Islam comes to function as a race through racecraft that erases internal ethnic differences

Evidence

This article began with a question regarding whether a religion can become a race over time and through a process of resignification. In the specific context of Europe and the United States, it is not only possible, but Islam has, in fact, come to operate as a race. If we start with the assumption, as discussed in Part I, that race is not real, is not a fact, that there is no biological basis for it as most critical race scholars have come to understand, then race is a fiction and a specter that only appears to exist, but is a product of racism. The ideology of racism uses racecraft— a set of tools and practices—to justify the treatment of a group of people as different and subordinated based on some shared difference. The difference is given meaning by racism. It does not exist prior to racism. For Africans brought to the United States, their differences as Wolof, Fulani, Mandinka, Yoruba, Fon, as so on were erased in a process that dehumanized and homogenized them first into slaves and then “Black” so that their mistreatment based on shared African ancestry could be justified. For the Islamicized/Muslims, ethnic differences are similarly being erased in a process that renders the connection to Islam the most meaningful marker of difference, a difference from non-Muslims and a difference from whiteness. In other words, the connection to Islam is the means by which people come to be Islamicized into a race. While historically, racing Muslims depended on their already existing racial identity, as the War on Terror has progressed, Muslim-ness has become less tightly anchored to color or ethnicity and more entwined with markers of Islam which incorporate these but does not require them. As such, white or white-passing individuals who might evade racial regulation become subject to it as soon as they are Islamicized, regardless of whether they believe in Islam as a religion or not. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 516

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the core definitional payoff of the whole argument: Muslim-ness has become detached from color/ethnicity and anchored to markers of Islam, the mechanism by which a religion becomes a race.
• XREF: This is the culminative statement of her racecraft thesis to compare directly against Aziz’s ‘Racial Muslim’ historical argument in The Racial Muslim. — connects to: Islam has functionally become a race in law within the last twenty years — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 34; Islamophobia has coalesced Muslims into a distinct racial group and Islam into a race. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 61; Islam-as-race emerges only after Muslims coalesce as a racial group — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 110 (+17 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The synthetic claim that white/white-passing people become racially regulated by Islamization alone — detachment of race from phenotype — is the sharpest, most paradigm-shifting version of the book’s thesis.
• QUESTION: Worth investigating whether this ‘noetic’ racialization by belief/marker rather than phenotype is unique to Islam-as-race or has historical parallels (e.g. Jewishness, Irishness).
• recurring: this claim recurs 3 times within its source

Broader Connections

• Orientalism converted Muslim identity from a religion into a race. #corroborates (0.95) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 161
• Islam functions as a full race in American and European hierarchies #corroborates (0.95) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 527
• Islam has become a race despite scholars’ hesitation to name it so #corroborates (0.90)
• Islam as a monolith is a nominal fiction masking internal diversity #corroborates (0.90)
• Muslims can evade racialization by concealing religious difference #contradicts (0.85)
• Muslims are racialized as a social group rather than a religious one #corroborates (0.85)