A covert Muslim could embrace Christian-mystical inwardness while rejecting its outer forms

Evidence

A second objection, and one of much greater moment, is the insidious ideological bias inherent in this use of the word. To accept that an individual is correctly referred to as Morisco is by implication to go along with the proposition that it was justifiable to redesignate him in that way against his own free will in the first place. It is to reclassify him, to impose a new sub-Christian identity on him without his assent. We can tell from their own writings (and, as we will see from chapter 5, there is quite a large corpus of such material) that the “converted” Muslims did not think of themselves as in any way different doctrinally from their fellow Muslims in other parts of the world … Their aspirations, as clearly expressed in their own writings, were not at all those of converts to Christianity. On the contrary, they constantly expressed wishes that the institutions of Islam might be restored in their native land (“the minarets raised up again,” “las ac¸omoas empinadas”). And, as has been said, they normally speak of themselves simply as muslimes. Moro and morisco (Morisco) were names that other people had for them, not the name they used for themselves. As time went by, they did perforce have to begin to accept the label, but Morisco was not ideologically neutral when employed in the sixteenth century, and it can easily smuggle an undesirable bias into our discourse today. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 62 (#complicates, via linked claim)

My concern here is not so much whether to use Islamophobia or anti-Muslim racism as it is to adopt a theoretical framing that explains the material consequences of the systematic racialization of Muslims. I take the position that engaging in Islamophobia that restricts Muslims’ religious freedom and other civil rights is a product of systemic racism. My working definition of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism, thus, is an exaggerated fear of, hatred of, and hostility to Islam and Muslims by the state and the public as a result of imputed inferior biological and cultural traits based on religious identity that produce systemic bias, discrimination, marginalization, and exclusion of Muslims from social, political, and civic life. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 135 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Koran inverts the biblical portrait of Ishmael as rejected son; Individual religious spirtualists converted to Islam seeking a primordial tradition rejecting modernity — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists…, 573; Islam is reinvented as body-spirit unity countering Western Christian asceticism — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1649 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Muslim religious identity is ascribed by outsiders, not internal practice #complicates (0.78)
• Calling converted Muslims Moriscos imposes an unaccepted Christian identity on them #complicates (0.76) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 62
• Islamophobia operates through imputed inferior traits rooted in religious identity #complicates (0.71) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 135