Abstract

This chapter discusses continuities and ruptures in the racialization of Islam and Muslims in five phases: the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the German Kaiserreich (1978–1918), the Nazi Reich (1933–1945), and postwar Austria and Germany (1945–2023). It compares how colonial and postcolonial empires and states have dealt with their Muslim populations, how Muslims resisted governmental control of their religious institutions, how the states attempted to subjugate and control them, and how this materialized in the establishment of new religious bureaucracy and educational institutions. Differences and similarities of these policies are discussed against the backdrop of various factors such as the structure of colonial empires, the colonial subject’s race, the postcolonial Muslim subject’s relation to former colonies, and the legal status of Islam.