Nineteenth-century racists read Islamic sectarian splits as racial revolts

Evidence

Semitic peoples were by their nature servile before God. However it was quietism rather than Islam as such that was the bane of Asia. He argued that Shi‘ism, as it developed from the eighth century onwards, was a kind of revolt of the Aryan Persians against Semitic Islam. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 305

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the chapter’s running account of Renan’s Semitic-spirit doctrine and to later readings of Shi’ism; also parallels the racialized religious historiography discussed later in the book.

Related

• Nineteenth-century Europeans racialized Shi’ism as Aryan resurgence against Semitic Islam (similarity 0.83)
• Nineteenth-century racial theorist Renan attributed Islamic science to Aryans, not Arabs. (similarity 0.78)