The Racialization of Muslims in America

Since the founding of this nation, the United States of America has had a tremulous relationship with race. While this began with the genocide of Native peoples and the enslavement of Black peoples, it certainly did not end there. Systematic racism, developed and ingrained into our government and society through years and years of prejudice and discriminatory laws, has created a society in which being anything but a White, straight cis male is a hurdle a person has to spend their whole life trying to get over. As of 2018, Black people made up 12.5% of the US population, yet accounted for 21.4% of those in poverty. Likewise, Hispanics and Latinx made up 18.2% of the population, but amounted to 26.2% of those in poverty. Until 1870, only free, White persons were legally allowed to become citizens. Eventually, this law changed to include those of African birth or descent. While this change allowed for numerous individuals to gain basic rights in the US, there were more than simply black and white people who desired to be citizens. Through a series of court cases and immigration laws, the US government tried to define what exactly a white person was, to try and account for those who did not fit the white/black binary of race.

Much like race, religion has also been a point of contention in the United States for centuries. In 1620, “the Pilgrims came to America aboard the Mayflower in search of religious freedom,” due to their persecution by the Church of England. Henceforth, religious freedom became an integral part of the United States’ government, with the First Amendment, adopted in 1791, establishing a separation of church and state. Yet, “the courts prohibited Muslim immigrants from becoming naturalized citizens from 1790 to 1944.” It should be noted, that while this is when Muslims were allowed to legally become citizens in the United States, this does not mean that this is when the first Muslims came to America. In 1868, birthright citizenship was added to the United States constitution, making anyone born in the US a citizen immediately. Further, in her 1997 book, The South Asian Americans, Karen Leonard cited, “almost a million Asian Indians in the United States.” With Muslims accounting for 13.4% of people in India today, it can be assumed that a number of these aforementioned Asian Indians were Muslim. This means that there were a tantamount of Muslims living in America during a time when Islam was being built up as something inherently anti-American.

It is said that around 10 to 15% of slaves brought to America were Muslim, with 46% coming from areas with, “significant numbers of Muslims.” During the colonial period, blackness became synonymous with property and something sub-human. This made it impossible for black people to be Muslim in the eyes of their white counterparts, as they believed religion required a person to have a soul, and property was soul-less. Thus, blackness and Islam were ostricized from each other. Due to the separation of these two identities and the dehumanization of Black people, many slaves, “often tried to disassociate themselves from other Africans by claiming that they were not black but Arabian or Moors.” With the confluence of domestic racism and Orientalism in the US, Islam became manufactured as something, “exclusively Arab or Middle eastern,” essentially racializing the entire religion. The intersection of this arbitrary racialization of people through law and the racism inherent to American society, intensify the marginalization of Muslims and greatly affect those who fit the narrow view of what a “Muslim” is to the average American.

Edward Said defines Orientalism as, “the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, epics, social descriptions and political accounts concerning the Orient.” Through this mindset, entire regions of the world became something inherently foreign to American life. This othering of people and cultures greatly contributed to the definition of Islam as the anti-thesis of American societal values. With the United States needing to establish itself as an emerging Western power, it was critical that they aligned themselves with the same ideology as the rest of the Western world. Thus, “the United States had to follow in the footsteps of Europe and establish itself as the mirror opposite of the Muslim world.” Further, Orientalism helped develop race as a social construct. By classifying people and cultures different from one's own as a monolith, arbitrary definitions of what it means to be Black, Asian, Middle Eastern, etc. came about. As of 2015, Muslims made up 24.1% of the world’s population, amounting to approximately 1.8 billion people. These 1.8 billion people are spread across the entire world, with 2.3 million in Europe, 32.1 million in the Middle East and North Africa region, 79.5 million in Asia-Pacific, and 38.2 million in Sub-Saharan Africa. Taking this into account, it seems impossible for there to be one definition of what a Muslim is and what they’re supposed to look like. Yet, there is an image of Muslims, ingrained in the minds of most American citizens, as Arabs or Middle Easterners. This speaks to the idea that, “in America, as a fact of life, everyone gets ascribed with a racial identity.” As this country was founded through the genocide of Native Americans, the white man had to assert his dominance at the top of an arbitrarily made racial hierarchy as to not loose control of land that was not his to begin with. This need to maintain social order led to institutionalized racism, which imposes laws upon arbitrary classifications of large groups of people as homogenous entities. While the, “contours of racial categories are always contested and changing,” the fact that society differentiates people into distinct categories and understands the nuances of what is meant when someone fits those categories is omnipresent.

