Anti-mosque opposition recasts Islam as a political movement to deny First Amendment protection

Evidence

One unlikely site for such a protest was Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where the local Muslim community had been holding prayer services for years without attracting any notice. When the construction of a new Islamic Center was approved in 2010, organized resistance by mosque opponents took the form of arguing that Islam was not a religion protected by First Amendment guarantees, but a political movement aiming at the imposition of sharia law in America. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 28

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the rhetorical strategy Edward Curtis’s chapter analyzes re: the Nation of Islam’s contested religious status — a thread the introduction itself flagrantly sets up. — connects to: Anti-sharia bills sought to criminalize mosque attendance by defining Islam as ideology; Anti-sharia legislation sought to criminalize all mosque attendance as terrorism; Anti-sharia litigation frames mosques as terrorist-breeding sites to justify exclusion. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 372
• SEED: Angle: how ‘not a religion but a political movement’ is a durable legal-delegitimization template applied across minority faiths, from the Nation of Islam to contemporary mosque fights.