Class position drives Muslim organizations’ assimilationist, race-averse strategy

Evidence

The racialization of Muslims is also tied to social structures and cannot be understood only as a product of the miseducation of the population about Islam. While it is important to educate the public about Islam and Muslims, this alone will not eliminate racism against them. As long as there is economic and political utility to racializing Muslims, it will continue. I have shown that the surveillance state is directly tied to racializing a Muslim body as worthy of surveillance. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 480 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

One is that integration should proceed on the grounds of established configurations which diverse cultural, religious and ethnic minorities should seek to emulate, if not assimilate into. That is to say that where Muslim minorities ‘insist on retaining their separate cultures, they should not complain if they are viewed as outsiders and subjected to discriminatory treatment’ (Parekh 2000: 197). A more nuanced and elaborate version of this position limits the comprehensiveness of assimilation to the public sphere, into which Muslims should assimilate in order to participate in the political cultures of a society, but without preventing them from retaining their diversity at the level of the family, and some parts of civil society. The insistence here is upon a prescribed ‘political culture, which includes [society’s] public or political values, ideals, practices, institutions, modes of political discourse, and selfunderstanding’ (Parekh 2000: 200). — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 446 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

This article began with a question regarding whether a religion can become a race over time and through a process of resignification. In the specific context of Europe and the United States, it is not only possible, but Islam has, in fact, come to operate as a race. If we start with the assumption, as discussed in Part I, that race is not real, is not a fact, that there is no biological basis for it as most critical race scholars have come to understand, then race is a fiction and a specter that only appears to exist, but is a product of racism. The ideology of racism uses racecraft— a set of tools and practices—to justify the treatment of a group of people as different and subordinated based on some shared difference. The difference is given meaning by racism. It does not exist prior to racism. For Africans brought to the United States, their differences as Wolof, Fulani, Mandinka, Yoruba, Fon, as so on were erased in a process that dehumanized and homogenized them first into slaves and then “Black” so that their mistreatment based on shared African ancestry could be justified. For the Islamicized/Muslims, ethnic differences are similarly being erased in a process that renders the connection to Islam the most meaningful marker of difference, a difference from non-Muslims and a difference from whiteness. In other words, the connection to Islam is the means by which people come to be Islamicized into a race. While historically, racing Muslims depended on their already existing racial identity, as the War on Terror has progressed, Muslim-ness has become less tightly anchored to color or ethnicity and more entwined with markers of Islam which incorporate these but does not require them. As such, white or white-passing individuals who might evade racial regulation become subject to it as soon as they are Islamicized, regardless of whether they believe in Islam as a religion or not. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 516 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Middle Eastern and South Asian Muslims’ upper-middle-class position drives their assimilationist religiosity-over-racism framing — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 718; Upper-middle-class status drives mainstream Muslim groups to avoid race analysis — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 730; Assimilationist integration demands Muslims adopt a dominant political culture while retaining private diversity. — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 446 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Assimilationist integration demands Muslims adopt a dominant political culture while retaining private diversity. #corroborates (1.00) — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 446
• Muslim racialization is structural and persists with political utility #corroborates (1.00) — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 480
• Islam comes to function as a race through racecraft that erases internal ethnic differences #corroborates (1.00) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 516