Three historical strands weave into Islam being constituted as a race

Evidence

Islam has been, and continues to be, seen as inherently non-white, alien, threatening, and opposed to the West and Judeo-Christian tradition. The genealogy offered in this part consists of three strands that weave together to produce Islam-as-race. First, Islam has been historically linked with Black and Brown peoples from slavery to the rise of Black radical Islam in urban communities. Second, from the 1960s onwards, as the United States became increasingly embroiled in the Middle East, a particular form of American Orientalism arose that constructed Islam as antithetical to the West. Islam was alienated from Europe and Muslims were similarly seen as categorically different from Europeans. Third, from the post-Oklahoma City bombing period to the present, Islam itself has become a target for regulation. While law enforcement and lawmakers in the first fifteen years after the Oklahoma attack focused on specific Muslim communities resulting in racial profiling based on visual attributes of the profiled, in the 2010s, Islam itself became the subject of scrutiny and expulsion. For the past decade, forty-three states have attempted to introduce anti-sharia bills that resignify65 Islam from a religion to an ideology and a terrorist identity. Islam itself is the problem tainting and homogenizing all who are linked with it whether they are believers or not. These three strands come together and overlap each other, braided together in the formation of Islam-as-race. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 117

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Europeans saw enslaved African Muslims as semicivilized aids for Christianizing other Africans; Targeting and dialectical resistance have made Islam function as a race. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 34; Islam itself constitutes a race produced by Islamophobic racecraft. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 106 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Islam has become a race despite scholars’ hesitation to name it so #expands (0.80)
• Islam has shaped the race concept since its historical inception #expands (0.78)
• Race was co-constituted with religion in European history. #corroborates (0.78) — Nasar Meer, Racialization and Religion, 31
• Islam comes to function as a race through racecraft that erases internal ethnic differences #expands (0.72) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 516
• Islam functions as a full race in American and European hierarchies #expands (0.72) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 527
• Contemporary meanings of Islam are framed by atavistic historical precedents #expands (0.72) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 756
• Islam-as-race emerges only after Muslims coalesce as a racial group #complicates (0.72) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 110
• Colonial-era differentiation of Muslims preceded and enabled present-day racialization. #expands (0.70) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 112
• Islam has functionally become a race in law within the last twenty years #expands (0.70) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 34