Early U.S. courts racialized Arab Christians as Muslim others to deny citizenship

Evidence

In Ex Parte Shahid (1913), Faras Shahid, an Arab Christian, was cast as polygamous, conflating Arab practice with Islamic practice and thus denying him the right to naturalization. In re Dow (1914) took the relationship between race and geography further. Dow, a Syrian, claimed to be of the Semitic race (thereby distancing himself from Islam), and thus ”white,” based on a precedent that included European Jews in that category. The court, however, ruled that Dow did not appear to be Caucasian or of the Semitic race because ”Caucasian” translated as having a European origin, and Syrian was defined, in an ethnological and geographic sense, as ”Asiatic,” ”whether [a person was] Chinese, Japanese, Hindoo, Parsee, Persian, Mongol, Malay, or Syrian” (Moore 1995, 53). Thus, Syrians, who were regarded as a racial group from West Asia, were properly ”Asiatic” and excluded from naturalization. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 206 (#expands, via linked claim)

For example, until 1944, American courts denied citizenship to those perceived or feared to be Muslim or of Muslim ancestry, some of whom were Christians. — Goleen Samari, Islamophobia and Public Health in the…, 11 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Invoking the same unfit for self-government tropes used against Jewish and Catholic immigrants, government lawyers emphasized the cultural inferiority and despotism of the Ottoman Empire from whence Ellis came. The court rejected this reasoning and found the “word ‘White,’ ethnologically speaking, was intended to be applied in its popular sense to denote at least the members of the White or Caucasian race of people.” The court reasoned, “If there be ambiguity and doubt, it is better to resolve that doubt in favor of the Caucasian possessed of the highest qualities which go to make an excellent citizen, as the applicant appears to be, and withal drawn to and well disposed toward the principles and policies of this government.” It was not immaterial that Ellis’s Maronite Christian identity distinguished him from the Mahometan Turks ruling his homeland. … A blow to Syrians’ naturalization efforts came in 1910 when the US Census classified people from the eastern Mediterranean as Asiatics. Christian Syrians were now at risk of being racially equated with non-White Mohammaden Turks, Buddhist Chinese, and Hindu Indians—all racial descriptors based in part on a religious identity. Although skin color, hair texture, and facial features allowed some Syrians to phenotypically pass as White, their legal status as subjects of the Muslim Ottoman Empire deemed them Asians. No longer did being classified as Caucasian suffice to qualify as legally White. Syrians now had to prove they were European. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 540 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Christians and Muslims from the same region received opposite citizenship outcomes; US courts redefined race socially to permanently exclude Asians from whiteness and citizenship — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 966; Courts admitted Arabs to whiteness via cultural contribution discourse, not religion — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 169 (+17 more)

Broader Connections

• Arab Christians were denied US naturalization through conflation with Islamic racial otherness #expands (0.97) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 206
• US courts denied citizenship to Muslims and even Christians presumed Muslim until 1944. #corroborates (0.93) — Goleen Samari, Islamophobia and Public Health in the…, 11
• Early US naturalization law treated Christian Syrians as White. #complicates (0.84) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 540