Islam was not formally criminalized in colonial America

Evidence

However, he provides no evidence that Islam was criminalized in colonial America. While his overall point that black Muslim slaves were reduced to property and therefore denied the right to practice their religion and even made to convert to Christianity is indeed accurate, it is not clear that religion was criminalized through any specific laws or acts. At least, I have not found legal scholarship to suggest that there were processes at work that we today understand as the “securitization of Islam” or the criminalization of Islam back in the colonial and antebellum era. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 921

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what precisely did the colonial denial of black Muslim religious practice consist of, if not statutory ‘criminalization’? Kumar names the gap but doesn’t fill it — evidence of conversion-by-force and property-status rules versus formal anti-Islam laws.
• XREF: This directly complicates Beydoun’s claim (American Islamophobia) which is presumably already in the vault cluster — Kumar pushes back on his criminalization-of-Islam-in-colonial-America framing. — connects to: Muslim-American history predates the American republic — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 974
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to the reader’s Islamophobia cluster: adds a sharp correction to the ‘Islam was criminalized in colonial America’ claim — distinguishes de facto religious denial of slaves from statutory securitization.

Broader Connections

• Muslim-American history predates the American republic #expands (0.75) — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 974