The War on Terror surveilled and classified Muslims into state-approved or suspect categories

Evidence

The world itself was at a crucial impasse. Everybody could feel it in the air, particularly the world’s Muslims, who found themselves on the wrong side of the civilizational divide marked by the neoconservative Bush administration, the hawks that steered it from Washington, and the limitless school of vultures deployed around the world. … The War on Terror, about sixteen months into its existence, had swiftly remade the structures of American government, unleashing strident legislation that enabled almost unchecked surveillance of Muslim citizens and residents on the home front and beyond. … Muslim Americans like myself were under intense scrutiny. Our religious expression and political views, our entire beings relentlessly examined and categorized. Were we “moderate” Muslims acting in line with the dictates of the state? Or “bad” Muslims voicing our concern over the strident surveillance and sweeping dragnets imposed on Muslims at home and abroad? — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 261

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the moderate-versus-bad Muslim binary that later structures the book’s analysis.
• XREF: connects to: A concentrated wave of 2009 arrests cast Muslims as wartime internal enemies; Former Air Force investigators pivoted to labeling Muslim groups terrorist fronts; The War on Terror recycled COINTELPRO-era racial policing tactics against Muslims — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 263