Racial ideology about Muslims was transferred onto enslaved Africans.

Evidence

As Islam and Muslims were eclipsed in European politics in the scramble of competing imperialisms, slavery took over the space they left open. Early on, black Africans were placed into a logic that paired them with Moors, Indians, and Jews. In the context of the American colonies, and then of the formation of the United States, religion was not far from the construction of the logic of nation and race. Racialized ideas about Muslims were transferred to African slaves to justify enslavement via claims of benevolent domination (e.g., the Hamitic hypothesis, which re-emerged in nineteenth-century and twentiethcentury narratives of black Muslims in the U.S.) and, indeed, the forced migration of African Muslims to the Americas. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 190 (#expands, via linked claim)

Through law, American racism manufactured these existential binaries and then fluidly tweaked them in order to serve shifting interests. These binaries drove blanket characterizations of deeply complex and heterogeneous populations. Viewing Muslim peoples as an unbending monolith is hardly a modern invention, nor is it a hardened characterization christened after the War on Terror, the latest emanation of American racial and racist empire. Rather, it is a primary device from the American racial toolkit, used against a broad host of peoples and the first Muslim populations—enslaved Africans—whose faith was stripped from them along with their humanity. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 223 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Europeans saw enslaved African Muslims as semicivilized aids for Christianizing other Africans; Enslaved African Muslims preserved Islam for generations until Protestant abolitionism absorbed them.; Chamberlain argued Jews were a mongrel race due to African mixing in Alexandria (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Anti-Muslim racial templates were transferred to justify African slavery #expands (0.97) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 190
• American racism against Muslims extends back to enslaved Africans #expands (0.92) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 223