Race and religion shape who is seen as freedom fighter versus terrorist

Evidence

Within the realm of geopolitics, race, religion, and interests still matter. The three are deeply entwined, particularly in relation to the Middle East and the Muslim world, where a protracted War on Terror renders anybody Arab, Brown, or Muslim a putative terrorist, notwithstanding the righteousness of their struggle or the unhinged imperialism of their opponents. The public imagining of freedom fighter and terrorist, victim and villain is intensely racial, which enables the seeing of everyday Ukrainians who take up arms and throw Molotov cocktails as heroes and powerless Muslims engaged in the very same acts, in pursuit of the same self-determination, as extremists. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1191

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that the very same acts are read heroically or as extremism depending on race is a paradigm-level insight about how racialized perception governs the moral valuation of resistance.