The Anatomy of Hate: Racism, Discrimination and Violence Against the Other

Reviewed by: Chowdhury Mueen Uddin, London, UK

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Books Reviewed

The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand. London: Verso, 2020, 352pp. ISBN: 978-1788736619.

Lobbying For Zionism: On Both Sides Of The Atlantic, by Ilan Pappe. One London: Oneworld Publications Ltd, London, 2025, 608pp. ISBN: 978-0861544028.

The World After Gaza, by Pankaj Mishra. London: Fern Press, 2025, 289pp. UK, ISBN: 978-1911717492.

Pride in Prejudice: Understanding Britain’s Extreme Right, by Paul Jackson. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022, 248pp. ISBN: 978-1526156723.

Euro Whiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project, by Hans Kundani. London: Hurst and Company, 2023, 248pp.ISBN: 978-1787389328.

A Global Racial Enemy: Muslims and 21st Century Racism, by Saher Selod, Inaash Islam and Steve Garner. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2023, 210pp. ISBN: 978-1509540198.

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Racism occupies a central place in Man’s story on this earth. Man’s unwillingness to accept, let alone embrace, other human beings around him is as old as humanity itself, and it constitutes a major flaw in his character. Far from highlighting strength, this denial and denigration of the other is a pathetic weakness that leads him to ignore, harass and even oppress others. This oppression fills him with a false and artificial sense of pride and arrogance. Racism blinds. It blinds Man from acknowledging his own shortcomings, and always shifting the blame on to others. It blinds him from identifying the real problem, which is in himself and, instead, frantically search for some basis or semblance of evidence to substantiate his false claim of superiority—his race, skin colour, religion, lineage, aristocracy, etc. While gloating in his arrogant false superiority, he refuses to show equal respect to his fellow human beings or give any importance to the needs of those who are vulnerable or less-fortunate than him. This attitude is particularly stressed in Man’s unwillingness to even recognise his fellow human beings, let alone share with them some of his acquired opportunities, advantages and privileges.

This mind-set of awareness about difference is not restricted to harmless, passive interaction with other people. Rather, it sets in motion an unavoidable course of animus, spitefulness, and vicious mistreatment of the ‘other’. From apparently harmless, yet demeaning, remarks and pseudo-legal moves in daily discourses of incompatibility and difference, it develops into vicious propaganda and concocted stories in all-out campaigns to dehumanise and distrust this ‘other’, and ultimately peaking to become harassment, strong-armed bigotry and violence.

Racism is indeed very ancient. The first act of racism occurred at the dawn of creation when Iblīs (the devil) disobeyed the divine command to prostrate before Adam, claiming his superior origin, ‘I am better than him; You created me of fire and him of clay.’ That is because he only saw the external material substance, the clay, from which man was created, but he failed to comprehend Adam’s spiritual substance, the soul breathed into him by the Almighty, which is the real reason of Man’s lofty dignity. This devilish instinct of false sense of superiority has always worked to turn vainglorious humans into racists. Iblīs’s argument, while logically correct, was spiritually wrong. As Alija Ali Izetbegovic states in his seminal work, Islam between East and West, Man’s dignity is a spiritual question: