Early colonialists viewed religion as an innate hierarchy of civilizations, not mere belief.

Evidence

In this passage, the religious clash between the Old World and the New World is represented as a clash between Christians and indigenous heathens, thus eliding the Old World religious di√erence between Christian, Jew, and Muslim. For the discoverers, it was precisely their understanding of the religious other and of religious di√erence that formed the lens through which to understand racial di√erence in the New World. In this moment, religion was defined not only in terms of broad ideologies of belief, but also as states of being in relation to cultural notions of civilization and barbarity—as the terms of inclusion and exclusion within the ”family of man.” These were clearly innate and naturalized categories in which religion was regarded not just as belief but as a level of human evolution. Religion was thought of as a universal category of natural being in a hierarchy of civilizations—hence, the fervor to convert non-believers. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 140

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader argument about how racial categories were constructed through religious frameworks, echoing themes in the later passages about anti-Muslim racism being written out of race history.