Credism: When Belief Becomes the Basis of Unequal Treatment

Credism, also spelled Creedism is prejudice, discrimination, unequal treatment, or institutional preference based on creed. Derived from the Latin credere (“to believe”), it belongs alongside words such as creed, credible, credence, and credential.

A person who engages in or supports such discrimination is a credist. Unlike racism, credism does not require the practitioner to hold personal animus. It arises wherever institutions or individuals adopt, enforce, or defer to distinctions created by a deen, belief system or ideology, regardless of whether they themselves subscribe to it.

Credism often passes without comment, or is attributed to something else, even when practised openly. Policies and practices that would be immediately condemned if based on race, sex, or age frequently escape scrutiny when the distinction rests instead on creed.

Credism Poster

Sharia reflects this hierarchy by assigning different legal values to human life according to their status. In Reliance of the Traveller, a Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law (o4.9), it states:

• The indemnity for the death or injury of a woman is one-half the indemnity paid for a man. The indemnity paid for a Jew or Christian is one-third of the indemnity paid for a Muslim. The indemnity paid for a Zoroastrian is one-fifteenth of that of a Muslim. When a miscarriage results from someone having struck the stomach of a pregnant woman (or other part of her), or when someone frightens her resulting in a miscarriage, the indemnity for the fetus is a male or female slave worth one-twentieth of the indemnity payable for killing the fetus’s father, or one-tenth that of its mother.

What makes credism distinctive is that it can be practised by people who do not follow the creed from which the classification originates. Teachers, police officers, judges, university administrators, journalists, politicians, and corporations may enforce or accommodate doctrinal distinctions without believing the doctrine themselves. They become agents of credism by accepting, institutionalising, or giving legal effect to categories they did not create.

In a recent example, a 13-year-old Muslim boy in Germany stated: “Since the majority of Germans are non-Muslims, then they are infidels. With the exception of the Arabs who live here. The Germans are obliged to welcome us because they are our servants.” (X video, July 2026)

The statement that non-Muslims are “our servants” is consistent with the Islamic doctrine of dhimmitude, derived principally from Quran 9:29 and elaborated in the Pact of Umar and subsequent works of Islamic jurisprudence. That verse instructs Muslims to fight those who do not believe “until they pay the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.”

The boy’s remark is a clear expression of credism. At thirteen, he is already a credist.

This form of discrimination has been difficult for its victims and opponents to address precisely because credism remains so poorly recognized. Without a name, discriminatory conduct based on creed is easily overlooked, misclassified or excused. There is a name for it. Recognize credism. Call it out just as you would racism.