National security law legally overrides protections against racial profiling of Muslims

Evidence

Cainkar argues that programs like NSEERs, which are based on “assumptions about the innate characteristics of persons who inhabit the grand categories of Arab and Muslim,” lead to the “racialization of Arabs and Muslims because they give concrete meaning to essentialized, undifferentiated representations of Arabs and Muslims.” In 2003, another thousand people were arrested as part of a program to catch “absconders” from Middle Eastern nations who had overstayed their visas and who might have knowledge of “terrorist activity.” Many of these people were put “on planes to destinations where they knew no one. They left behind jobs, homes, and families, including American-born children.” American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) National Legal Director David Cole has referred to these forms of persecution as the “new McCarthyism.” While the Cold War persecuted Communists in the United States, the war on terror targeted racialized subjects. Such a perception coded into law enabled the FBI to gather information about “concentrated ethnic communities,” on the grounds that such information can aid in the analysis of “potential threats and vulnerabilities” and assist in “domain awareness,” as legal expert Faiza Patel observes. Put simply, the FBI is legally permitted to racially profile Muslims, though it does not use that term. While federal law around anti-discrimination prevents profiling Muslims simply because they are Muslims, national security can be used to override these protections. Thus, it is legal to assume that a devout Muslim from a Middle Eastern country is linked to terrorism. As legal scholar Leti Volpp has argued, after the events of 9/11 the “terrorist” was differentiated from the “citizen,” so that civil liberties could be denied to the former. Such a denial of rights is based on exclusionary racist logics. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 552

Categorization

• XREF: The Cainkar/Volpp/Cole framing directly names the racialization mechanism and the terrorist/citizen distinction that parallels Rana’s and Aziz’s work on the imperial security state. — connects to: The national security state has racialized Muslims into a category vulnerable to premature death. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 52; National security exceptions legally override anti-discrimination protections for Muslims — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 564; The state authorizes citizens to racially profile Muslims under national security — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 424 (+7 more)
• QUESTION: The precise legal mechanism by which ‘national security can be used to override’ anti-discrimination protections when profiling Muslims is asserted but not fully unpacked here—worth tracing the actual doctrine.

Broader Connections

• National security exceptions legally override anti-discrimination protections for Muslims #corroborates (0.98) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 564
• The state authorizes citizens to racially profile Muslims under national security #expands (0.85) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 424
• The association of Islam with terror was structured into national security laws #expands (0.85) — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 19
• Racialized claims of terrorist harm weight legal balancing tests against Muslims. #corroborates (0.85) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 350
• National security law became a pretext to silence dissident religious Muslims #expands (0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 910
• Racial profiling extends to religious signifiers like Muslim names and clothing. #expands (0.80) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 227
• Surveillance derives from country-of-origin priority lists that racialize Muslim identity #expands (0.75)
• Muslim identity is criminalized by national security policies #contradicts (0.70) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 874
• Government profiling rules exempt national security and stay nonbinding #contradicts (0.70) — Sahar F. Aziz, Sticks and Stones, the Words That Hurt, 93