Racialization of Muslims is historically discontinuous and empire-contingent.

Evidence

For Islam to emerge as a race in the present, the differences between Muslims and Europeans, and the purported Islamic world and Europe, had to be made meaningful and clear as a precursor. This is where the history of Europe and America’s encounter with Islam becomes important. Differentiating Muslims and Islam is one of the colonial and capitalist racial practices that has formed the substratum of modern Islamophobia and Islam-as-race. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 112 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Two international factors interact with two domestic factors to produce this outcome. American imperial designs and Orientalism interact with coercive assimilationism of immigrants and White Protestant supremacy. The interplay of these four factors produce five typologies of the Racial Muslim: (1) Religious Dissident, (2) Religious, (3) Secular Dissident, (4) Secular, and (5) Former Muslim. The typology partially explains the interplay between the state’s prioritization of certain Muslims in national security enforcement, on the one hand, and individual identity performances by Muslims seeking to avoid the material and dignitary harms arising from racialization, on the other. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 80 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Empire is a contingent process that reproduces itself through shifting racism. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 93; Anti-Muslim racism is a persistent product of empire, not event-driven. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 93; Empire is a mutable structure that keeps reconfiguring race. (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Anti-Muslim racism has no unbroken historical continuity from medieval to modern forms #corroborates (0.95)
• Colonial-era differentiation of Muslims preceded and enabled present-day racialization. #corroborates (0.90) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 112
• American imperialism, Orientalism, coercive assimilation, and White supremacy jointly produce racialized Muslim categories #expands (0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 80