Religious identity functions as a racial marker within American hierarchies

Evidence

The co-constitutive nature of religion and race means neither identity exists in isolation but rather interacts to produce a racial-religious hierarchy. Religious identity in certain contexts functions as a racial marker. The literature on racial and ethnic formation, although richly developed, does not adequately incorporate the role of religion in producing socially constructed racial hierarchies, or what is known as the racialization of religion. Likewise, the literature on religious freedom tends to overlook the dispositive role that race plays in the subordination of religious minorities. The social construction of Whiteness is shaped as much by religious identity as it is by skin color, hair texture, facial features, and other phenotypical characteristics. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 71

Physical features coupled with differences in language, social organization, diet, dress, and culture dictated a person’s inherited propensities. Religion also played a significant role in race making. Religious beliefs were evidence of racial distinctiveness from the dominant White group. Thus to be a “real American” in the first half of the twentieth century, one had to be Christian and more specifically Protestant. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 385

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘racialization of religion’ and the co-constitutive religion-race relationship as the book’s theoretical core.
• XREF: Connects to critical race theory work on Whiteness as a social construction (Ignatiev, Roediger) and to the reader’s interest in how categories like race and religion are mutually constructed. — connects to: Religious, gendered, and racial markers jointly produce a cosynthetic subordinated Islamic identity. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 100; Islam functions as a full race in American and European hierarchies — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 527; Christian nationalism fuses ethnic, racial, and political hierarchy with religious identity — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 66 (+4 more)
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 71; Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 385