Early modern blood-purity racism inherited heresy suspicion, not intellectual inferiority

Evidence

This book has argued that empire, in various forms, has served as the crucible of anti-Muslim racism. In Chapter 1 we saw how Spain, the leading empire in the period of mercantile imperialism, developed possibly the first biological notion of race through its blood purity laws. The full force of these laws was applied first to Sephardic Jews and then to Spanish Muslims. Both groups faced systematic discrimination over a long period of time and were expelled in a process that we would today call ethnic cleansing. However, this was still a nascent form of racism, or protoracism, since it combined religious persecution with modern bodily or somatic notions of race. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 728 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Contact with the Spanish led to a configuration of Indians as Muslims. Throughout the sixteenth century, and into the seventeenth century and eighteenth century, ideas about racial di√erence were encapsulated through religious di√erence and, in the case of Native Americans and Muslims, also through sexual di√erence. Muslims and Native Americans were classified as racially other—that is, barbaric, depraved, immoral, and sexually deviant. The stereotype of the Muslim, as presented in literary and theological documents, imagined the ”Turk” as ”cruel, tyrannical, deviant, and deceiving” and the ”Moor” as ”sexually overdriven and emotionally uncontrollable, vengeful, and religiously superstitious” (Matar 1999, 13). This creation of the figure of the Muslim as the Christian other became part of the ideological justification of holy war and imperial expansion. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 187 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

In his useful little book, Racism: A Short History, George Fredrickson suggests that racism necessarily requires the presumption of inequality or inferiority on the part of those whose assumed difference is deemed intrinsic or unchangeable. But does it? — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 64 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Religion served as the primary vehicle for racial difference in early modern Europe — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in…, 187; The Hamitic curse mythology legitimized racial hierarchy in European thought — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 673; Spain’s blood purity laws constitute an early biological racism — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 728 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Spain’s blood purity laws constitute an early biological racism #complicates (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 728
• Religion served as the primary vehicle for racial difference in early modern Europe #qualifies (0.75) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 187
• Racism may not require presuming intrinsic inferiority of the other #expands (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 64
• The Hamitic curse mythology legitimized racial hierarchy in European thought #exemplifies (0.72) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 673
• Sixteenth-century nurture itself could be deemed racial contamination #complicates (0.72) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 231