State repression of the Nation of Islam conflated civil rights with communist subversion

Evidence

FBI surveillance during the Second World War (including the arrest of members of the Nation of Islam for draft evasion) conflated demands for civil rights with communism and a possible alliance with the Japanese. The Black Muslim scare of the 1960s continued this pattern, as the Department of Justice unsuccessfully argued in the Supreme Court that the Nation of Islam was a cult undeserving of First Amendment protections of religious freedom. Overt FBI actions against the Nation of Islam went beyond wiretapping to include briefings of journalists and the leaking of damaging information about Elijah Mohammed in an attempt to undercut him. The problem for African American Muslims was that immigrant Muslims from the Middle East were classified as whites, while the Black Muslims were discredited on racial lines. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 45

Categorization

• XREF: The white-classification of immigrant Muslims vs. racial discrediting of black Muslims echoes the Frankfurt School’s finding that anti-Semitic targets shift with economic role; also the ‘manufactured case’ logic recalls Milgrom’s reputation/entry-control machinery inverted for policing. — connects to: A high-capacity nondemocratic regime rolled back civil rights in response to an external threat. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 396
• SEED: The racial re-sorting — where the very same religion is celebrated when practiced by a ‘white’-classed immigrant and repressed when practiced by black citizens — is a clean analytical hook for an essay on how the target of fear is actually a racial-role construction, not a creedal one.