Modern biological racism grew out of earlier religious antipathy toward converts

Evidence

This is illustrated in Modood’s description of antisemitism as ‘a form of religious persecution [which] became, over a long, complicated, evolving but contingent history, not just a form of cultural racism but one with highly systematic biological formulations’. … Centuries before those modern ideas we have come to call ‘racism’ … the move from religious antipathy to racism may perhaps be witnessed in post-Reconquista Spain when Jews and Muslims were forced to convert to Christianity or be expelled. At this stage, the oppression can perhaps be characterised as religious. Soon afterward, converted Jews and Muslims and their offspring began to be suspected of not being true Christian believers, a doctrine developed amongst some Spaniards that this was because their old religion was in their blood. In short, because of their biology, conversion was impossible. — Nasar Meer, Tariq Modood, Refutations of Racism in the ‘Muslim…, 48

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the islamophobia-vs-antisemitism comparison thread and the historical conversion-suspicion pattern, echoing earlier chapters’ treatment of chosen vs ascribed Muslimness. — connects to: Anti-Muslim and antisemitic persecution became racism when conversion was deemed biologically impossible. — Nasar Meer, Tariq Modood, Refutations of Racism in the ‘Muslim…, 49; Bodily notions of inherited difference preceded fully secular modern racism.; Spain’s blood purity laws constitute an early biological racism — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 728
• DEFINE: Illustrates how religious persecution successively became cultural and then biological racism through conversion-suspicion.

Related

• Anti-Muslim and antisemitic persecution became racism when conversion was deemed biologically impossible. (similarity 0.90)
• Bodily notions of inherited difference preceded fully secular modern racism. (similarity 0.82)
• Spain’s blood purity laws constitute an early biological racism (similarity 0.80)
• Religion gets racialized by ascribing inherited biological traits to a faith community (similarity 0.80)
• Spanish persecution of conversos shows race-like ideology existed before modern racism (similarity 0.78)