Europeans first encountered Africans chiefly as Muslim soldiers, fusing racial and religious identity

Evidence

Critical race theorists call this process “racialization,” and contend that “races are not biologically differentiated groupings but rather social constructions.” Races, and racial categories, therefore, are fluid and dynamic constructs that are shaped and reshaped in line with political, economic, and cultural interests. In line with this process of racialization, Orientalism (re)made “Muslim” into a race. This conversion of Muslim identity from a religion into a race changed a diverse population represented in every corner of the globe to the narrow form of the Arab, or as stated by Islamophobia scholar Erik Love, anybody “who looks Middle Eastern.” — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 161 (#expands, via linked claim)

The nineteenth-century armies of imperialist Europe continued the tradition of relying on substantial recruitment among ethnic minorities, “riff-raff,” outcasts, aliens and the peasantry: to the million serfs of the Russian army were added the Asiatic Bashkirs and Kalmucks, Ingush and Ossietin; the Corsicans and Bretons of the French army were augmented by the Legion founded on Kabyle swordsmen, Swiss and other European mercenaries, but by mid-century the army itself had come to be dominated by West Africans; in the Philippines, the Spanish army was native, as was the Dutch army of the East Indies. In India, the East India Company and the Bengal army (1842) employed between them upward of 70,000 natives in their sepoy regiments. In Britain itself, in 1832, the Irish accounted for 42 percent of the army. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1520 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Pieds noirs faced Europe while Muslim Algerians faced inland Africa; French colonial justice policy tried to stop Islam’s spread by grouping Africans by ethnicity; Imperial European armies recruited heavily from ethnic minorities and colonized peoples — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1520 (+4 more)

Related

• Imperial European armies recruited heavily from ethnic minorities and colonized peoples (similarity 0.87)
• Europe’s first racialized view of Africans came through Islam’s armies (similarity 0.86)
• The War of the South recruited soldiers across racial lines on both sides (similarity 0.82)
• The French Empire treated colonized peoples as disposable military manpower for the nation (similarity 0.82)
• Orientalism converted Muslim identity from a religion into a race. (similarity 0.81)
• For early modern Europeans Islam functioned as a civilizing intermediary toward Christianizing Africans (similarity 0.80)
• Orientalist scholarship conflates Muslims and Jews into one racial type (similarity 0.80)
• Europeans once considered the Ottomans ethnically European (similarity 0.78)
• Racialization of Muslims is historically discontinuous and empire-contingent. (similarity 0.78)
• Black soldiers from across empires discovered shared oppression in London clubs (similarity 0.78)
• Capitalist imperialism’s denial of equality to colonized peoples produced Muslim racialization (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Orientalism converted Muslim identity from a religion into a race. #expands (0.40) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 161
• Imperial European armies recruited heavily from ethnic minorities and colonized peoples #corroborates (0.25) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1520