Ordinary citizens are recruited by the state to surveil Muslim Americans

Evidence

Racialization of Muslims is not just a state-led process but one that also occurs through interactions in daily life. Racialized meanings attached to Muslim bodies by the state are politically motivated, such as to get public support for maintaining and investing in a surveillance state or foreign policy like the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Private citizens internalize the messages given to them by both the state and the media and then interact with Muslims in ways that reflect their misperceptions of Islam. The state encourages citizen participation in the War on Terror through the Department of Homeland Security’s publicly placed slogans and ads like “If You See Something, Say Something.” This state-run program emboldens private citizens to report any suspicious activity they see. As a result, private citizens are invited to participate in the surveillance of Muslim bodies. By observing, monitoring, and policing Muslims, private citizens also participate in the racialized surveillance of Muslim Americans. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 251

Categorization

• XREF: Directly links to Beydoun’s argument about the state’s complicity in Islamophobia and to the countersurveillance literature; also connects to how the ‘See Something, Say Something’ program parallels COINTELPRO-era citizen informant programs.
• DEFINE: Defines racialization as operating through both state policy and everyday citizen interaction, establishing the two-tier framework Selod uses throughout.
• SEED: Angle: how mundane DHS public slogans transformed private citizens into an unpaid surveillance force, a domestic soft-power corollary to the militarized watch.