Nineteenth-century Americans racialized Mormons through the same Orientalist lens they used on Muslims.

Evidence

Referred to as an American Mahomet, Joseph Smith was vilified by Americans as licentious, duplicitous, and conniving. Protestants were especially enraged by Mormon polygamy. The practice confirmed Mormons’ foreignness and susceptibility to despotism. Orientalized depictions of Joseph Smith portrayed him as a sexually depraved despot with a large harem of women held captive under his spell. The multifamily Mormon households were likened to Turkish harems. Like “Mahometans,” Mormon polygamists were described as callous patriarchs who exploited their wives for sex and produced an inferior race of children. Protestants also believed polygamy turned women into slaves and men into brutes. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 327

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the complacency/immodesty piece and to orientalism literature; parallels how the veil got racialized Islamic vs. Judeo-Christian identities in Aziz’s own argument.
• SHARE: Send to anyone interested in religious othering or the history of orientalism in America.