Cultural and religious practices become racialized markers treated as inherent traits.

Evidence

Garner and Selod argue, “The process of racialization entails ascribing sets of characteristics viewed as inherent to members of a group because of their physical or cultural traits. These are not limited to skin tone or pigmentation, but include a myriad of attributes including cultural traits such as language, clothing, and religious practices” (2015: 4). This targeting of cultural attributes and practices as racialized markers of difference is especially salient in the case of Muslims in America. Furthermore, culture is often gendered. For us to truly uncover how bodies acquire racial meaning, it is important to understand how the process of racialization is gendered and has gendered consequences. For example, religious practices, such as gender segregation in mosques, are treated as evidence of the misogyny of Muslim men rather than understood within the context of religious doctrine. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 69

Categorization

• XREF: The gendered-racialization point ties directly to the reader’s question of how surveillance lands differently on men vs. women. — connects to: Culture served as a racializing mode that displaced politics onto religion — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 256; Racialization binds disparate signifying practices into one shared symbolic meaning — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1293; Violence legitimated by religious claims is a racialized governing technology. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 137
• ADDENDUM: The hijab-as-submission reading echoes the ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ article’s theme of dominant interpretations imposed on dress.