Muslim identity was legally treated as proof of non-whiteness

Evidence

When an immigration judge ruled in 1942 that the Yemeni Ahmed Hassan—perhaps the first Arab Muslim to face the court (the others had been Arab Christians)—could not petition for citizenship, the community faced a setback. “Arabs are not white persons within the meaning of the [Immigration] Act,” wrote Judge Arthur Tuttle, who heard Hassan’s petition, citing Hassan’s Muslim background as proof of his racial difference. “Apart from the dark skin of the Arabs,” he explained, “it is well known that they are a part of the Mohammedan world and that a wide gulf separates their culture from that of the predominately [sic] Christian peoples of Europe.” — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 979

Categorization

• SHARE: Send to anyone working on legal construction of race — the 1942 Tuttle ruling is a clean case where religion became racial evidence.
• XREF: Directly echoes The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s theme that Muslim identity marks the protagonist as alien. — connects to: Islamic identity rendered immigrants non-white in citizenship cases regardless of legal test — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 154; Islamic identity exceeded skin color in rendering Arabs non-white for citizenship; People who seem white can be raced non-white on the basis of Islam alone. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 252 (+7 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies how ‘race’ was legally operationalized through religion and culture, not just skin color.