Muslims get racialized via projected religious ancestry regardless of self-understanding

Evidence

Racialization constitutes a group of people in homogenizing and essentialising terms regardless of their own self-understanding. Such a process underpins the contemporary racialization of Muslims. Gotanda (2011, 188) observes that the ‘power of racialization is that the “Muslim terrorist” is imposed upon groups regardless of their subjective wishes’. Racialization, Gotanda notes, transform a person of a certain religion or nationality to a person of a certain ancestry by projecting a common descent. For Muslims, Gotanda suggests, the ‘ancestral link is not through Africa and slavery as for African Americans or through the national homeland as for Asian Americans but through religion – the faith of the ancestral homeland’. (ibid.) Eventually, a racial category emerges (e.g. ‘the Muslim’) that flattens and erases internal diversity and differences based on a projection of a shared descent to which racial meanings are attached. — Mareike Riedel, Islamophobia, Racial Discrimination…, 64

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The mechanism where racialization attacks through religion-as-ancestry — imposing a category precisely when and because self-identity differs — is a dense, generative insight.
• XREF: Reinforces the reading purpose: the self-identification requirement fails precisely because racialization operates independently of self-view. — connects to: Muslims are racialized as a social group rather than a religious one; Muslims can evade racialization by concealing religious difference; Muslims were racialized through cultural signifiers rather than phenotype alone — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in…, 106 (+19 more)

Related

• The racialized Muslim category swept in non-Muslims who merely look Muslim (similarity 0.89)
• People who seem white can be raced non-white on the basis of Islam alone. (similarity 0.87)
• Islam-as-race emerges only after Muslims coalesce as a racial group (similarity 0.87)
• Sustained connection to Islam, not geography or phenotype, determines racial inclusion as Muslim. (similarity 0.87)
• Islam has become a race despite scholars’ hesitation to name it so (similarity 0.86)
• The racialized Muslim category flexibly absorbs perceived Muslims across ethnicity, nationality, and religion. (similarity 0.86)
• Islamophobia has coalesced Muslims into a distinct racial group and Islam into a race. (similarity 0.86)
• Anti-Muslim racism collapses diverse names, skin tones, dress, and nations into one imagined enemy. (similarity 0.86)
• Shared connection to Islam, not color, now anchors Muslim racialization (similarity 0.86)
• The racialized content of the Muslim category persisted across changing labels (similarity 0.86)
• Muslim religious identity becomes a racial category through surveillance. (similarity 0.86)
• Islam-as-race is a construct independent of actual religious practice. (similarity 0.86)
• Islam comes to function as a race through racecraft that erases internal ethnic differences (similarity 0.85)
• Religious identity can become racialized by imputing biological and cultural inferiority (similarity 0.85)
• Religious identity racializes Arab and South Asian Muslims along shared lines (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• Muslims are racialized as a social group rather than a religious one #corroborates (0.90)
• Conversion does not erase racialized Muslim identity #corroborates (0.85)
• Muslims were racialized through cultural signifiers rather than phenotype alone #expands (0.80) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 106
• Religious beliefs are read as biological traits marking Muslims as racially inferior #expands (0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 131
• Converting to Islam causes white people to be reracialized as non-white #expands (0.80) — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 89
• Religious identity racializes Arab and South Asian Muslims along shared lines #expands (0.78)
• The racialized content of the Muslim category persisted across changing labels #corroborates (0.78) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 163
• Surveillance justified by religious identity constitutes racialization of Muslims #expands (0.78)
• Studying non-Arab converts reveals how Islam is racialized apart from ethnicity #expands (0.75) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 843
• Muslims move down the racial hierarchy rather than becoming a new race #expands (0.75)
• The racialized Muslim category is fluid enough to absorb non-Muslims perceived as Muslim #expands (0.75) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 630
• Muslims can evade racialization by concealing religious difference #contradicts (0.72)
• Muslim men can be racialized by ethnicity alone, not only by disclosed religion #expands (0.72)
• Islam-as-race emerges only after Muslims coalesce as a racial group #expands (0.72) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 110
• Cultural difference is racialized into immutable grounds for excluding Muslims from citizenship #expands (0.72)