Islam was not associated with whiteness, blocking Muslim naturalization

Evidence

What this history reveals is that Muslims had difficulties becoming naturalized citizens because Islam was not associated with whiteness (Gualtieri 2009). For some Arabs, such as Syrians, their Christian identity and lighter skin tones afforded them certain key privileges that South Asians—who had darker complexions and were typically either Hindu or Muslim—were unable to access. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 89

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core answer to the reader’s question of how a faith gets racialized: Islam itself is treated as a non-white religious category separate from phenotype.
• XREF: Anchors the reader’s Global Racial Enemy slot replacement — shows the legal genealogy of treating Islam as a racial mark. — connects to: Chinese exclusion in the 1880s supplied no precedent for European-immligrant restriction — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 996; Islamic identity rendered immigrants non-white in citizenship cases regardless of legal test — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 154; The 1924 Asiatic Barred Zone placed nearly all Muslims outside admissible whiteness (+4 more)
• SEED: Article angle: how American courts historically treated monotheisms (Christianity, Judaism) as geographically tied to whiteness while Islam was not — a religious geography of citizenship.