Race analysis better captures anti-Muslim discrimination than religious-discrimination framing

Evidence

It may be asked: why not simply call all of these experiences religious discrimination, without regard to race? As explained previously, race is intimately related to Islam in the United States. To cabin these various discriminations of Muslims and non-Muslims alike into religious discrimination alone misses a great deal. Scholars over the last two decades have noted the racial and racialized discrimination against Muslims and people perceived to be Muslims. The strategies used against these populations cannot be captured by religious discrimination operating in a racial vacuum. In the early immigration cases, for instance, petitioners were not asked to demonstrate their Christianity but to demonstrate their whiteness because of the social, political, and legal racial context of the United States. Islam’s coding as racially non-white is what kept people out. Moreover, as noted above, race is an assemblage of practices, social relations, and ascriptive and prescriptive attributes and beliefs. Different elements come together to mark a raced person; it is not always physical attributes or visible features. Just as Blackness or Latin-ness does not reduce to merely color, Islam-as-race does not reduce to just religion. Rather than trying to force race into religion, race is the more capacious concept and better relays the crux of the matter in the context of America and Europe. Most importantly, it is not primarily a religious hierarchy that is being maintained and policed, —though religion factors into it—but a racial one. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 317

Categorization

• XREF: This is the direct contrast point for Aziz’s Racial Muslim thesis: she argues race is more capacious than religion here, and grounds the discrimination in a racial rather than religious hierarchy — the key comparative claim the reader is hunting for. — connects to: Islamophobia is an ideology justifying racism, not a Hegelian dialectic. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 46; Islam has functionally become a race in law within the last twenty years — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 34; Understanding discrimination against Muslims requires analyzing race and religion together — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 112 (+12 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The closing insistence that what is policed is a racial rather than religious hierarchy — with religion merely ‘factoring in’ — is the load-bearing move that lets a field dominance be enforced on believers and non-believers alike.

Broader Connections

• Understanding discrimination against Muslims requires analyzing race and religion together #corroborates (0.85) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 112
• The term Islamophobia understates the racial and political roots of anti-Muslim bias #corroborates (0.85) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 260
• Anti-Muslim discrimination should be fought through existing anti-racism frameworks #expands (0.82) — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 58
• Separating Islamophobia as ideology from racism undermines anti-racist struggle #corroborates (0.82) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 159
• Mainstream race-equality groups narrowed Islamophobia to mere religious discrimination #corroborates (0.82) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 748
• Anti-Muslim racism is the operationalization of the causal factor Islamophobia #corroborates (0.82) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 133
• Islamophobia framing individualizes prejudice and obscures racial hierarchy #corroborates (0.80)
• Islamophobia operates as entrenched American race politics producing anti-Muslim racism #corroborates (0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 72
• Framing discrimination as individual hate obscures its structural and policy-based causes #expands (0.78) — Evelyn Alsultany, Antisemitism and Islamophobia The…, 34
• Multiple intersecting macro factors, not single causes, produce systematic anti-Muslim discrimination #expands (0.75) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 74