
Because antisemitism was created as a name for anti-Jewish ideology, not as the logical opposite of a broad category called Semitism.
The term became prominent in Germany in 1879 through the writings and political activity of Wilhelm Marr. Marr presented Jews as a supposedly separate and dangerous racial people and argued that they threatened German society. His term was intended to give older hatred of Jews a modern, racial and allegedly scientific appearance.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines antisemitism as prejudice against or hatred of Jewish people. Yad Vashem similarly explains that the word was created to express antipathy toward Jews as an alleged race rather than merely as followers of a religion.
Marr was not forming a neutral category that included Arabs, Ethiopians, Assyrians and every other speaker of a Semitic language. He was renaming and racializing hostility toward Jews.
That historical origin determines the word’s meaning.
8. Isn’t the word itself logically broader?
It may appear broader when broken into pieces:
- anti- means against
- Semitic can refer to a language family
From that alone, someone could assume that antisemitism must mean hostility toward all Semitic-speaking peoples.
But words are not always defined by mechanically combining their parts. Their meanings develop through historical use.
For example:
- A butterfly is not a fly made of butter.
- Homophobia does not literally mean a clinical fear of sameness.
- Anti-Americanism does not generally refer to hostility toward every person in North, Central and South America.
- Antisemitism does not mean opposition to the academic category of Semitic languages.
This is sometimes called an etymological fallacy: assuming that a word’s present meaning must be determined only by its roots or literal components rather than its documented historical usage.
For approximately a century and a half, antisemitism has referred specifically to anti-Jewish prejudice. That remains its established meaning in historical scholarship, law, dictionaries and human-rights work.
9. Was the term deliberately misleading?
In an important sense, yes.
The term was developed during an era when racial theorists wanted prejudice to sound scientific. “Jew-hatred” was an openly emotional and religious description. “Antisemitism” sounded as if it described a rational opposition between racial groups.
Yad Vashem notes that the term helped lend anti-Jewish hatred an appearance of scientific legitimacy.
There was never a coherent movement called “Semitism” that antisemites were simply opposing. The word packaged old anti-Jewish hostility in the vocabulary of nineteenth-century racial theory.
This is one reason many organizations now prefer the spelling antisemitism rather than anti-Semitism. The hyphenated spelling can suggest that a real entity called “Semitism” exists. The unhyphenated spelling emphasizes that antisemitism is one historically specific form of prejudice against Jews.
10. Could an Arab person experience antisemitism?
An Arab person could be mistakenly targeted by an antisemite who believes that person is Jewish. In that situation, the attack may still be classified as antisemitic because the perpetrator’s motive was anti-Jewish prejudice.
An Arab Jewish person could also experience antisemitism because they are Jewish, and anti-Arab racism because they are Arab.
But hostility toward an Arab person because they are Arab is normally called:
- Anti-Arab racism
- Anti-Arab prejudice
- Xenophobia
- Anti-Palestinian racism, when Palestinians are specifically targeted
- Anti-Muslim hatred or Islamophobia, when religion is the target
These prejudices can overlap, but they are not identical.
For example, a Palestinian Christian may experience anti-Palestinian or anti-Arab racism without anti-Muslim hatred. An Iranian Muslim may experience Islamophobia without being Arab. A Jewish Arab may experience both antisemitism and anti-Arab racism.
Using precise terms helps identify what prejudice is actually operating.
11. Does restricting antisemitism to Jews erase prejudice against Arabs?
No.
Saying that antisemitism has a specific historical meaning does not make other forms of racism less serious.
Anti-Arab racism, anti-Palestinian racism, Islamophobia, colonial dehumanization and discrimination against North African populations have extensive and documented histories. They deserve to be identified and addressed in their own right.
Expanding antisemitism to mean every form of hatred against Semitic-language speakers can actually make analysis less precise. It can obscure who was targeted, why they were targeted and which stereotypes were used.
For example:
- A conspiracy claiming Jews secretly control banks is antisemitic.
- A claim portraying all Arabs as terrorists is anti-Arab racism.
- An attack on a mosque because it is Muslim is anti-Muslim hatred.
