Muslim identity in America is socially constructed from legacies of slavery and Orientalism

Evidence

Two international factors interact with two domestic factors to produce this outcome. American imperial designs and Orientalism interact with coercive assimilationism of immigrants and White Protestant supremacy. The interplay of these four factors produce five typologies of the Racial Muslim: (1) Religious Dissident, (2) Religious, (3) Secular Dissident, (4) Secular, and (5) Former Muslim. The typology partially explains the interplay between the state’s prioritization of certain Muslims in national security enforcement, on the one hand, and individual identity performances by Muslims seeking to avoid the material and dignitary harms arising from racialization, on the other. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 80 (#expands, via linked claim)

Muslims arrived in the United States not only by immigrating from more than one hundred different countries, many of which were targets of American imperial designs, but also on ships carrying enslaved Africans beginning in the seventeenth century. Islam’s association with categorically condemned heathens and savages from Africa merged with the importation of European Orientalism whose nemesis was the Mahometan Turk to produce a complex and fluid process of racialization. As a result, Muslim identity is socially constructed to merge immigrants and non-immigrants of various skin colors, ancestries, and phenotypes into an essentialized identity: the foreign, illiberal, and inherently violent Racial Muslim. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 481 (#expands, via linked claim)

Interestingly, there is a great deal of racial differentiation: 41 percent of Muslims identify as white (includes Arabs, Middle Easterners, and Iranians), 20 percent as black, 28 percent as Asian (includes South Asians), 8 percent as Latinx, and 3 percent as mixed race (Pew Research Center 2017). — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 108 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Islam’s racialization dates to American slavery, not modern immigration debates — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 148; American popular perception linked Islam to Black identity and decolonial violence until recent decades — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 199; Islam functions as a full race in American and European hierarchies — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 527 (+19 more)

Broader Connections

• American imperialism, Orientalism, coercive assimilation, and White supremacy jointly produce racialized Muslim categories #expands (0.94) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 80
• American Muslim identity merges slavery-era and immigrant origins into one racialized type #expands (0.92) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 481
• American Muslims are racially diverse and often identify as white or Asian #complicates (0.80) — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 108