Competing tsarist ministries disagreed over whether Muslims were a domestic threat or foreign asset.

Evidence

Clear lines of division frequently appeared between representatives of the Ministries of the Interior and War, as institutions responsible for domestic social control, and those of the Foreign Ministry, who tended to be more attentive to how tsarist policies would be perceived abroad by enemies and foes alike. Many officials in St. Petersburg, as well as in tsarist consular outposts throughout the Middle East, even calculated that Russian Muslims who travelled abroad as “merchants” and pilgrims could enhance the reach of tsarist power abroad. And particularly during the reign of the Ottoman ruler Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909), when the sultan projected an image of himself as the defender of Muslims everywhere, competition for Muslim loyalties became an international affair. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 515

Categorization

• XREF: Complements the later ‘securitization’ literature on how minority populations get framed as internal security threats — echoes the author’s broader research on Muslim communities.