Guilt by association rather than evidence determines suspicion of Muslims in the war-on-terror era.

Evidence

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

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels Changez’s treatment in The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Changez’s friends’ suspicion of him after 9/11; and Naqvi’s Home Boy. This is exactly the analytical vocabulary for the reader’s two novels. — connects to: Framing drove membership in an ascribed conspiratorial enemy, not behaviour or intent. — Erin K. Jenne and Promise Frank Ejiofor, Ethnopopulism and genocidal…, 65; Former Air Force investigators pivoted to labeling Muslim groups terrorist fronts; Nearly three-quarters of US terrorism convictions relied on perceived ideology, not criminal acts — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 585
• DEFINE: Defines ‘narrative of guilt by association’ as a mechanism by which fiction shows the security state manufacturing suspicion.