The FBI treated politically active black religions as non-religion

Evidence

This framing suggests that for the FBI, religion, at least among black people, must be politically quiescent in order to be religion. Once a group began to articulate a position that ran counter to the dominant politics of the Bureau, it stopped being religion proper. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 394

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A compact, dense claim doing heavy theoretical work: it names the mechanism by which state surveillance strips religiosity from politically dissident subjects — religion only counts as religion when it is politically inert, a condition that de facto targets the already-marginalized.
• XREF: Echoes Talal Asad’s genealogy of religion as a separable, private sphere, and connects to the reader’s overarching pivot from ‘them’ to ‘us’ — the fearer’s categories doing the disciplining. — connects to: The FBI operated a documented program undermining civil rights leaders — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 153; The FBI designated orthodoxy by political loyalty rather than theology — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 235
• SEED: Possible essay angle: ‘religion as a privilege of the politically docile’ — how states in general (US, France, China) define legitimate religiosity by political quiescence.