Racism in Muslim communities

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Racism within the Muslim world is a source of concern, particularly for Black Muslims and other Muslims of color. [1] [2] Black Muslims throughout the world report that they face racism from other Muslims who are of Arab, Asian, white, or other non-Black background. In countries where white people form the demographic majority, white Muslims may enjoy certain privileges over their non-white counterparts, even including a generally better reception from people of belonging to the Muslim community. In Arab countries, racism against black Muslims and Asian Muslims, especially South Asian Muslims, is often ubiquitous. Racist attitudes and oppression perpetrated in the Arab world against black Muslims is deeply connected to the long legacy of the Trans-Saharan slave trade, the Red Sea slave trade, and the Indian Ocean slave trade.

Contents

Issues

In Western societies, both white Muslims and Black Muslims may be used in a tokenistic way in institutional settings to emphasize the supposed diversity of a Muslim organization. White Muslims may be strategically placed "on the front stage for advertisement purposes". Black Muslims in France report that they are tokenized for diversity purposes in predominantly non-Black Muslim spaces that do not truly value or include Black Muslim voices. [3]

Slavery

By country

Australia

White converts to Islam may enjoy white privileges that Muslims of color do not enjoy in Australia. White Muslims may be perceived as non-white if they are visibly Muslim, such as by wearing a hijab, but many white privileges would return if the white Muslim were to dress in a less visibly Islamic fashion. A white hijabi may receive less white privilege than a white non-hijabi due to the fact that Muslim identity is often racialized within Australian society. [4]

Non-Black and white Muslims in Australia may use the N-word or other racial slurs, believing that because Australian Muslims are mostly brown and because Islam is a racialized religion, that the words are not offensive coming from Muslims. [4]

According to Australian Muslim journalist Zahra Al-Hilaly, Black Muslims face racism that non-Black Muslims do not experience. She has written that she has racial privilege as a non-Black Arab Muslim and that "White Muslims are often praised and feted, but black Muslims do not receive the same reception, leadership roles or attention in the Muslim community." [5]

Canada

Muslim Link, an online hub for Canadian Muslims, has posted the Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative's "Anti-Racism Guide for White Muslims". The Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative is a US-based racial justice education organization with members in the US and Canada. While white Muslims experience Islamophobia in Canada, they may also benefit from white privilege in ways that Canadian Muslims of color do not experience. Some white Muslims may believe that because they are Muslim they are therefore incapable of being racist. According to Muslim Link's anti-racism guide, white Muslims "have been socialized as white people, with messages from our families, teachers, media and society about whiteness under an umbrella of white supremacy, both subtle and overt. We grew up without the lived experience of racism that People of Color have. This has both shaped and limited our understanding of racism." [6] [7]

United Arab Emirates

Black Muslim bloggers have criticized the exclusion of Black Muslims from the Dubai-based Modest Fashion Week. [8] [9]

United Kingdom

According to Dr. Amena Amer, a British Muslim lecturer, white British Muslims enjoy white privilege not afforded to non-white Muslims. White Muslims' "whiteness offers them an opportunity to distance themselves from extremism, a tactic unavailable to non-white Muslims." White Muslims suspected of involvement in terrorism are sometimes afforded more leniency or understanding than Muslims of South Asian or Middle Eastern heritage. [10]

United States

Black Muslims in the United States experience the same anti-Black racism that other Black Americans face, as well as the same Islamophobia that other Muslim Americans face. Black Muslims also experience racism within predominantly non-Black Muslim communities. Because Muslims are often racialized as Arab or South Asian in American society, Black Muslims are often erased and made invisible. Black Muslims may experience racial discrimination in predominantly non-Black Arab-American and South Asian-American mosques. [11]

