Muslims were doubly erased as either distant inferiors or militant Black Americans

Evidence

Until national origin quotas were lifted in 1965, Muslims were treated as either inferior foreigners in lands far away or militant African Americans. The few Muslim immigrants from the Ottoman Empire were largely invisible, numbering in the mere tens of thousands, at a time when more than ten million Jews and Catholics were emigrating from Eastern and Southern Europe. Magazines such as National Geographic and Harper’s depicted Arabs and Turks as an exotic people lagging in modernity and cultural sophistication. American artists such as Miner Kilbourne Kellogg and Edward Troye painted Middle Eastern vistas populated by primitive Bedouins and exotic, despotic peoples. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 522

Categorization

• XREF: The double erasure — Orientals abroad or militants at home — parallels how other minoritized groups get defined only in relation to dominant categories. — connects to: Huntington’s clash thesis erases power asymmetries among Muslims and fuels racism. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 241