Targeting and dialectical resistance have made Islam function as a race.

Evidence

Can a religion, over time and through its social and legal resignification, come to be a race? This article answers in the affirmative; in the context of North America and Europe where racial hierarchies have been most pronounced, practitioners of the religion of Islam have come to be perceived as belonging to a race called “Muslim.” While there is a large literature on the racialization of Muslims and Islamophobia, scholars have nevertheless been reluctant to declare Islam or Muslims as a race. This article now makes that claim. In the last twenty years, Islam has come to function as a race socially and in the law. It began with the increasingly specific targeting of Muslims/Islamicized people, through which Islamophobia has developed as a distinct form of racism. Through reiterative subjection of the group whose shared characteristic is their connection to Islam, the “Muslim” coalesced into a racial identity. And finally, through the racecraft of Islamophobia and the dialectical resistance to it by Muslims/Islamicized people, Islam emerged as a race. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 34

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s whole MOC thread on Islam-as-race versus domestic subordinate-group inversions (Maori, Black, Québécois), and to prior chapter material on racecraft and Ta-Nehisi Coates/Fields. — connects to: Islam-as-race is a construct independent of actual religious practice. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 36; New racial identities can form in response to racism itself — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 51; Race emerges from prior racist practice, not from perceived difference — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 32 (+11 more)
• DEFINE: Distinguishes ‘Islam-as-race’ (a construction detached from actual belief) from ‘an Islamic race,’ which the author refuses — a precise conceptual distinction relevant to comparing how identity anchors different subordinate groups.
• QUESTION: The article’s causal claim — subjectivity coalesces via reiterative subjection plus dialectical resistance — begs the reader’s core question: does this account omit the shared homeland/arrival anchor that Black/Maori/Québécois inversions rest on? Worth chasing against those literatures.
• recurring: this claim recurs 4 times within its source

Broader Connections

• Islam itself constitutes a race produced by Islamophobic racecraft. #corroborates (0.95) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 106
• Islamophobia has coalesced Muslims into a distinct racial group and Islam into a race. #corroborates (0.90) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 61
• Islam comes to function as a race through racecraft that erases internal ethnic differences #expands (0.85) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 516
• Muslims move down the racial hierarchy rather than becoming a new race #contradicts (0.85)
• Islamophobia operates as a racial formation, not merely religious prejudice #expands (0.85) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 46
• Islam has become a race despite scholars’ hesitation to name it so #corroborates (0.80)
• Islam-as-race emerges only after Muslims coalesce as a racial group #corroborates (0.80) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 110
• Three historical strands weave into Islam being constituted as a race #expands (0.80) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 117
• Islam functions as a full race in American and European hierarchies #expands (0.78) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 527
• Capitalist imperialism plus liberal societies produced Muslims as a full race #expands (0.75) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 117