St. Louis, Missouri, has a legacy of anti-Black racism within white Muslim communities. While Bosnian Muslims experience a complicated relationship to whiteness, they are considered white by the US Census and may enjoy white privileges that Black residents of St. Louis may not enjoy. [12] In 2014, a Bosniak-American named Zamir Begic was beaten to death with hammers. The murder caused shock in the Bosnian community of St. Louis and protests were held against violent crime. Because Begic was white and his suspected assailants were Black and Latino, some claimed that the murder of Begic was an example of "black-on-white" crime while others claimed it was a "a targeted attack on Bosnians". While the belief that Begic was targeted due to his ethnicity or race contributed to racial tensions between the Black community and white Muslims of Bosnian descent, St. Louis police did not believe the attack had any ethnic or racial basis. [13] [14]

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xenophobia</span> Dislike of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange

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Miscegenation is marriage or admixture between people who are considered to be members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms miscere and genus. The word first appeared in Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro, a hoax anti-abolitionist pamphlet David Goodman Croly and others published anonymously in advance of the 1864 presidential election in the United States. The term came to be associated with laws that banned interracial marriage and sex, which were known as anti-miscegenation laws. These laws were overruled federally in 1967, and by the year 2000, all states including Alabama had removed them from their laws. In the 21st century, newer scientific data shows that human populations are actually genetically quite similar. Studies show that races are more of an arbitrary social construct, and do not actually have a major genetic delineation.

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Supremacism is the belief that a certain group of people is superior to all others. The supposed superior people can be defined by age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, language, social class, ideology, nationality, culture, or belong to any other part of a particular population.

Racism has been reflected in discriminatory laws, practices, and actions against "racial" or ethnic groups throughout the history of the United States. Since the early colonial era, White Americans have generally enjoyed legally or socially sanctioned privileges and rights which have been denied to members of various ethnic or minority groups at various times. European Americans have enjoyed advantages in matters of education, immigration, voting rights, citizenship, land acquisition, and criminal procedure.

This is a list of topics related to racism:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Racism in Africa</span> Overview of racism in Africa

Racism in Africa has been a recurring part of the history of Africa.

The article describes the state of race relations and racism in the Middle East. Racism is widely condemned throughout the world, with 174 states parties to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by April 8, 2011. In different countries, the forms that racism takes may be different for historic, cultural, religious, economic or demographic reasons.

African Americans and Jewish Americans have interacted throughout much of the history of the United States. This relationship has included widely publicized cooperation and conflict, and—since the 1970s—it has been an area of significant academic research. Cooperation during the Civil Rights Movement was strategic and significant, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Racism in the State of Palestine</span> Discussion of racism

Racism in the Palestinian territories encompasses all forms and manifestations of racism experienced in the Palestinian Territories, of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, irrespective of the religion, colour, creed, or ethnic origin of the perpetrator and victim, or their citizenship, residency, or visitor status. It may refer to Jewish settler attitudes regarding Palestinians as well as Palestinian attitudes to Jews and the settlement enterprise undertaken in their name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Racism in France</span> Overview of racism in France

Racism has been called a serious social issue in French society by some commentators despite public belief that racism does not exist on a serious scale in France. Antisemitism and prejudice against Muslims have a long history. Acts have been reported against members of resident minority groups including Jews, Berbers, Arabs and Asian people. 2019 police data indicates a total of 1,142 acts classified as "racist" without a religious connotation.

In the Arab world, racism targets non-Arabs and the expat majority of the Arab states of the Persian Gulf coming from South Asian groups as well as Black, European, and Asian groups that are Muslim; non-Arab ethnic minorities such as Armenians, Africans, the Saqaliba, Southeast Asians, Jews, Kurds, and Coptic Christians, Assyrians, Persians, Turks, and other Turkic peoples, and South Asians living in Arab countries of the Middle East.