From around 1878 to 1938, the US courts were plagued with a series of racial prerequisite cases. These court cases were used to try and determine what exactly constituted a white person, as this was key in determining who was eligible for citizenship. Having just recently expanded citizenship to people of African descent or heritage, the courts became more critical of who they wanted to fully accept into the US as citizens. Immigrants’ intention to naturalize was questioned through these court cases, as the judiciary only wanted to accept immigrants who could easily assimilate into American society. Court records eventually became contradictory about who was “white”, as there is no true classification of any race. The courts began to use three types of evidence: scientific understanding of ethnology, popular understanding of the perceived race of an individual, and congressional intent of what “white” meant in 1870. One of these cases, one which placed Muslims directly opposite from all things white and Christian, was US v Cartozian (D. Oregon, 1925). After World War I, the Ottoman empire was divided up which lead to massive Arab nationalistic sentiments. During its existence, the Ottoman empire was known to be relatively religiously tolerant. Religious tolerance in this context, meant that they allowed their constituents to practice other religions, but not without some sort of penalty. For example, their rule required “conquered Christians to give up 20 percent of their male children to the state. The children were forced to convert to Islam and become slaves.” With the decline of the empire, there was an increase in anti-Armenian sentiments, as Armenia was the, “first nation in the world to make Christianity its official religion.” Turkish Sultan Abdul Hamid II became, “infuriated by the nascent Armenian campaign to win basic civil rights,” and vowed to fix the “Armenian problem”, leading to the Armenian Genocide. Fleeing this oppression and genocide, the Cartozian family sought citizenship in the United States. In regards to the perceived race of the defendant, the court, “alleged that he is not a free white person within the meaning of the naturalization laws of Congress.” It was argued that when the stipulation of citizenship being limited to “a free white person,'' was created, the founders were only trying to relay this privilege to people who fit their own bloodline. But, with such a broad qualifier as skin tone, the United States received numerous citizenship applications from white-passing individuals from non-European countries. This led defendants to, in numerous racial prerequisite cases alike, try and tie their roots back to Europe. Armenia: Travels and Studies, volume 2, claims, “All the evidence points to the conclusion that they [Armenians] entered their historical seats from the west, as a branch of a considerable immigration of Indo-European peoples crossing the straits from Europe into Asia Minor and perhaps originally coming from homes in the steppes north of the Black Sea."

While this common, historical lineage sets Armenians closer to what was perceived as whiteness in America at that time, what helped the Cartozian case the most was assimilability with certain ethnic groups, and their lack thereof with other groups. Dr. Paul Rohrbach of Berlin, not only claims that, “the color line is not drawn against the Armenians anywhere in the world," but that Armenians are assimilable with European/Caucasian people. He cites numerous instances in which Armenians have intermarried with Russians and Germans, saying, “he found Armenians intermarrying with white people everywhere.” As the Court has just recently, “rejected the argument that contemporary descendants of an Indo-European ancestor were necessarily ‘white’,” it was crucial to also establish the Armenians’ history of oppression, “by the Turks, Kurds, and Syrian Muslims.” The Armenians are said to, “have maintained a remarkable homogeneity,” amidst oppression from the aforementioned groups. This was due, “inassimilability of Armenians with their Islamic neighbors.” This idea helped deeply ingrain the idea that Islam was the civilizational foil to all things White, western, and Christian. The defendant was granted citizenship, which, “invoked deep historic prejudices between Christianity and Islam.”

