Post-emancipation federal silence replaced the antebellum friendly-foreigner image of Muslim Americans

Evidence

When slavery ended in 1865, however, the image of the Muslim as the friendly foreigner disappeared. With the exception of an occasional federal judicial decision regarding the ability of Muslims to integrate into American culture and the banning of polygamists from entering the country in 1891, the federal government seems to have had little to say about its domestic Muslim populations, most of whom were Gilded Age immigrants from the Ottoman Empire. Important legal cases questioning the whiteness and assimilability of Muslim immigrants arose in the period, but there was little guidance from the executive or legislative branches regarding the relatively small numbers of Muslims who lived in the United States. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 350

Categorization

• XREF: The disappearance of the friendly Muslim with slavery’s end shows the ‘friendly’ image was instrumental—projection serves the fearer’s interests, not the Muslim’s—resonating with the book’s psychological core. — connects to: Antebellum American views of Muslims shifted with historical circumstances