Denying Islam religious status legitimizes anti-Muslim state action as religious-freedom protection
Evidence
Dobson’s fallacious claims that Muslims are under an obligation to replace the US Constitution with Sharia law fueled a movement seeking to exclude Muslims from religious accommodation. Tony Perkins, president of the Christian conservative Family Research Council and a member of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, bluntly articulated the commonly held belief in 2015 among some within the Christian Right that “only 16 percent of Islam is a religion—the rest is a combination of military, judicial, economic, and political system. Christianity, by comparison, isn’t a judicial or economic code—but a faith… . Sharia is not a religion in the context of the First Amendment.” According to this logic, banning mosques and targeting Muslims through surveillance, prosecution, and war do not contradict American ideals of religious freedom; rather, such actions keep America safe and preserve its White Judeo-Christian identity. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 743
Categorization
- SEED: An essay angle: how redefining an outgroup’s faith as ‘not really a religion’ is the rhetorical lever that lets suppression be reframed as defense — a pattern traceable across anti-Catholic, anti-Mormon, and anti-Muslim discourse.
- XREF: Strongly parallels the moral-panic literature the reader has engaged (Cohen’s moral panic; ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ panic framework) — panic claims justify exclusionary state action. — connects to: Anti-sharia legislation aimed to recategorize Islam from religion to political ideology — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 284; Liberal tolerance of reformed Islam coexists with nativist demands to end Islam itself — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 303