Mapping Pakistan into the Middle East manufactures a target for state policing

Evidence

Pakistan is recast as part of the Middle East through imagined geographies of conflict and through the construction of the figure of the Muslim in the global racial system. Thus, conflating such diverse populations as Arabs and South Asians into the racialized ”Muslim” produces a visible target of state regulation and policing for consuming publics. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 425

Categorization

• XREF: This is a concrete example of how ‘imagined geographies’ reconstruct the world — parallels the Middle East/Muslim-world reconfiguration discussed in McAlister’s Epic Encounters and Shohat and Stam’s Unthinking Eurocentrism.
• DEFINE: Actually illustrates what ‘global racial system’ means in practice: geography is redrawn to make heterogeneous populations legible as one targetable enemy.