Murfreesboro’s white-majority demographics and segregated public housing frame its mosque conflict.

Evidence

In addition to residential discrimination, there are also some interesting parallels between opposition to public housing projects in the suburbs and anti-mosques activism. Since the Nixon administration, public housing opponents have linked crime and poverty with race. Public housing in the suburbs has been construed as outposts of the inner cities bringing all their problems to the pristine lawns and white-picket-fenced houses of middle-class Americans. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 493 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Both the people defending the decision to permit the ICM and its opponents equated the mosque with the KKK without questioning that false equivalence. The implication was that if an Islamic house of worship was permitted, then a historically violent white supremacist organization should also be sanctioned. Yet no one seems to have appreciated the irony that in the context of Tennessee, the KKK has not only been tolerated, but has indeed been celebrated and institutionalized in the past. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 415 (#complicates, via linked claim)

These competing racial constructions, or “racializations,” are built upon the notion that whites are always innocuous and self-directed individuals. Muslims, by contrast, are a faceless mass, all tied to an ominous monolith that is imagined in the form of the terror network of the day or the rival civilization that they all belong to. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 938 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Anti-mosque litigation concentrates in majority-white suburbs where Muslim populations expanded. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 471; Opponents and defenders alike equated a mosque with a white supremacist organization — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 415; Anti-mosque activism parallels suburban resistance to racialized public housing — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 493 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Anti-mosque activism parallels suburban resistance to racialized public housing #corroborates (0.95) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 493
• Opponents and defenders alike equated a mosque with a white supremacist organization #complicates (0.90) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 415
• Whites are framed as individuals while Muslims are framed as an ominous monolith #qualifies (0.85) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 938