Secularization and Protestantization of practice is the price of Muslim assimilation into America

Evidence

The experiences of Jews and Catholics after World War II, as I describe in chapter 4, demonstrate that assimilation for Muslims is likely to entail the secularization and Protestantization of Islamic practices. Thus the first to be accepted into America’s newfound Abrahamic national identity (should it actually occur) will be the White-presenting Secular Racial Muslims. Whitepresenting Religious Muslims who Protestanize how they practice will also fit in the Abrahamic faith tradition, making them either White or honorary White. The least likely to be accepted into an Abrahamic national identity is the Religious Dissident Muslim, whose Orthodox lifestyle, combined with staunch opposition to US government policy in Muslim-majority countries, clashes with Anglo-Protestant assimilationist pressures and the national ideology of empire. Even a White-presenting phenotype is insufficient for the Religious Dissident Muslim to gain full acceptance into the national identity. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 979

Categorization

• XREF: The Protestantization-of-practice claim parallels the book’s chapter 4 treatment of post-WWII Jewish and Catholic assimilation, and echoes the earlier ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ essay’s theme of dress and religious identity politics. — connects to: The going-Muslim trope denies assimilated Muslims any genuine integration into America — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 608; Full assimilation in antebellum America demanded converting away from Islam; Assimilation demands on Muslims require abandoning Islam itself, not just privatizing it — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 296
• SEED: Angle: whether the interfaith ‘Abrahamic family’ discourse is structurally Protestant in ways its Muslim (and Jewish) participants don’t fully notice — a piece on the costs of the Abrahamic umbrella term.