The War on Terror shifted Muslim Americans down the racial hierarchy away from whiteness

Evidence

In the current era of the War on Terror, marked by hypersurveillance of Muslim bodies, I argue that South Asian and Arab Muslim Americans’ racial experiences have once again changed due to the current sociopolitical climate. For Muslim Americans, their racial and ethnic identities intersect with their racialized religious identity to incite new experiences. We must continually reexamine the racial hierarchy because one’s location on it is not static but fluctuates (Omi and Winant 2015). Because of the institutionalization of anti-Muslim sentiments in attitudes and policies, South Asian and Arab Muslim men and women have been shifted down the hierarchy away from whiteness. For Arab Muslims, the racial classification of white is no longer appropriate, while for South Asian Muslims, their status as a model minority or honorary whites no longer reflects their lived realities with racism. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 463

Categorization

• XREF: The mechanism directly supplies what the reader’s map needs for the Global Racial Enemy slot — institutionalized anti-Muslim sentiment demoting an entire religious group in racial classification. — connects to: The War on Terror racializes all Muslims as a boundless enemy to justify war — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 540
• DEFINE: Clarifies the book’s core analytic claim: racial location is dynamic, and faith-based surveillance reclassifies Muslims away from white without making them Black — a distinct racial position.