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Modern anti-Muslim racism required both rights-based societies and imperial domination

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tagsja-picks, xref, deepthinking, question, causal_relationships, trade, corroborated, category/causal-relationships
aliases@kumar_islamophobia_2012, loc. 193

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Modern anti-Muslim racism required both rights-based societies and imperial domination

Evidence

Building on these scholars, I offer that even while Muslims were viewed in hostile ways in previous centuries, two further ingredients were needed—societies based on equal rights and the political economic domination of Muslim lands in the era of capitalist imperialism—for an ideology of racial alterity and inferiority to develop. The ability to colonize Muslim lands and to deny rights to the colonized created the conditions for modern anti-Muslim racism. No doubt, as Wolfe argues, earlier tropes were drawn upon in this project of racialization. However, the necessary and sufficient conditions for the production of Muslims as a race in its modern form were present only in the nineteenth century in the era of capitalist modernity. To be sure, the racialization of Muslims was unstable and variable and took different forms at various moments in time. Even at a particular historical conjuncture, Orientalism was mediated in different ways in various spheres from politics to culture. This is because the “West” is not a monolith, there is therefore no singular production of those racialized by empire; anti-racism is also part of the mix. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 193

European xenophobic traditions such as Judeophobia, Islamophobia or Negrophobia are considerably older than race. Though most if not all of its ingredients can be found in earlier classifications, race itself is a distinctive configuration of ideological elements that we do not find configured in this way before the late eighteenth century, but that we do find so configured, and mutually reinforcing, from that time on. 
 I offer that even while Muslims were viewed in hostile ways in previous centuries, two further ingredients were needed—societies based on equal rights and the political economic domination of Muslim lands in the era of capitalist imperialism—for an ideology of racial alterity and inferiority to develop. The ability to colonize Muslim lands and to deny rights to the colonized created the conditions for modern anti-Muslim racism. 
 However, the necessary and sufficient conditions for the production of Muslims as a race in its modern form were present only in the nineteenth century in the era of capitalist modernity. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 204

Categorization

  • XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in institutional structures creating social outcomes, parallel to the law merchant work. — connects to: Modern racism against Muslims required European military supremacy over Muslim empires — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of
, 82; Modern anti-Muslim racism required both colonial domination and liberal societies professing equality — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of
, 96; US anti-Muslim racism emerged only with America’s imperial power in the Middle East (+11 more)
  • DEEPTHINKING: The dual-conditions argument for when Muslims became a race is dense and paradigm-shifting - resists one-sentence summary.
  • QUESTION: If these two specific conditions are ‘necessary and sufficient,’ what does the Soviet case of anti-Muslim treatment imply—does it falsify the claim or demand a different mechanism?
  • corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of
, 193; Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of
, 204

Broader Connections

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