British colonizers imagined American Indians as descendants of North African Muslims

Evidence

The British imagination, by contrast, perceived Islam and Muslims through Spanish ethnologies of American Indians, which led to the configuration of Muslims as Indians (Matar 1999). That is, the British described American Indians as descended from North African Muslims and perceived them as having similar cultural practices and values, ranging from religious beliefs and rituals to marriage practices, kinship, and sexuality (Matar 1999, 101). Through Christian eyes, both Muslims and American Indians were seen as sodomites who engaged in widespread homosexuality. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 188

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is a remarkably specific historical claim — would be worth chasing down Matar’s evidence for how extensively this descent theory circulated.
• XREF: connects to: Early British anti-Muslim imagery was borrowed from Native American encounters — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 111