Muslim racialization crosses party lines as both administrations national-security state grew

Evidence

Domestically, however, the Trump administration’s rhetoric and infamous Muslim Ban treated Muslims as a suspect race. Likewise, Obama’s national security policies were grounded in the logic that racialized Muslims are inherently violent national security threats. Whether disguised in liberals’ neutral-sounding labels such as “countering violent extremism” or conservatives’ explicit focus on combating “Islamic extremism,” racialization of Muslims is bipartisan. The result is a co-optation of religious tolerance, under the guise of an Abrahamic tradition, in pursuit of racial projects at home and empire building abroad. Put another way, government officials’ reference to an Abrahamic national identity has been used as a cover for continued anti-Muslim national security practices rather than a basis for deracializing Muslim identity. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 1004

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the author’s standing interest in how state security rhetoric masks racial projects; parallels the Complaints About Immodesty theme of moral language as political cover. — connects to: The national security state has racialized Muslims into a category vulnerable to premature death. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 52
• SEED: Angle: ‘tolerance as cover’ — how Abrahamic-inclusion rhetoric functions as state security laundering, not deracialization.