Litigants weaponized court proceedings to spread anti-Muslim racist tropes

Evidence

The transcripts from the ICM injunction hearing illustrate these strategies. 249 The text is full of racecraft from the plaintiffs’ attorney, in his opening statement, and the expert witness. The court transcripts of the proceedings provide critical insights into the ways in which the law’s institutions and practices are used by the plaintiffs to disseminate a raft of racist ideas about Muslims and Islam, to tie Islam and Muslims to terrorism, to appropriate the power to construct the narrative about Islam, and to resignify its very terms to further their cause. All this is part of a broader nationwide anti-sharia law panic which resulted in bans legislated in several states. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 345

Categorization

• XREF: Shows legal institutions themselves being used to construct race — connects to her racecraft thesis and to the earlier claim that racecraft has material dimensions because segregation itself enacts race. — connects to: Plaintiffs rhetorically conflated mosque construction with hosting Osama bin Laden — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 381; Anti-sharia testimony framed lawful Muslim practice as a seditious, lawless threat; Tennessee officials equated a mosque with the KKK while institutionalizing the actual Klan. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 415 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Court legitimation converts false anti-Muslim claims into citable authority #expands (0.90)
• Racialized claims of terrorist harm weight legal balancing tests against Muslims. #corroborates (0.85) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 350
• Courts treated ordinary Muslim religiosity as evidence of terrorist predisposition #expands (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 574