Through the grouping of an entire religion as a monolithic entity, foreign to all things American, the idea of “Muslim” as a race was solidified. By placing white Christians on one end of the spectrum and brown Muslims at the other end, a group of people was arbitrarily created as a scapegoat for xenophobic ideas and laws coming from the United States government. “The record in Cartozian reveals that the defense used a rhetorical strategy of unifying against a common enemy,” something which could be classified as identification by antithesis. Further, this case did not stand alone in its efforts to ostracize Muslims from American government and society. For example, racial prerequisite case, In Re Hassan (E. D. Michigan, 1942), argues that, “it cannot be expected that as a class they [Muslims] would readily intermarry with our population and be assimilated into our civilization.”

Jumping forward to the 21st century, there are stark differences in how Muslims were perceived during the naturalization era versus modern times. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, also known as the McCarran-Walter Act, lifted the Barred Asiatic Zone of 1917. Later, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 lifted the National Origins Formula, designed to limit immigration from certain foreign countries. After World War I ended, there was an increasing communist influence from the Soviet Union on countries in East Europe and Asia. The conflation of this emerging communist influence and the desire to, “distinguish between ‘friendly Asians and ‘enemy’ Asia,” lead to the creation of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act. Instead of using an applicant’s ethnicity to determine their ability to be naturalized, the focus shifted to their ideologies. “It [the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952] permitted the exclusion or deportation of any alien who engaged or had purpose to engage in activities prejudicial to the public interest or subversive to national security.” After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the government became exponentially interested in maintaining this aforementioned idea of national security. This is where we see a major shift in the perception of Muslims and Islam in America. During the naturalization era, Islam was seen as undemocratic and foreign to all things American and white. After 9/11, the perception shifted to one of Islam as an imminent threat to national security. According to the FBI, there was a, “17-fold increase in anti-Muslim crimes nationwide during 2001.” Additionally, the US government promptly passed the USA PATRIOT Act, in October of 2001. While this was meant to provide increased protection from possible domestic and international acts of terror, it inherently left Muslims in a very vulnerable place. “The USAPA enables the government to monitor, investigate, detain, and deport Muslims legally in the name of security, without rudimentary due process of the law and in gross violation of their rights.”

Beydoun defines dialectical Islamophobia as, “the process by which structural Islamophobia shapes, reshapes, and endorses views or attitudes about Islam and Muslim subjects inside and outside of America’s borders.” Over the past couple decades, the United States administration slowly painted an idea of Muslims as terrorists in the eyes of most all American citizens. Erik Love claims, “the racist and demonstrably false stereotype about terrorism and ‘Muslims’ is so pervasive that openly asserting it has become a perfectly acceptable, mainstream opinion in the United States.” By allowing Islamophobic rhetoric to leak into government, and further to come out of the Presidents mouth, the hate Muslims and other people of color face increases daily. President Donald Trump has been one of the most outwardly Islamaphobic presidents the United States has seen. Relative to the more liberal society we live in now, compared to the 1800s, Trump’s constant anti-Muslim rhetoric calls to action individuals who had somewhat repressed their xenophobic racism. Trump has constantly second guessed the validity of Islam and reinforced false stereotypes of how Muslims are, which in turn makes his consituents think it is ok to think like he does. On June 13th, a day after the Pulse Nightclub shooting, Trump stated that, “radical Islam is anti-woman, anti-gay and anti-American.” He further went on to cite children of Muslim Americans are, “responsible for a growing number of terrorist attacks.” Later in 2017, Trump confirmed the fact that he sees Islam as inherently non-peaceful. He says, “I’ll speak with Muslim leaders and challege them to fight hatred and extremism and embrace a peaceful future for their faith.” Hearing the president reinforce the idea that Muslims are anti-American terrorists drives individuals to think it is acceptable, even encouraged, for them to outwardly express the same ideals. Trump makes it acceptable to be Islamophobic in America.

