Successful naturalization turned on concealing Islam and emphasizing Christianity

Evidence

It was only when the Act was repealed in 1946 after World War II and the at the start of the Cold War that Asians began to immigrate in appreciable numbers. Even once the Act was lifted, however, the burden was on Muslim immigrants to persuade the courts that they were white and thus worthy of entry. In this endeavor, the results varied. As has been noted by other scholars, petitioners for citizenship whose Islamic religious identity was centralized and made prominent often failed. Christianity was used to whitewash applicants from the same regions in which unsuccessful Muslim applicants came. In other words, Christianity was an important element of whiteness. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 156

Categorization

• XREF: Supplies a documented domestic precedent: Christianity-as-whiteness-pass parallels earlier chapter claims about polygamy jurisprudence racializing Islam, and feeds the reader’s question about whether American Islam’s absence of a single shared arrival narrative blocks identity inversion. — connects to: Islam functionally disqualified citizenship applicants from whiteness regardless of method — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 153; Syrian Christian immigrants strategically deployed Christianity to win US naturalization — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 538; Arab Christians were denied US naturalization through conflation with Islamic racial otherness — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in…, 206 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Syrian Christian immigrants strategically deployed Christianity to win US naturalization #corroborates (0.95) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 538
• Arab Christians were denied US naturalization through conflation with Islamic racial otherness #contradicts (0.80) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 206
• Christians and Muslims from the same region received opposite citizenship outcomes #corroborates (0.80)