Al Qaeda threat narratives rest on unspoken racial images rather than evidence

Evidence

Indeed, all three characteristics (jihad, bonds between members, and the sleeper cell) become believable, as I show below, largely through unspoken but nonetheless invoked racial images of Muslim and Arab irrationality, tribalism, and, finally, disease or pathology. These ideas position non-Arabs and non-Muslims, in contrast, as belonging to a society of individuals who are rational and secular. As CSIS reiterates time and time again through the hearings, Arabs and Muslims are not like us. The power of this narrative structure is such that it is virtually impossible to question its coherency by asking, for example, how we come to know about these characteristics. The force of law without law, where questions need not be answered, only entrenches further the narrative of a potentially deadly clash of civilizations. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 98

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that a security narrative’s rhetorical power lies precisely in its immunity to questioning — ‘law without law’ — is a dense observation about how racialized threat frames operate below the level of evidence.
• XREF: connects to: US empire’s conception of the Philippines as al-Qaeda territory targeted Filipino-Americans domestically; Imperial conceptions that tag homelands as al-Qaeda territory produce shared persecution