The confluence of this racialization of Muslims and narrow views of race held by many Americans affects many people of color still today. Today, Islamophobia instilled in our society has surpassed the demographic group it was aimed at, and has begun to affect other visually similar people. Sikhism, the fifth-largest religion in the world, is predominantly practiced in the Indian state of Punjab, located near Pakistan. Adherents to this religion may practice Kesh, one of the Five K’s devout Sikhs try to live by. Kesh is the practice of keeping one’s hair uncut to respect God’s creations and their perfection. In order to maintain their long hair, many Sikhs wear turbans. As Sikhism originated in India, many of its followers have brown complexions, making the intersectionality of their skin color and minority religion prompt an ignorant, xenophobic gaze from the average white American. Many times, ignorant individuals see a person with brown skin and a head covering and immediately think they are Muslim. Upon first look, this confusion seems to be an innocent misunderstanding. But, taking into account the severity of Islamophobia in today’s America, this misunderstanding now threatens the lives of Sikhs, Hindus, Arabs, and anyone who could fit the one faceted description of what a Muslim “is”. Parmjit Singh, a turban wearing Sikh man, was stabbed to death in Northern California park in August of 2019. Just the month before, another Sikh man from a neighborhood nearby was also murdered. In February of 2017, two Indian men were shot and killed in a bar in Kansas, with the shooter calling them terrorists and telling them to “get out of my country”. These are not isolated instances and the victims are not just coincidentally brown. Executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together says, “The overwhelming motivation for these attacks or intimidation incidents are part and parcel of a growing wave of hostility based on perception that Sikhs are Muslim.” Since 2001, anti-Muslim hate crime has become extremely prevalent in American society, with the FBI citing a 67% surge in anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2016. This means that not only are Muslims still being vengefully killed for terrorist acts they did not commit and do not condone, but people of similar appearance face tremendous hate and violence as well.

In a country where your skin color pre-determines your social standing, it is hard for people of color to remove themselves from hastily generalized stereotypes. Since the days of colonization, black people have been systematically dehumanized and their opportunities for success have been limited. With a fifth of all American Muslims being black, slavery and colonization not only ingrained racism in American society, but Islamophobia as well. With the influx of Muslim, Arab, and Asian immigrants into the United States, racial prerequisite cases worked to limit who fit the definition “white”, consequently limiting their ability to be naturalized citizens. The intersectionality of racism and Islamophobia created the “Muslim race” in the eyes of many American citizens. This racialization not only affected Muslims, but inherently fell onto those who fit a stereotypical definition of what a Muslim was. Consequently, Sikhs, Hindus, Arabs, and numerous other demographic groups have faced the violence and prejudice that comes along with Islamophobia. Undoing centuries worth of built up hatred and false perceptions will take centuries, but the first step in this process is removing the anti-Muslim ideas engrained in our government and work to disentangle the intersectionality of discrimination people of color and Muslims face everyday.

‍

Works Cited

“America's True History of Religious Tolerance.” Smithsonian.com. Smithsonian Institution, October 1, 2010. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/americas-true-history-of-religious-tolerance-61312684/.

“Being Sikh in Trump's America: 'You Have to Go out of Your Way to Prove You're Not a Threat'.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, November 20, 2017. https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-trump-sikhs-20170509-htmlstory.html.

BEYDOUN, KHALED A. AMERICAN ISLAMOPHOBIA: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear. Place of publication not identified: UNIV OF CALIFORNIA Press, 2019.

Campi, Alicia. “The McCarran-Walter Act: A Contradictory Legacy on Race, Quotas, and Ideology.” Immigration Policy Center, 2004.

Chaudhary, Vivek. “Why Do Sikhs Wear Turbans? You Asked Google – Here's the Answer | Vivek Chaudhary.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, September 13, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/13/why-do-sikhs-wear-turbans-google-answer.

