Orientalist scholarship conflates Muslims and Jews into one racial type

Evidence

In sum, the Orientalist view of the East as it emerged in the nineteenth century was based on a racial and civilizational vilification of Muslims. This is not, however, to suggest that Orientalist scholarship existed or was used in colonial contexts without contradiction. There were Orientalists who rejected notions of racial superiority; at the same time, however, they agreed that race was a useful category of analysis. There were those who admired Islam and others who disparaged it; some actively aided the colonial mission while others saw themselves as producing objective knowledge. Orientalist ideas were used differently in various contexts. Put simply, the relationship between Orientalist thought and the project of empire-building is complex. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 132 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Critical race theorists call this process “racialization,” and contend that “races are not biologically differentiated groupings but rather social constructions.” Races, and racial categories, therefore, are fluid and dynamic constructs that are shaped and reshaped in line with political, economic, and cultural interests. In line with this process of racialization, Orientalism (re)made “Muslim” into a race. This conversion of Muslim identity from a religion into a race changed a diverse population represented in every corner of the globe to the narrow form of the Arab, or as stated by Islamophobia scholar Erik Love, anybody “who looks Middle Eastern.” — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 161 (#expands, via linked claim)

Based on a binary that made Europe the antithesis of the “Orient” and “Orient” synonymous with the “Muslim world,” Orientalism spawned the corollary view that Muslims were a monolithic racial or ethnic bloc, imagined in the narrow form of an Arab or Middle Eastern. — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 161 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Both Jews and Muslims have been racialized by majority populations in modern Europe. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 100; Orientalist Muslim dehumanization legitimizes colonial and imperial adventures — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 44; The vilification of Jews and Muslims is one continuous historical process (+14 more)

Related

• Orientalism converted Muslim identity from a religion into a race. (similarity 0.93)
• Orientalist scholarship varied internally but shared the racial category (similarity 0.92)
• Orientalism imagined Muslims as a monolithic Arab or Middle Eastern racial bloc. (similarity 0.92)
• Orientalist truth about racial difference was radical and ineradicable (similarity 0.92)
• Orientalist doctrine attributes untruthfulness to a racialized Oriental mind (similarity 0.90)
• Orientalist dissenters defended Islam’s internal diversity against essentializing stereotypes (similarity 0.90)
• Racial homogeneity assumptions enabled sweeping claims about the ‘Muslim mind’ (similarity 0.88)
• Islamic Orientalism resisted internal critique while cognate fields engaged it. (similarity 0.88)
• Orientalism was internally divided rather than a monolithic colonial tool (similarity 0.88)
• Orientalist civilizational essentialism is a pillar of race making (similarity 0.87)
• The Middle East itself is a product of Orientalist construction. (similarity 0.87)
• Islamic culture seemed monolithically tyrannical to Southey (similarity 0.86)
• Colonial-era science transformed Muslims into a fixed racialized type (similarity 0.86)
• Even anti-racist Orientalists held fixed cultural essences for the racialized (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalist scholarship was internally diverse and historically contingent, not monolithic (similarity 0.86)

Broader Connections

• Orientalist scholarship varied internally but shared the racial category #corroborates (0.90) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 132
• Orientalism converted Muslim identity from a religion into a race. #expands (0.85) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 161
• Orientalism imagined Muslims as a monolithic Arab or Middle Eastern racial bloc. #exemplifies (0.80) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 161
• Religious identity racializes Arab and South Asian Muslims along shared lines #corroborates (0.70)
• Orientalist civilizational essentialism is a pillar of race making #expands (0.70) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1277
• Racial homogeneity assumptions enabled sweeping claims about the ‘Muslim mind’ #corroborates (0.60) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 126
• Cultural practices become racialized when they are essentialized as innate to Muslims #expands (0.55) — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 274