American officials read educated Muslims as a racially distinct civilized breed apart.

Evidence

Starting from this idea that Muslims are a race, Orientalists claimed to be able to explain the “Muslim mind” or the “Arab mind.” Because race-based theories assume that the members of a race are all alike, scholars within this tradition could make sweeping generalizations about how Muslims think and behave. Most of all, the “Muslim mind” was disparaged; as the British poet Rudyard Kipling wrote, “You’ll never plumb the Oriental mind. And even if you do, it won’t be worth the toil.” — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 126 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Muslim Americans occupy a liminal racial position above African Americans; African American Muslims experience racialized religion differently due to distinct history — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 478; Comparing Muslims to blacks erases that African Americans are the largest American-born Muslim group (+3 more)

Related

• Racial homogeneity assumptions enabled sweeping claims about the ‘Muslim mind’ (similarity 0.87)
• Orientalist doctrine attributes untruthfulness to a racialized Oriental mind (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalist truth about racial difference was radical and ineradicable (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalism imagined Muslims as a monolithic Arab or Middle Eastern racial bloc. (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalist dissenters defended Islam’s internal diversity against essentializing stereotypes (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalist scholarship conflates Muslims and Jews into one racial type (similarity 0.84)
• Muslim America’s narrative is rooted in blackness, not Arab identity (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalism converted Muslim identity from a religion into a race. (similarity 0.83)
• Said persistently conflates claims about the essence of Oriental racial identity with claims about the essence of Islamic religious doctrine, so a critique of racial essentialism does not easily… (similarity 0.83)
• Racialization of Muslims is historically discontinuous and empire-contingent. (similarity 0.83)
• Muslims were constituted as an inferior race via the figure of Homo islamicus. (similarity 0.82)
• Muslims were viewed as inferior when Muslim states were weak, not when strong (similarity 0.82)
• Islam’s racialization dates to American slavery, not modern immigration debates (similarity 0.82)
• Philological reduction of language legitimates claims connecting race to mind and character. (similarity 0.82)
• Early American Muslim elites were better educated than most white Americans (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Muslim Americans occupy a liminal racial position above African Americans #expands (0.70)
• Racial homogeneity assumptions enabled sweeping claims about the ‘Muslim mind’ #expands (0.70) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 126
• Comparing Muslims to blacks erases that African Americans are the largest American-born Muslim group #qualifies (0.65)
• African American Muslims experience racialized religion differently due to distinct history #complicates (0.60) — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 478
• Muslim Americans are racialized even when visibly white, so racialization must include cultural traits #responds-to (0.60) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 88
• Muslim and Black coalition-building deepened shared understanding of intersecting racisms. #responds-to (0.50)