Muslims were told anti-Muslim racism cannot exist because Muslims are not a race

Evidence

Western European Muslims have found these scholarly hegemonies an especially galling obstacle to getting academia and fellow citizens to understand the exclusionary discourses and misrecognitions that Muslims are subject to. Following the assertive Muslim agency triggered off by the Satanic Verses affair and other Muslim controversies, as Muslims responded to such hostilities and articulated their misrecognition, they were constantly told, especially in Britain, that there is no such thing as anti-Muslim racism because Muslims are a religious group and not a race. Hence Muslims could legitimately ask for toleration and religious pluralism but not for inclusion in anti-racist egalitarian analyses and initiatives. — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 583

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives the historical-political origin of the central definitional dispute this reader is tracking — why ‘racism’ was initially denied to Muslims as a religious group, directly framing the anti-Muslim-racism turn.
• XREF: This is the load-bearing origin story for the entire definitional debate the reader is mapping — the religious-group-not-race objection is precisely what Runnymede 2017 and the UN racism definition were built to overturn, against which Halliday’s ‘anti-Muslimism’ partially conceded. — connects to: Anti-Muslim bias is denied legitimacy by framing Muslimness as voluntarily chosen. — Nasar Meer, Tariq Modood, Refutations of Racism in the ‘Muslim…, 8; Anti-Muslim discrimination should be fought through existing anti-racism frameworks — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 58; New racist rhetoric lets far-right groups deny racism while demarcating Muslims — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 464 (+13 more)

Related

• Islamophobia is best understood and countered as a form of anti-Muslim racism. (similarity 0.88)
• Separating Islamophobia as ideology from racism undermines anti-racist struggle (similarity 0.88)
• Racism scholarship’s biologistic paradigms long excluded anti-Muslim discrimination as unclassifiable (similarity 0.88)
• The Runnymede Trust defines Islamophobia as a form of racism against Muslims (similarity 0.87)
• Anti-Muslim discrimination should be fought through existing anti-racism frameworks (similarity 0.87)
• Anti-racist movements often fail to see anti-Muslim bigotry as racism (similarity 0.86)
• The Runnymede report classed Islamophobia as racism without defining it as racism (similarity 0.86)
• Anti-racist orgs once treated religion as a separate axis from race. (similarity 0.86)
• Mainstream race-equality groups narrowed Islamophobia to mere religious discrimination (similarity 0.86)
• Islamophobia is defined as anti-Muslim racism, not merely fear or dislike (similarity 0.85)
• Anti-racist organizations historically avoided treating religion as within their remit (similarity 0.85)
• Islamophobia as a term originally means unfounded hostility toward Islam, not structural racism. (similarity 0.85)
• New racist rhetoric lets far-right groups deny racism while demarcating Muslims (similarity 0.85)
• Mainstream race-equality bodies resisted framing Islamophobia as a racial issue (similarity 0.85)
• Mainstream anti-Islamophobia defense framed bias as cultural misunderstanding, not racism (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• New racist rhetoric lets far-right groups deny racism while demarcating Muslims #expands (0.85) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 464
• Islamophobia is defined as anti-Muslim racism, not merely fear or dislike #contradicts (0.85) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 48
• Racism has empirical grounding that Islamophobia still lacks #corroborates (0.85) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 789
• Racism scholarship’s biologistic paradigms long excluded anti-Muslim discrimination as unclassifiable #exemplifies (0.82) — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 588
• Separating Islamophobia as ideology from racism undermines anti-racist struggle #expands (0.80) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 159
• Mainstream race-equality bodies resisted framing Islamophobia as a racial issue #corroborates (0.80) — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 753
• The Runnymede report classed Islamophobia as racism without defining it as racism #exemplifies (0.80) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 264