Mumei’s Reviews > Muslims in the Western Imagination > Status Update

Let me know how it is when you're done! looks interesting

I am not done, but it is *excellent*. I side-eyed one line (that race is biological - which is like true in a super narrow and super specific sense (e.g. people are racially categorized based on appearances and your appearance is biological), but it's a trivial line. There are really interesting observations about skin color. For instance, she talks about various instances where medieval stories tell about Muslims (Saracens, in these stories) who are described as black and deformed and monstrous, but who upon conversion to Christianity become white skinned and human:

"The identification of light skin with Christianity is found through the centuries in tales of Muslim monsters and monstrous births that follow the medieval formula of conversion and healing, the restoration of humanity to the true believer. For medieval Christians, there was no community of "white people," per se, even though foreigners were often represented with dark skin. Certainly, "race" as I am speaking of here is not constructed or politicized in the medieval mind in the same way as we find it in the modern imaginaire. However, in the Middle Ages we see the foundations of the ways in which "whiteness," race, and Christianity become connected over time."

Sounds good. I'll check it out.

You should also check out

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

While it only spends a section of a chapter on it (I think), this book does narrate how and why white Carribean planters developed full blown racism during the period.