Counterterrorism surveillance compels immigrant congregations to transform their own leadership toward conformity
Evidence
Since the 9/11 attacks, the FBI has run massive counterterrorism investigations in greater Detroit, sending special agents into mosques and interviewing religious leaders and laypeople. As a result, many immigrant congregations have undergone what can only be described as strategic Americanization campaigns, revamping their boards, replacing older, conservative, Arabic-speaking members with younger, moderate, American-educated professionals, and making a concerted effort to introduce themselves to the larger society through open houses and da`wa (missionary and teaching) events. Self-policing is now the norm. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 684
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Self-policing under surveillance echoes Foucault’s panopticism and the discipline discussed throughout this volume’s anatomy of intolerance.
- DEEPTHINKING: The quiet transformation of congregational boards under surveillance is a dense mechanism of disciplinary power acting through subjects’ own self-revision.
Related
- FBI mosque investigations caused congregations to moderate their own leadership (similarity 0.92)
- State surveillance makes Muslim leaders perform Americanization while policing their own discourse (similarity 0.83)
- Institutionalized anti-Muslim ideology corrupts official counterterrorism training (similarity 0.79)