Anti-essentialist CRT theory naturally enabled examining Islamophobia as racism

Evidence

A core observation that stretched across several projects attached to CRT was the notion that race and racism were not biologically-based concepts but socially constructed, partly by law. The effort to Think, Teach, and Act through a CRT prism on racial power that transcended the narrow understanding of racism as merely prejudicial treatment based solely on skin color opened a world of possibilities to explore the dynamics of Islamophobia. Our program and its wider footprint were growing, but the reach of critical race thinking to Islamophobia was at that time only a possibility, a door left open by our anti-essentialist understanding of racism. Any subordinated group could be subject to racism; we knew this much. The particulars of these other racisms—how they function, what they are called, whether the analog to colorblindness could be ameliorative—were questions that a practitioner and theorist might consider. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 18

Categorization

• XREF: This anti-essentialist opening of racism to non-color groups frames the theoretical claim that Islamophobia is a form of racism — the same frame the reader’s Iftikhar read-along and the whole book’s global thesis rests on. — connects to: the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: How Ourselves, the True, and Every Other Are Built from War”
• DEFINE: Explains the core CRT premise (race is socially constructed by law) that underwrites treating Islamophobia as racism rather than mere religious prejudice.