Anti-Catholic smears in colonial America anticipated today’s anti-Muslim rhetoric

Evidence

American colonial politicians were also deeply distrustful of Catholicism. Self-government emerged as a fundamental value distinguishing the New World from the Old. Thus religions with hierarchical leadership such as Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Lutheranism (and later Mormonism) were antithetical to Protestant notions of individual liberty. American Protestants viewed Catholics, in particular, as tyrannical and backward—a similar smear hurled at Muslims today. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 283

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s overall thesis about how Muslims are racialized through imported European religious prejudices — the analogy to Catholics recurs throughout.
• SEED: Angle: tracing ‘tyrannical and backward’ as an enduring smear template applied to successive religious minorities, from Catholics to Mormons to Muslims.