State suppression of black Muslims targeted rhetorical resistance, not real treason

Evidence

Muhammad was acquitted of the sedition charge, but was sent away for refusing to register for the military draft. 44 His arrest and prosecution signaled the emergence of a larger pattern for dealing with African American Muslims who criticized the United States. These black Muslims would rarely engage in any genuinely treasonous activity against the United States, but they did capitalize on their imagined ties with foreign states and “foreign” traditions like Islam to resist, at least in rhetorical terms, the policies of the US government toward people of color both at home and abroad. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 395