- A claim denying Palestinians any national identity may be anti-Palestinian racism.
- A person can express several of these prejudices simultaneously.
Each deserves accurate identification.
12. Are Palestinians Semitic?
Palestinian Arabic is a Semitic language, so Palestinians who speak Arabic are speakers of a Semitic language.
Palestinians are also a modern national people with ancestry shaped by many populations that lived in or migrated through the region. Describing them merely as “Semites” does not adequately explain their identity.
The same is true of Jewish communities. Hebrew and many historical Jewish languages are Semitic, but Jewish identity cannot be reduced to language alone.
Therefore, the statement “Palestinians are Semitic” is linguistically defensible when it means that Palestinian Arabic is Semitic. It should not be used to imply that Palestinians, Jews and all Arabs belong to one scientifically distinct biological race.
13. Are Jews the only Semitic people?
No, if “Semitic” is being used linguistically.
Jews are not the only people historically associated with Semitic languages. Arabs, Assyrians, Arameans, Maltese people and several Ethiopian and Eritrean populations also speak or historically spoke Semitic languages.
But the phrase Semitic people is increasingly considered imprecise. Language does not create a uniform ethnicity.
The most accurate formulation is:
Jews are one of many populations historically associated with Semitic languages, but antisemitism is the established name of prejudice directed specifically against Jews.
14. Why the apparent contradiction persists
The confusion survives because two different histories became attached to similar words.
The history of “Semitic”
“Semitic” began as an eighteenth-century European label for a group of related languages. It was later incorrectly extended into racial classification.
The history of “antisemitism”
“Antisemitism” was created in the nineteenth century as a racialized and political name for hatred of Jews.
The second word did not emerge as a general response to the full linguistic meaning of the first. It borrowed scientific-sounding terminology to repackage one specific prejudice.
As a result, the two definitions are not perfectly symmetrical.
15. What is accurate to say about the Moors?
The historically responsible answer is:
- “Moor” was a broad European label, not a precise ethnicity.
- Many Moors were Amazigh.
- Many were Arabs or Arabic speakers.
- Some had mixed Arab and Amazigh ancestry.
- Arabic is a Semitic language.
- Amazigh languages are Afroasiatic but not Semitic.
- Some older racial classifications may therefore have described some Moors as Semitic.
- It is inaccurate to classify all Moors as one Semitic race.
The idea that the definition “used to include the Moors” contains a partial truth, but it simplifies a much more diverse historical population.
Conclusion
The term Semitic properly refers to a family of languages that includes Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Amharic, Tigrinya and others. In outdated nineteenth-century racial theories, it was also applied broadly to Jews, Arabs and other populations.
Some people called Moors were Arabs or Arabic speakers and could therefore be classified as Semitic-speaking. Others were Amazigh and spoke languages belonging to a different branch of the Afroasiatic family. “Moor” was too broad and historically variable to define one Semitic population.
Nevertheless, antisemitism does not mean hostility toward all people associated with Semitic languages. The term was introduced specifically to describe and promote hostility toward Jews, recasting older Jew-hatred as a racial and political ideology.
The most accurate distinction is:
- Semitic: principally a linguistic classification.
- Antisemitism: prejudice or hatred directed against Jews.
- Anti-Arab racism: prejudice directed against Arabs.
- Anti-Palestinian racism: prejudice directed against Palestinians.
- Islamophobia or anti-Muslim hatred: prejudice directed against Muslims.
The literal appearance of the word can be misleading, but its documented historical meaning is not ambiguous.
Continue the Exploration
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If this article sparked your curiosity, consider exploring our collection of articles on identity, culture, perception, awareness, belief, fear, conflict, and the psychology of being human. These subjects may seem unrelated at first, but they often reveal the deeper patterns that influence politics, history, and human relationships across every nation and generation.
For readers who want to explore these questions even further, our book, Proof That You’re God, examines how identity, perception, and consciousness shape the way we experience ourselves, one another, and the world we share. Whatever conclusions you ultimately reach about Israel, Palestine, the United States, or any other subject, we hope your understanding continues to expand through curiosity, careful investigation, and a willingness to question both the world around you and the assumptions within yourself.