“Christians Remain World’s Largest Religious Group, but ...” Accessed December 12, 2019. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/05/christians-remain-worlds-largest-religious-group-but-they-are-declining-in-europe/.

Coulson, Douglas. “Persecutory Agency in the Racial Prerequisite Cases.” University of Miami Race and Social Justice Law Review2 (2012).

Falinger, Marie. “Islam in the Mind of American Courts: 1800 to 1960.” Boston College Journal of Law & Social Justice12, no. 1 (2012): 5.

“Fifty Years On, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act ...” Migration Policy Institute. Accessed December 12, 2019. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/fifty-years-1965-immigration-and-nationality-act-continues-reshape-united-states.

Gomez, Alan. “US Birthright Citizenship Explained: What Is It, How Many People Benefit.” USA Today. Gannett Satellite Information Network, October 31, 2018. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/10/30/birthright-citizenship-explained-president-donald-trump-immigration/1817034002/.

History.com Editors. “Armenian Genocide.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, October 1, 2010. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/armenian-genocide

History.com Editors. “Ottoman Empire.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, November 3, 2017. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/ottoman-empire.

“Islam In America | History Detectives.” PBS. Public Broadcasting Service. Accessed December 12, 2019. http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/islam-in-america/.

Jenna Johnson, Abigail Hauslohner. “'I Think Islam Hates Us': A Timeline of Trump's Comments about Islam and Muslims.” The Washington Post. WP Company, April 28, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/20/i-think-islam-hates-us-a-timeline-of-trumps-comments-about-islam-and-muslims/.

“Kansas Man Charged with Hate Crime, Firearm Offenses in Shooting of Three Men at Olathe Bar.” The United States Department of Justice, October 3, 2017. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/kansas-man-charged-hate-crime-firearm-offenses-shooting-three-men-olathe-bar.

Love, Erik Robert. Islamophobia and Racism in America. New York: New York University Press, 2017.

Lynch, Harry Finnis Blosse. Armenia, Travels and Studies Volume 2. Place of publication not identified: Rarebooksclub Com, 2012.

Mohamed, Besheer, and Jeff Diamant. “Black Muslims Account for a Fifth of All U.S. Muslims, and about Half Are Converts to Islam.” Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center, January 17, 2019. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/17/black-muslims-account-for-a-fifth-of-all-u-s-muslims-and-about-half-are-converts-to-islam/.

Narayanan, Vasudha. Journal of American Ethnic History19, no. 1 (1999): 3. https://www.jstor.org/stable/i27502502.

Orgi. “Religion.” Census of India: Religion. Accessed December 12, 2019. http://censusindia.gov.in/Census_And_You/religion.aspx.

Panagopoulous, Costas. “Trends: Arab and Muslim Americans and Islam in the Aftermath of 9/11.” Public Opinion Quarterly70 (2006).

Said, Edward. Orientalism. Great Britain: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1978.

Sauter, Michael B. “Faces of Poverty: What Racial, Social Groups Are More Likely to Experience It?” USA Today, October 10, 2018. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2018/10/10/faces-poverty-social-racial-factors/3797717 3/.

“Sikh Community Asks FBI to Investigate Stabbing Death in Northern California.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, August 29, 2019. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-28/california-sikh-man-stabbed-park.

Singh, Simran Jeet, Simran Jeet Singh, Simran Jeet Singh, Simran Jeet Singh, Jeffrey Salkin, Jamie Aten, and Thomas Reese. “Why Sikhs Don't Throw Muslims under the Bus.” Religion News Service, October 9, 2019. https://religionnews.com/2019/01/28/why-sikhs-dont-throw-muslims-under-the-bus/.

Suri, Manveena, and Huizhong Wu. “Sikhs: Religious Minority Target of Hate Crimes.” CNN. Cable News Network, March 8, 2017. https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/asia/sikh-hate-crimes-us-muslims/index.html.

Wong, Kam. “The USA Patriot Act: A Policy of Alienation.” Michigan Journal of Race and Law12, no. 1 (2006).