Former Air Force investigators pivoted to labeling Muslim groups terrorist fronts
Evidence
The world itself was at a crucial impasse. Everybody could feel it in the air, particularly the world’s Muslims, who found themselves on the wrong side of the civilizational divide marked by the neoconservative Bush administration, the hawks that steered it from Washington, and the limitless school of vultures deployed around the world. … The War on Terror, about sixteen months into its existence, had swiftly remade the structures of American government, unleashing strident legislation that enabled almost unchecked surveillance of Muslim citizens and residents on the home front and beyond. … Muslim Americans like myself were under intense scrutiny. Our religious expression and political views, our entire beings relentlessly examined and categorized. Were we “moderate” Muslims acting in line with the dictates of the state? Or “bad” Muslims voicing our concern over the strident surveillance and sweeping dragnets imposed on Muslims at home and abroad? — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 261 (
#expands, via linked claim)
In fact, what are at stake here are types and degrees of innocence and guilt. In addition to the difficulty of establishing Issa’s “guilt” in relation to terrorism—his background is murky and Russian reports unreliable—the novel is concerned with the construction of a narrative of guilt by association, favored by Bachmann’s hawkish intelligence nemesis Arnie Mohr, who bases it on Issa’s known contacts. Untraceable Muslims are automatically treated with suspicion, even when, as in this case, the supposed “evidence” seems not to fit the personality of the accused. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 332 (
#complicates, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: The War on Terror surveilled and classified Muslims into state-approved or suspect categories — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 261; Guilt by association rather than evidence determines suspicion of Muslims in the war-on-terror era. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 332; US enemy-combatant classification expanded from named groups to all nearby Muslims.
Broader Connections
- The War on Terror surveilled and classified Muslims into state-approved or suspect categories
#expands(0.80) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 261 - Guilt by association rather than evidence determines suspicion of Muslims in the war-on-terror era.
#complicates(0.75) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 332 - US enemy-combatant classification expanded from named groups to all nearby Muslims.
#expands(0.72)