State surveillance makes Muslim leaders perform Americanization while policing their own discourse

Evidence

However, mixed messages are the rule, as civic officials routinely congratulate Arabs and Muslims in the Detroit area when newly constructed mosques are inaugurated, while at the same time, new levels of police surveillance are enforced. FBI monitoring of mosques leads to enthusiastic efforts by Muslim leaders to demonstrate full Americanization, even while they stay on alert for infiltration by informers. The FBI informs Muslim leaders that they will be fine as long as they only talk about “true Islam”—evidently as understood by the US government. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 53

Categorization

• XREF: The FBI’s ‘true Islam’ condition parallels Grosfoguel’s chapter on ‘good vs bad Muslims’ — the state defining acceptable Islam. Directly serves the reader’s aim of comparing chapters. — connects to: Americanization advocates demanded continuous surveillance and registration of the population. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1502; Community leaders unknowingly become intelligence sources for the security state — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 624; Late-20th-century globalization was Americanization plus the fallout of Third World state collapse — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 112
• SEED: The ‘true Islam as understood by the US government’ line is an essay seed: how state surveillance reshapes religious orthodoxy itself — who gets to define religious authenticity.