The War on Terror imagined one undifferentiated Muslim geopolitical mass.

Evidence

Although Pakistan’s cultural, linguistic, and historical a≈nity is to the South Asian subcontinent, in the post–9/11 Age of Terror, it seems to have shifted geographically to become part of the Middle East. In fact, in the global War on Terror, the Muslim world is increasingly imagined as a single geopolitical mass. Without doubt, the complex overlap of regions including South Asia, Central Asia, the Arab Gulf, and the broader Middle East, has intensified through the connections created by mass migration, satellite technology, and complex financial, social, and cultural flows. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 34

Categorization

• QUESTION: Do satellite TV (Al Jazeera) and remittance flows measurably push South Asian Muslim self-identification toward a ‘Middle Eastern’ axis? Worth chasing data.
• SHARE: Send to a scholar of South Asian diaspora media — the point that Pakistan ‘geographically shifts’ into the Middle East post-9/11 is a compact formulation useful for teaching.