Spanish anti-Muslim racism operated through the invisible mind, not visible body

Evidence

From the perspective of a suspicious Catholic Spain, the Moorish body—or the Jewish body, for that matter—demanded cultural cleansing. By converting to Christianity, the argument went, Muslims and Jews could achieve religious cleansing. But Catholic Spaniards were still suspicious of the mind—that is, of covert practices by crypto–Moors and crypto–Jews—and the term ”Moro” came to be associated with those who had darker skin color, even though most historical evidence does not support the idea that racial di√erences were visible between so-called Moors and Spanish Catholics (L. P. Harvey 2005, 3–10). — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 163

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader theme of religious ‘passing’ and invisible difference — echoes the crypto-Jew/crypto-Muslim suspicion logic and anticipates modern questions about imperceptible difference making surveillance necessary.
• QUESTION: How does the logic of invisible difference driving heightened surveillance map onto the post-9/11 racial profiling the book is building toward?