Kashmiri Muslim identity has been collapsed into presumptive terrorism across India.

Evidence

“Being a Kashmiri is a synonym of being a terrorist if you are living outside of Kashmir and inside India. If you wear a skullcap (kufi) while going to the mosque, people look at us as if we are wearing a bomb.” Muslim identity is intimately tied to terror suspicion, while being Kashmiri stands for the quest for self-determination that stands in the way of Modi’s Hindutva designs for Kashmir. In June of 2022, I met with several leaders of the Kashmiri freedom movement in Istanbul, Turkey, who echoed the same. One of them, who is also a founder of the independent research organization that tracks Hindutva violence, Hindutva Watch, succinctly stated, “They have reduced Kashmiri identity to terrorism.” — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 518

Categorization

• SHARE: The visual detail of a skullcap being read as ‘a bomb’ is a concrete, evocative finding for someone researching everyday sartorial Islamophobia.