Classifying Muslims: Contextualizing Religion and Race in the United Kingdom and Germany

Abstract

Since the late 20th century, public discourse in Muslim‐minority countries has centered around the question of how to classify Muslims. In this paper, we compare the state, academic, and self‐classification of Muslims in two countries: the United Kingdom and Germany. We propose that the historical experience of anti‐Semitism makes religion a more salient master category to understand Muslims in Germany, while the history of both anti‐Semitism and anti‐Black racism largely resulting from colonial domination means that religion together with race are master categories used to understand Muslims in the United Kingdom. Through this multilayered ethnographic and historical analysis, we challenge taken‐for‐granted assumptions in both the political and academic milieu about what it means to be Muslim, emphasizing the importance of the interplay between sociopolitical categories and self‐identifications.

Racialism

“…Dans d'autres études, la religion aussi, avec l'intensification des conflits entre une soi-disant civilisation occidentale et une prétendue civilisation orientale, est de plus en plus investie d'une signification raciale, en Europe comme en Amérique du Nord. Ainsi le discours politique établit-il une opposition entre des Européens et des musulmans, dans laquelle des chercheurs en sciences sociales ont vite décelé une distinction et une hiérarchie raciales, et par ricochet un nouveau racialisme à l'oeuvre (Selod et Embrick 2013 ;Becker, Rinado et Guhin 2023).…”