State Islamophobia has always been entangled with US racial classification, splitting Muslims by race.

Evidence

The problem for African American Muslims was that immigrant Muslims from the Middle East were classified as whites, while the Black Muslims were discredited on racial lines. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 45

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Curtis’s argument that surveillance tracks the perceived foreignness of race rather than religion itself; ties to broader critiques of how whiteness was legally constructed in US immigration law.