The camp word ‘Muslim’ originated from prisoners’ praying posture resembling Arabs.

Evidence

Seeing them from afar, one had the impression of looking at Arabs praying. This image was the origin of the term used at Auschwitz for people dying of malnutrition: Muslims. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 682 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

So much has the figure of the Muslim been tied to Europe’s horror of death’s threat that the “Muselmann” became the name for those Jews in the Holocaust camps that had left life but had not yet given in to death. The camps’ Muselmanner were those who existed, it might be said, alongside death, in death’s wake, the moment prior to death’s throes, prostrate as if a Muslim praying. Emaciated, moving only to scrounge scraps to eat, caring about nothing but passing through the next moment, and the next, and the next. Wild eyed, lacking almost all will, “men of unconditional fatalism” (to mimic Agamben’s citation of Kogon). Lacking dignity and self-control. Indeed, the embodiment of lack, most notably a lack of love, of respect, of spirit for life itself. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 870 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Wehrmacht soldiers coined Muslim camp terminology from Arab praying imagery — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the…, 682; A visual similarity to Arabs praying gave the camps their word for the dying; Camp language produced a Polish verb meaning to become a Muslim — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the…, 1210 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Wehrmacht soldiers coined Muslim camp terminology from Arab praying imagery #corroborates (0.97) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 682
• A visual similarity to Arabs praying gave the camps their word for the dying #corroborates (0.96)
• Camps named the death-adjacent Jew ‘Muselmann,’ linking Muslim imagery with dying #corroborates (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 870
• The camp Muslim abandoned prayer and belief in God entirely #complicates (0.77)
• The camp figure of the Muslim was a transient condition, not a fixed fate #complicates (0.76) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 1210
• The camp label ‘Muslim’ was unstable, allowing reversal and return #complicates (0.75)