Religious explanations of terrorist violence serve to expand state surveillance powers.

Evidence

Religious explanations of the violence of 9/11, however, have helped significantly expand the state’s control over its citizens. A few days after 9/11, President George W. Bush, in an address to Congress, reassured Americans that al-Qaeda represents “a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam.” He, nonetheless, associated 9/11 with some aspect of Islam—which, as yet, has never been convincingly defined—that, then, demanded constant surveillance and expanded state powers that would allow the state to monitor more readily and secretly its own citizens, detaining them and persecuting them on suspicion of terrorism. By attributing exclusively religious motivations to al-Qaeda’s acts of terrorism, even while disassociating these motivations from the “mainstream Islam,” the state, which in a democratic society is charged with the protection and representation of its citizens, found a way in which it could increase its control over its citizens and erode their right to due process in the name of their own protection. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 265

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s stated pivot from interrogating Islam to examining the frightened subject — the state deploys fear of Islam to extract citizen consent for expanded control. — connects to: National security agencies have coveted private-sector surveillance capacities as seamless extensions of state power — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 381; State surveillance treated militant Islam as more threatening than non-violent Christianity — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 193; Sacralizing religion extends state power across identity, law, and violence — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 67
• DEEPTHINKING: The mechanism is genuinely subtle: the state disavows Islam as mainstream (‘fringe movement perverting peaceful teaching’) while simultaneously relying on the religious association to justify unprecedented powers. Both disavowal and reliance serve the same function.
• SEED: Angle for an essay: how ‘exceptions’ to a stigmatized group (the ‘good Muslim’ / ‘fringe terrorist’ distinction) are what actually make expansive control possible — the disavowal is load-bearing.