Syrian Christian immigrants strategically deployed Christianity to win US naturalization

Evidence

As Khaled A. Beydoun notes, societal perceptions that Islam was a pagan faith and a heathen foil caused Syrian litigants in naturalization cases to highlight their Christian religion to distinguish themselves as civilized and fit for self-government, in contrast to the uncivilized and illiberal Muslims. Some Arab litigants, for example, pointed to the 1891 law barring polygamists or persons who admit their belief in polygamy as evidence of Congress’s intent to bar Muslims, not Christians, from the eastern Mediterranean. Syrian Christians, thus, emphasized their connection to the Holy Land and belief in Jesus Christ. Whatever differences Syrians may have had with respect to American society were attributable to culture, not race. And they assured the courts that as Christians, they were assimilable into Protestant Anglo-American society, in contrast to Muslims. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 538

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: how immigrant groups weaponize their proximity to whiteness and Christianity against other marginalized groups — the strategy of ‘looking away’ from Muslims to gain citizenship. Parallels to model-minority dynamics today.
• XREF: Connects to ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ — both involve Christianity/politics used as markers of civility against a constructed Muslim other. — connects to: Syrian immigrants won citizenship by proving their whiteness through Christian faith; Successful naturalization turned on concealing Islam and emphasizing Christianity — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 156