American imperial interests need a visible racialized Muslim figure as target

Evidence

Thus, In the post–9/11 era, the Muslim racial formation conflates Arabs and South Asians so that actors can play a broad spectrum of roles and representations. The histories that underlie narratives based on domestic terror schemes in the U.S. thus represent the full scope of the Muslim Middle East. Racial ambiguity and dissimulation are devices from which to racialize cultural, societal, and historical di√erence from the perspective of American imperial interests that requires a visible target—that of the racialized Muslim. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 388

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the framework of racial formation theory (Omi and Winant) and the role of a visible enemy in imperial legitimation.