Geopolitical and economic utility, not religion, drove discrimination against Muslims

Evidence

The experience of Muslims in imperial Spain was both similar to and different from that of Jews. Unlike Jews, Muslims were not immediately forced to convert in 1492 or face expulsion. Indeed it was not until 1500 that they faced the same fate. A majority of Muslims were agricultural workers or skilled artisans in the textile and silk industries and as such were not in direct competition with the Old Christians who had aggressively pushed the blood purity laws. The monarchy as well as feudal lords considered these Muslims to be a useful labor force and a source of fiscal revenue. … Their power was tied to their relationships with various Muslim kingdoms in the Mediterranean and Near East. Iberian elites believed that the Moors were the domestic representatives of powerful Muslim Mediterranean kingdoms (as well as the Ottoman Empire) and therefore had to accord these heretics different treatment from that of the Jews who lacked this kind of protection. Thus, geopolitical factors played a role in the differential treatment of Jews and Muslims. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 120

Categorization

• XREF: Nuances the vault cluster claim: the reader’s existing sources may treat Muslims and Jews as uniformly targeted; Kumar shows differential treatment flowed from labor utility and Muslim external-power protection. Complicates any flattened ‘inassimilable other’ narrative. — connects to: Geopolitical leverage and economic value delayed Muslim persecution in Spain. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 120; Muslims’ perceived inferiority in Spain tracked the geopolitical power of Muslim states; Multiple intersecting macro factors, not single causes, produce systematic anti-Muslim discrimination — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 74 (+2 more)
• SEED: Angle: the ‘domestic representative of a foreign power’ logic used against Iberian Moors is nearly identical to the ‘fifth column’ framing of post-9/11 US Muslims — an essay tracing this continuity would be strong.

Broader Connections

• Structural utility, not ignorance, sustains Muslim racialization. #corroborates (0.80)
• Multiple intersecting macro factors, not single causes, produce systematic anti-Muslim discrimination #qualifies (0.78) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 74