Muslim identity gets racialized through names and clothing, not only skin tone

Evidence

Because there are very few countering representations of Muslims as normal, law-abiding, patriotic American citizens, the dominant narrative of Muslims as terrorists, misogynists, and sexual predators who are antifeminist and anti-American is definitive. These cultural practices are seen as essentialized, inherent characteristics of Muslim bodies. For many Muslims, these labels are applied when they are identified as Muslim through visual clues like skin tone and clothing or nonvisual clues like having a Muslim name. Religious clothing that has acquired racial meaning racializes bodies in a similar way to skin tone. The hijab signifies foreignness and provokes the assumption that those who wear these symbols are “others” who are not American and not white. The hijab symbolizes a threat to Western feminist ideals and is associated with the forced submission of Muslim women to Muslim men (Razack 2008). But for Muslim men and women who do not wear religious signifiers, their Muslim names also racialize them even if they are phenotypically white. Therefore, it is important to examine all the ways that racialization occurs, particular those that are not inspired by phenotypes. Furthermore, we must begin to examine gendered forms of racialization rather than relying on the notion that every body is racialized equally and uniformly. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 70

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definitional move: racialization extends beyond phenotype to cultural signifiers — the hijab and Muslim names racialize bodies like skin tone.
• XREF: Directly supports the guiding question of how a faith gets racialized; connects to Beydoun’s ‘Muslim Ban’ racialization argument and Rana’s work. — connects to: Islamic identity exceeded skin color in rendering Arabs non-white for citizenship; Islam has become a race despite scholars’ hesitation to name it so; The moment of being mistaken for Muslim is a direct lesson in racialization’s power (+2 more)