Racism in the LGBT community is any negative prejudice or form of discrimination against ethnic minority lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities by white LGBT communities in the Western world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Bosnian Americans in St. Louis</span>

The city of St. Louis, Missouri, and metropolitan area is tied with Chicago, Illinois for the largest Bosnian American population in the United States, and has the largest Bosnian population outside of Bosnia. The highest concentration of Bosnians in St. Louis is in the "Little Bosnia" neighborhood of Bevo Mill. The Bosnian cultural imprint can be seen in the numerous Bosnian restaurants, bakeries, and cafes, as well as several Bosnian mosques and religious organizations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of slavery in the Muslim world</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Racial capitalism</span> Post-Marxist social and economic concept

Racial capitalism is a concept reframing the history of capitalism as grounded in the extraction of social and economic value from people of marginalized racial identities, typically from Black people. It was described by Cedric J. Robinson in his book Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, published in 1983, which, in contrast to both his predecessors and successors, theorized that all capitalism is inherently racial capitalism, and racialism is present in all layers of capitalism's socioeconomic stratification. Jodi Melamed has summarized the concept, explaining that capitalism "can only accumulate by producing and moving through relations of severe inequality among human groups", and therefore, for capitalism to survive, it must exploit and prey upon the "unequal differentiation of human value."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indian Ocean slave trade</span>

The Indian Ocean slave trade, sometimes known as the East African slave trade or Arab slave trade, was multi-directional slave trade and has changed over time. Captured in raids primarily south of the Sahara, predominately black Africans were traded as slaves to the Middle East, Indian Ocean islands, Indian subcontinent, and Java. Beginning in the 16th century, they were traded to the Americas, including Caribbean colonies.

Racism in Jewish communities is a source of concern for people of color, particularly for Jews of color. Black Jews, Indigenous Jews, and other Jews of color report that they experience racism from white Jews in many countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Kenya, South Africa, and New Zealand. Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews also report experiences with racism by Ashkenazi Jews. The centering of Ashkenazi Jews is sometimes known as Ashkenormativity. In historically white-dominated countries with a legacy of anti-Black racism, such as the United States and South Africa, racism within the Jewish community often manifests itself as anti-Blackness. In Israel, racism among Israeli Jews often manifests itself as discrimination and prejudice against Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, Ethiopian Jews, African immigrants, and Palestinians. Controversially, some critics describe Zionism as racist or settler colonial in nature.

References

  1. ↑ "Research Guides: Middle East and North Africa: Racism in MENA Region".
  2. ↑ Phares, Walid (18 March 2008). The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad. St. Martin's Publishing. ISBN   9780230610927.
  3. ↑ "White Muslims, Black Muslims". Critical Muslim. 10 August 2020. Retrieved 2022-04-22.
  4. 1 2 "'Islam is a Blackfella Religion, Whatchya Trying to Prove?': race in the lives of white Muslim converts in Australia" (PDF). State Library Victoria. Retrieved 2022-04-22.
  5. ↑ "We need to tackle anti-black racism in Muslim communities". SBS . Retrieved 2022-04-22.
  6. ↑ "Beyond Colour-Blind: On Writing an Anti-Racism Guide for White Muslims". Muslim Link. Retrieved 2022-04-22.
  7. ↑ "Combating Anti-Black Racism". Harvard University . Retrieved 2022-04-22.
  8. ↑ "Dubai's Modest Fashion Week 'excludes' Black Muslim bloggers". The New Arab. 13 December 2017. Retrieved 2022-04-22.
  9. ↑ "Muslim Women Are Calling Out Dubai's Modest Fashion Week For A Lack Of Diversity". BuzzFeed. 23 December 2017. Retrieved 2022-04-22.
  10. ↑ "When racialised assumptions don't fit: White Muslims and the contestation of threat". London School of Economics. 24 October 2018.
  11. ↑ "Black Muslim Experiences". Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. 18 June 2020. Retrieved 2022-04-22.
  12. ↑ "There's another community upset in St. Louis over a senseless killing". Quartz. 11 December 2014. Retrieved 2022-04-22.
  13. ↑ "Are the media ignoring another St Louis killing?". BBC News. 3 December 2014. Retrieved 2022-04-17.
  14. ↑ "St. Louis Bosnians Have Been Dragged to the Forefront of the City's Racial Tensions". Vice News. 16 December 2014. Retrieved 2022-04-17.

Sources

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