Surveilled Muslim women respond through a mix of self-surveillance and resistance.

Evidence

Muslim women’s responses were complicated. Because women were not on government lists and their religious attire triggered their surveillance by private citizens, they tried to both mitigate their surveillance and resist their racialization in various ways. Muslim women described the various ways they altered their behavior and dress in public spaces because of their constant surveillance. They told me stories of how they were careful to wear colorful hijabs and smiled more often in public to avoid appearing morose or oppressed. They attempted to reclaim their American identity while wearing the hijab because they knew they were being surveilled. In some ways, Muslim women felt they had more agency and power to contest their surveillance. Their responses lie somewhere between self-surveillance and resistance. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 352

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the gendered contrast with men’s experience that the reader is tracking, and to the COINTELPRO/surveillance literature cited in the reading purpose (Beydoun, Rana, Sian, Bazian).
• SEED: An essay angle: the hijab as a site where private-citizen surveillance, rather than state lists, drives racialization — the ‘surveillance without a list’ phenomenon.