Security officials portray Muslim extremists as timelessly patient and unchanging

Evidence

As P.G. of CSIS elaborated for the Court, readily invoking the devious, endlessly patient Oriental, Al Qaeda ‘has a different sense of time than we do. They will wait for years before they attack.’ As in Almrei, while not everyone involved in Al Qaeda can be said to be ‘personally violent or personally engaged,’ those who are are unlikely to give up their dedication to the cause. As P.G. emphasized, ‘Violent beliefs of Islamic extremists will not fade with time, rendering these individuals threats to public safety for years to come.’ — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 132

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Orientalist ‘timeless East’ trope and to how control regimes justify permanence by making the subject’s patience infinite — parallels risk-of-recidivism logic that justifies preventive detention.
• DEEPTHINKING: The premise that a threat’s patience is infinite while the state’s watch is also indefinite collapses into a permanent-detention justifier — worth sitting with how threat temporality is racialized.