Studying non-Arab converts reveals how Islam is racialized apart from ethnicity

Evidence

These cases emerged in the commercial news media as examples of non-Arab converts to Islam, as terrorists and alleged terrorists, and as examples of many (some would say endless) threats of radical Islam. I examine how the popular news media explains the trajectory into violence of non-Arabs who have converted to Islam (as opposed to examining the explanations for those who are Arab and/or Muslim) in order to explore the racialization of Islam during the War on Terror. Examining identities that are not implicated in the Arab/Muslim conflation from birth provides the opportunity to examine how Islam comes to be marked in the case of non-Arab/non–South Asian converts to Islam. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 843

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: the analytical power of studying converts over members-by-birth to expose the racialization mechanism of any marked identity.
• XREF: connects to: Muslims get racialized via projected religious ancestry regardless of self-understanding — Mareike Riedel, Islamophobia, Racial Discrimination…, 64