The American Muslim-as-public-enemy image shifted from black to brown

Evidence

The public face of Muslim America has changed since the 1960s. No longer represented by bow-tied black men hawking copies of Muhammad Speaks or the beautiful, semi-naked body of Muhammad Ali, public images of Muslims in America seem instead to rely on old Orientalist tropes like the burka’d woman, the bearded mullah, or the wild-eyed warrior. The Muslim as public enemy is brown rather than black. How that occurred is a long story, one that has to do with the end of the Cold War and the emergence of political resistance in the name of Islam to US empire and US client states among a number of Muslim groups worldwide. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 414

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s larger thesis about the pivot from ‘them’ to the frightened subject; also to Ernst’s own chapter framing of the Black Muslim Scare vs. post-9/11 era. — connects to: American popular perception linked Islam to Black identity and decolonial violence until recent decades — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 199; Renewed Muslim immigration shifted Islam’s racialization from Black radicals to Brown aliens — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 246