Inseparability of Religion and Race
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While reading Husains Moving Beyond, I reflected on my own position as a racialized Muslim, and how this presented a complication in my own conceptualization of my religious and racial identity.
As Husain explains, the racialization of Muslims has disrupted the black-white binary, as it positions a race that doesn't fit categorically within either binary. Thus, the conceptualization of the Muslim is complex because it has been understood as a determinant of race, racializing Muslims as brown. However, this understanding is central to Western conceptualizations of what it means to be Muslim, especially considering the mainstream stereotype of Muslims as South Asian or Arab.
Husain further discusses these implications in the post-9/11 context which strengthened the categorization of the racialization of Muslims as brown. It established this new racial category which largely reflected the increasing levels of islamophobia experienced by ‘the brown’. The new emergence of this racial category in the West, specifically in the US and Canada, defined conceptualizations for not only Muslims but South Asians and Arabs that fall within the bounds of Western understanding of ‘the brown’.
As someone who falls within the category of ‘the brown’ and has first-hand experienced the racialization of Muslims, especially in the post-9/11 context, the inseparability between my race and religion has always been something I have struggled with. I think it's a testament to the generalization of what it means to be Muslim, inherent to the racialization of Muslims. As Husain mentions, it does not include the diversity of what it means to be Muslim, both in a racial and practical sense. For me, this has manifested into a complicated conceptualization of my own identity and subsequent crisis in relation to Islam, and whether I am even religious enough to want to be identified as Muslim. However, the inherent brownness of Muslim racialization has made my religion inseparable from my racial identity, especially as it is reinforced in my name, Anah Noor Ibrahim.