"Birtherism" and Anti-Blackness: The Anti-Islamic Ante-Life of Africanized Slavery. Issue 8 (17th November 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Grimes, Katie Walker
• Is Part Of: Political theology. Volume 18:Issue 8(2017)
• Page Start: 709
• Page End: 729
• Publication Date: 2017-11-17
• Subjects: anti-blackness -- birtherism -- white supremacy -- supersessionism -- Islam; Christianity and politics -- Great Britain -- Periodicals; Political theology -- Periodicals; Christian socialism -- Periodicals; 261.7094105
• DOI: 10.1080/1462317X.2017.1335534
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1462-317X

Abstract

Abstract : The first black President of the United States, Barack Obama, entered office on a wave of racial optimism. But rather than transcending the United States' racialized history, Obama's presidency has in a sense "outed" it, exposing this history's anti-Islamic origins. This article establishes a link between anti-blackness and the Islamophobic reaction to his election: late medieval and early modern European Christians could classify newly Africanized peoples as uniquely and ontologically enslaveable only because they previously had imagined Muslims as such.