Everyday interrogations strip Muslim Americans of felt citizenship and belonging

Evidence

When they identified them as Muslim, private citizens began to question and interrogate the Muslim Americans in this study about their nationalities, cultural values, and their loyalty to the United States. Muslim Americans are stripped of their status as an American through these interactions. They do not enjoy the privileges citizenship should entail, including feeling like a valued and loyal member of society. Instead, since 9/11, Muslim Americans are told they should “go back home,” situating them as foreigners in their own country. They are repeatedly questioned about their connection to terrorism. Their identity as American is continuously called into question through their foreignization and constant surveillance since 9/11. In this unique time in history, Muslim Americans experience fragility around their national identity as a result of their racialized religious identity. As this chapter shows, private citizens participate in the racialized surveillance of Muslim Americans, which is guided by gender. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 253

Categorization

• XREF: The core interior-experience material the reader flagged as prime visceral evidence. Connects to the ‘fragility around national identity’ concept and to how citizenship functions as a felt status, not just legal right.
• DEEPTHINKING: The passage packs a dense claim: that everyday informal interrogation, not state action alone, produces an existential fragility of national identity that negates the privileges citizenship legally confers. That is the pivotal mechanism of racialization Selod is building toward.