Cold War geopolitics made citizenship courts expand racial inclusion of Muslims

Evidence

Arguments in cases regarding access to citizenship rights for Syrians in the early twentieth century depended on racial classification and ethnology to define religious di√erence based on an opposition between Muslim foreigners and white Christian citizens. The racial label ”Muslim,” for example, was assigned to Arab Christians who, paradoxically, were racialized as the religious other of white European Christianity. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 205 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In the 1990s, the Arab/Muslim population of Michigan experienced steady increases in political incorporation, even as the United States waged war against Iraq, imposed brutal sanctions on that country, and occasionally lobbed rockets at al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. Institutions and events now taken as evidence of Arab/Muslim cultural acceptance—for instance, the Arab American National Museum and the Dearborn Arab International Festival—have their origins in the mid-1990s, when Arab American organizations reaped the benefits of increased publicand private-sector funding. The latter came in the wake of the 1993 Oslo Accords, when Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) worked out a tentative peace agreement and Arabs living in the United States were brought into the larger geopolitical control mechanism known as “the peace process.” Throughout the 1990s, America’s generalized antipathy toward its own Arab/Muslim citizens gave way to Ramadan breakfasts in the White House and brazen attempts by US presidential candidates to woo Michigan’s Arab and Muslim votes. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 688 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Early-twentieth-century US citizenship cases racialized Syrians as Muslim foreign threats. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in…, 205; Arab American political inclusion was purchased as geopolitics demanded — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 688; Cold War and civil-rights pressure widened judicial definitions of whiteness — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 173

Related

• Early-twentieth-century US citizenship cases racialized Syrians as Muslim foreign threats. (similarity 0.86)
• Arab American political inclusion was purchased as geopolitics demanded (similarity 0.86)
• Arab Muslims won US citizenship via the Semitic-race argument in the mid-1940s (similarity 0.81)
• Arabs had to litigate their whiteness to gain US citizenship (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Early-twentieth-century US citizenship cases racialized Syrians as Muslim foreign threats. #corroborates (0.85) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 205
• Arab American political inclusion was purchased as geopolitics demanded #exemplifies (0.80) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 688