German Imperial Orientalism: Toward an Ethnomethodological and Historical Study of Muslim as a Racialized Social Category

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Abstract

Scholars have been increasingly drawing attention to the racialization of Muslims in Western Europe in the contemporary period. Some in the Anglophone world, like Liz Fekete (2004) and Nicholas de Genova (2018), have also taken up the term “anti-Muslim racism” to describe attitudes, practices, and structures negatively targeting and affecting Muslims, a move which has also been occurring among some German scholars––such as Iman Attia (2009), Gabriele Dietze (2009), and Ilke Eickhof (2010)–––as well. The overwhelming majority of this new attention has focused on the racialization of Muslims post-9/11, with greater focus on the period of the so-called “refugee crisis.” This paper focuses on the antecedents of this period of racialization, examining German Imperial Oriental policy in order to further our understanding of the continuities of German orientation to Muslim as a racialized category. In specific, this paper explores the period between 1888 and 1945; this period includes the beginning of German semi-imperial policy in the region with the acquisition of the Anatolian Railway concession and Germany’s two “Holy War” projects during the First and Second World Wars. Combining an ethnomethodological approach with historical methods, this paper argues that we can see evidence of a historical orientation to Muslim as a racialized social category that is both relevant and consequential. Thus, the primary and secondary sources examined constitute both evidence that the category existed as a discursive resource to be deployed for any number of projects and evidence of the practices through which it was maintained as such. This paper contributes to studies of German racial formations, as well as to the broader study of anti-Muslim racism as a historical phenomenon.

Author

• Joseph Sterphone, University of California, Santa Barbara