Early modern moriscos held a liminal racial-religious status

Evidence

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 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Early modern Spain and Portugal pioneered hereditary notions of bodily racial difference. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 114; Religion served as the primary vehicle for racial difference in early modern Europe — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in…, 187; Moriscos’ liminal status shows Ottoman power blocked full European racism (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Religion served as the primary vehicle for racial difference in early modern Europe #corroborates (0.80) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 187
• Powerful Muslim empires prevented Europeans from fully racializing moriscos as inferior #qualifies (0.80)
• Baptized Moriscos remained culturally and religiously attached to Islam #expands (0.78)
• Moriscos’ liminal status shows Ottoman power blocked full European racism #qualifies (0.75)
• Religion served as the lens for early racial difference in the New World #corroborates (0.70)