Most so-called terrorism prosecutions were mundane non-terrorism crimes

Evidence

A few months earlier, New York University’s Law and Society Program reached very similar findings. They also cataloged the Justice Department’s claims of fighting terrorism and, after their thorough investigation, found that there are in fact “few, if any, prevalent terrorist threats currently within the U.S.” (“Terrorist Trial Report Card, US Edition,” New York University Center of Law and Security, Dec. 2006, p. 3). The Washington Post had deduced the same thing previously, that the vast majority of prosecutions that are loudly touted as “terrorism-related” are in reality relatively mundane matters of immigration violations, credit-card fraud, or lying to a government official. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 1160

Categorization

• XREF: Reinforces the book’s argument that the War on Terror criminalized ordinary Muslim life; echoes the moral-panic contrast in the reader’s notes.