Conversion to Islam fused Black radicalism and foreign menace in white 1960s imagination

Evidence

Cassius Clay evolved into Muhammad Ali. And in doing so embraced a new name and an old faith, Islam, which at the time occupied the mortifying intersection of Black radicalism and foreign menace in the white imagination. A white imagination that, in the 1960s, clung tight to the dying body of Jim Crow while dreaming that Joe Frazier, George Foreman, or Jerry Quarry would knock the Islam out of Ali. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1055

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s global Islamophobia synthesis: this is the American domestic root of the Black-radical/foreign-menace conflation that Beydoun later maps internationally. — connects to: Terrorism racialization evolved from Arabs to Iranians and South Asians from the late 1960s — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 215; Late-1960s empire crisis birthed black criminal and brown terrorist jointly — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 249