Forced underground, Spanish Islam diverged from orthodox Islam through the distortions of clandestinity.

Evidence

So it came about that from the mid-1520s onward all the Muslims of Spain, without exception, whatever their antecedents, had been subjected to obligatory if perfunctory conversion. Their religious status was now everywhere the same. In the eyes of the Spanish state and of the Christian church they were all, at least nominally, Christians. It was certainly not the case, however, that they had been reduced to uniformity, nor was the treatment accorded to them by their Christian rulers uniform. In addition, from the middle of the sixteenth century onward, Islam in Spain as an underground religion was beginning to develop some characteristics that marked it off from orthodox Islam as it existed and exists elsewhere in the world, in the main because of the distorting effects of the enforced retreat of this essentially public religion into clandestinity. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 507

Categorization

• DEFINE: Key concept: a public religion driven underground develops distinctive traits — useful framing for the whole chapter’s argument about crypto-Islam.
• XREF: Echoes clandestine religious practice in other contexts — early Christians in Rome, Jews in converso Spain — as a general phenomenon of underground orthodoxy.