The racialization of Muslims mirrors how earlier faith groups threatened Protestant identity.

Evidence

The explanation to this paradox, I argue, lies in the racialization of Muslims from a people of faith to a savage, uncivilized, and suspect race. Islam is reframed as a political ideology founded by an imposter prophet. Even for those Americans who acknowledge that Islam is a religion, Muslims remain collectively threatening to America’s Judeo-Christian national identity, just as Judaism, Catholicism, and Mormonism had previously threatened America’s Protestant national identity. Consistent with the social identity theory of in-group and out-group phenomena, Muslims are in the out-group—if not for their religion, then for their racialized identity. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 961

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the book’s core concept — the racialization of Muslims — by recasting religious difference through social identity theory.
• XREF: The claim that Protestant national identity previously absorbed Judaism, Catholicism, and Mormonism as threats echoes arguments about Catholic Nativism in the 19th century and the Reed Smoot Mormon hearings; connects to the historicization chapters of this book.
• DEEPTHINKING: The move of reframing Muslims from a faith to a race, and the historical pattern that each new group gets absorbed into the Protestant core, is a genuinely paradigm-level frame for understanding American religious tolerance.