Anti-Muslim prejudice eased once Muslims no longer posed a threat

Evidence

James Mill, whose History of British India (1817) represents one of the most influential and tartest British appraisals of South Asians, praised Muslims for their sophistication relative to Hindus. India’s “Mahomedan conquerors” manifested “an activity, a manliness, an independence, which rendered it less easy for despotism to sink, among them, to that disgusting state of weak and profligate barbarism, which is the natural condition of government among such a passive people as the Hindus.” 22 Mill demonstrates here a dynamic common among Britons in India: the identification of a specific characteristic supposedly unique to one religious group might be the reason that one Briton praised Muslims relative to Hindus and the reason another condemned Muslims in favor of Hindus. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 126

Categorization

• QUESTION: Mill’s ‘praise’ of Muslims as manly conquerors is strategic disparagement of Hindus; the flattening binary deserves unpacking.
• XREF: Reinforces the threat-based account of Islamophobia forming across this chapter; parallels colonial divide-and-rule racial schemas.