The racialized Muslim category flexibly absorbs perceived Muslims across ethnicity, nationality, and religion.

Evidence

This chapter outlined how the racialized Muslim was constructed as a security threat in the post-9/11 era. While there are precursors going back to the 1960s, the post-9/11 “racial Muslim” is a fluid category that includes a wide variety of people from West Africa to Bangladesh. Additionally, others get included in this category such as the half-white/half-Jamaican “shoe bomber” Richard Reid and the Puerto Rican José Padilla. Muslims and those perceived as Muslims were targeted in a variety of ways from airport screenings, registries, detention, deportation, entrapment, preemptive prosecution, and intrusive surveillance. Additionally, the security state sought to recruit informants using both incentives and coercion. During the Obama administration, the Countering Violent Extremism program used a “friendlier” and kinder form of community-based surveillance. Theories of radicalization that justified various practices of preemptive prosecution were modes of racializing the “Muslim” and turning a diverse group of people into a “race” of people who had to be monitored and disciplined lest they carry out violence. These theories are based on the supposition that “Islam” is a dangerous ideology that drives Muslims to violence. The “Arab terrorist” of the 1960s has evolved into a composite and flexible terrorist figure. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 630

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth confirming the claim that radicalization theories function as racializing modes — is that Kumar’s analytical assertion or backed by the CVE/community surveillance evidence cited earlier?
• DEFINE: Defines the ‘racial Muslim’ as a fluid, composite security category operable on perceived rather than actual identity.
• XREF: connects to: The racialized Muslim category is fluid enough to absorb non-Muslims perceived as Muslim — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 630; The racialized Muslim category swept in non-Muslims who merely look Muslim — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 539; The Muslim is a unitary racial category despite enormous internal diversity. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in…, 45 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• The Muslim is a unitary racial category despite enormous internal diversity. #corroborates (0.90) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 45
• Muslims are racialized as a social group rather than a religious one #corroborates (0.90)
• Islamophobia has coalesced Muslims into a distinct racial group and Islam into a race. #corroborates (0.90) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 61
• Islam comes to function as a race through racecraft that erases internal ethnic differences #corroborates (0.90) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 516
• American Muslims are racially heterogeneous across white, black, Asian, Latinx categories. #complicates (0.85) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 142
• Sustained connection to Islam, not geography or phenotype, determines racial inclusion as Muslim. #qualifies (0.85) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 107
• The racialized content of the Muslim category persisted across changing labels #expands (0.80) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 163
• Muslims get racialized via projected religious ancestry regardless of self-understanding #qualifies (0.80) — Mareike Riedel, Islamophobia, Racial Discrimination…, 64
• Muslim religious identity becomes a racial category through surveillance. #expands (0.80)
• Muslim men can be racialized by ethnicity alone, not only by disclosed religion #corroborates (0.80)