How does one become white? Asking for a friend
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In his chapter on the Liverpool Muslim Institute (LMI) established by Quilliam in Victorian Liverpool, Gilham explores British Christian converts to Islam, their motivations, and the nature of their practices. Quilliam was said to have been a “charismatic leader” who provided an “institutional structure such as the LMI” as a “place to nurture belief and sustain commitment” (Gilham, 102). What I understood the practices to represent was a sort of Christian-Muslim hybrid since LMI would put on Sunday services and substitute reading from the Bible with English translation of the Qur’an using “many suitable hymns, eliminating objectionable verses from them and making their whole tone Unitarian and Islamic” (Gilham, 91). This was a way of attracting “a steady stream of intrigued nominal and practising Christians”, who were mostly working class people, at a time when Church attendance was in decline. Many converts were attracted to Islam’s clear monotheism and “found the principle tenet of the Trinity perplexing” (Gilham, 105). Others were women who converted after marriage. However, according to Gilham, some were persuaded to convert after meeting Quilliam as there is “strong evidence of the ‘affectional’ mode of conversion in the cases converts”, which has been attributed to his charismatic nature (102).
It is interesting how the anti-Muslim discrimination experienced by white British Christian converts to Islam could be argued to have parallels with racism drawn to it. The Muslims of the LMI and British Muslims more generally were increasingly silenced through intimidation and discrimination” and they saw their meetings interrupted as members of the public would “shout and stamp on the floor […] to try to drown out the speaker’s voice” (Gilham, 109). This is a narrative we have seen all too many times before where the victims of the discrimination, perpetrated by the majority, are portrayed as the antagonists who, in this case, were “blindly regarded as [...] , ‘an uncultivated barbarian and heathen, and as filthy, ignorant and most vicious’” (Gilham, 107). Although there didn’t seem to be any explicit racialisation of the Muslims of the LMI within Liverpudlian society simply based on external appearance, the nature of the discrimination they received is very similar to that experienced by non-white Muslims. The intense discrimination of this minority group, reflects the ignorance and bigotry of British society during the late Victorian era as “many people believed that the Liverpool Muslim community aggravated the situation by ‘flaunting’ their alien religion” (Gilham, 109). Oftentimes, as we have seen in past readings for class, the white man seeing someone as “alien” or “other” presents itself as justification enough for discrimination or racism, thus supporting the argument that these British Muslim converts could be considered as “off-white”, despite technically being very and truly white. As Prof Khan puts it, “off-whiteness" is the state of being proximate to whiteness; claiming whiteness; being white, but not quite”. This is exactly the case for the Muslims of the LMI - they are white and British, some even previously Christian, thus the epitome of white Britishness, but they are “not quite” white to the rest of British society because of their faith. Furthermore, I would argue that the fact that white presenting practising Muslims were seen as such a threat to the white Christian population of Liverpool ties closely to fear; the white Muslim is a threat to the understanding the white Christian man has of his own identity, so he therefore cannot consider them as white.
Contrastingly, in the Gualtieri reading, she argues that the Syrian immigrants’ journey to being classified as “white” was a deliberate and active choice, motivated by social, legal, and practical advantages that accompanied whiteness in American society. At the time, Syrians; eligibility for citizenship depended on their classification as “white”, and so following the case of George Dow, the efforts of Syrian immigrants resulted in the judge ruling that “Syrians “were to be classified as white persons,” and were eligible for naturalization” (Gualtieri, 29). This differs from the white British Muslim’s experience, whereby their active choice in converting to Islam by consequence caused them to be considered as non-white in the eyes of British society, therefore reflecting the common theme of whiteness, or not blackness in the case of America, being the only true route to acceptance in society. For Syrian immigrants, emphasising their Christianity was crucial in aiding their own racialisation as white, as the Christian identity aided them to be seen as more aligned with Western civilisation, and should therefore be distinguished from other “off-white” groups. This can be seen through the example of H.A. Elkourie, who responded to claims that Syrians belonged to “a distinct race other than the white race” by “invoking a religious argument” that Syrians were Semites and were therefore “within a branch of the “white race””(Gualtieri, 41).