Modern racism against Muslims required European military supremacy over Muslim empires
Evidence
The book begins in the early modern era in Spain, when bodily or somatic notions of race were developed. Chapter 1 discusses how imperial Spain adopted blood purity laws that cast Jews and Muslims as permanent outsiders who could not be assimilated through earlier logics of Christian universalism. Race and racism in this period had some of the markers of modern racism, but because it was still conceived in a religious idiom and because Muslims or, to be precise, Muslim converts known as moriscos, occupied a liminal space between inferiority and superiority, I call this protoracism. While Spain was a dominant power in the era of mercantile imperialism, the Ottomans and various other Muslim empires were significant forces on the global stage. European powers in the early modern era were unable to challenge or defeat them. Thus, the Turks were seen as equal to if not superior to Europeans in countries like Britain. In this context, it was not possible to see Muslims as uniformly inferior, a hallmark of modern racism. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 82
Categorization
- XREF: Directly relevant to testing whether the racialization loop requires a specific power distribution or is content-agnostic. — connects to: Modern racism required first defeating rival Muslim empires; Orientalist racial hierarchy of Muslims required European military superiority to arise — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 122; Modern anti-Muslim racism required both rights-based societies and imperial domination — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 193 (+5 more)
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 82
Broader Connections
- Modern racism required first defeating rival Muslim empires
#corroborates(0.98) - European superiority over Muslim empires enabled racial notions of Muslim inferiority
#corroborates(0.97) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1826 - Orientalist racial hierarchy of Muslims required European military superiority to arise
#corroborates(0.95) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 122 - Modern anti-Muslim racism required both rights-based societies and imperial domination
#qualifies(0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 193 - Full anti-Muslim racism required both Enlightenment freedom ideology and European military dominance
#qualifies(0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 729 - Modern anti-Muslim racism required both colonial domination and liberal societies professing equality
#qualifies(0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 96 - Full-blown anti-Muslim racism required free-society ideology plus military dominance
#qualifies(0.78) - Anti-Muslim racism has no unbroken historical continuity from medieval to modern forms
#qualifies(0.75)