What is the argument that Rana is making about race, biology, religion, and Islamophobia?
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Rana is arguing that Islamophobia is indeed a form of racism. Rana uses many examples of how Islam was racialized throughout history to set forth how the racialization of Muslims in the United States came to be. Rana discusses the idea of “race-making,” considering historical practices where religious differences were used to justify racial hierarchies and imperial dominance.
Rana’s argument about race, biology, religion, and Islamophobia is that Islamophobia, despite being centered on religious identity, functions as a form of racism due to the historical and ongoing racialization of Islam. Islamophobia does not merely target Muslims for their beliefs but also for how they are socially constructed as a racialized group. One of the examples Rana traces back the racialization of Muslims, is to medieval Europe when European Christian powers wanted to reclaim territories from Muslim rule in Spain.
In the Reconquista, Spanish Christians viewed Muslim in Spain as not just someone who differed in religious thought, but as a different race althogether. The Spanish Inquisition provides a key example of how religion was racialized. Muslims and Jews were often forced to convert to Christianity to avoid persecution or expulsion. The concept of “limpieza de sangre” (cleansing of blood) was used to distinguish those of “pure” Christian blood from those with Jewish or Muslim ancestry, showing how religious identity became racialized through bloodline and ancestry, their racialized otherness would always remain intact and were treated biologically different.
So, through Rana’s reading, it is understood that Muslims became racialized not just because of religious difference, but through a complex blend of cultural, geographical, and physical markers.This anti-Muslim racism is shaped by a long history of colonialism, imperialism where Muslims are viewed as a threat to Western social and economic structures. From the conquest of the Americas to the transatlantic slave trade, Islam was racialized alongside other racial categories. In the U.S., the term “Muslim” became not just a religious label but a racialized one, connecting Native Americans, African Americans, and immigrants into a broader framework of anti-Muslim racism.