US counterinsurgency logic fused foreign and domestic Arabs into one terrorist threat

Evidence

This is especially significant given that immediately after 9/11, it seemed that Arab and Muslim Americans would be represented sympathetically and Arabs and Muslims would not. However, as the “sleeper cell” threat permeated, all Arab and Muslim identities came to be suspect, and the “good” Arabs and Muslims became those who would help the United States fight Arab/Muslim terrorism—whether or not they were American. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 85 (#expands, via linked claim)

Khaled became a regular participant at AAPF’s annual social justice writers retreat, where he drew connections between the new frontier of American imperialism abroad and domestic campaigns of so-called counterterrorism and long-standing systems of racism against Black people and sexism against women. … Those retreats offered freestyle intellectual engagement, and Khaled’s organic observations from those informal debates and observations would later appear in his books and articles. … “Muslims are being racially constructed as terrorists,” he observed during one of our retreats, noting how “the War on Terror was a global imperial project.” These discussions often featured ideas that would later form the thesis of his subsequent publications, including his critically acclaimed first book, American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 22 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Cold War counterinsurgency logic fused foreign and domestic Arab threats; The global Arab terrorist image was produced by empire crisis and counterinsurgency with Israel — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 203; US counterterrorism targeted Arabs while ignoring actual Jewish terrorist groups — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 443 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• The sleeper-cell threat erased distinctions between Arab Muslims and American citizens in public suspicion #expands (0.85) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 85
• US imperialism abroad and domestic counterterrorism form one interconnected racial system #expands (0.80) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 22
• Proximity converted a remote global Muslim threat into a domestic one #corroborates (0.80)
• US foreign policy reframed Arab resistance to hegemony as racial terrorism #expands (0.78) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 607
• Operation Boulder redeployed COINTELPRO counterinsurgency methods to racialize Arab Americans #exemplifies (0.75) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 249
• US counterterrorism targeted Arabs while ignoring actual Jewish terrorist groups #contradicts (0.72) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 443
• Postwar modernization theory and the Israel partnership produced the Arab terrorist race #expands (0.72) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 103
• The War on Terror unites disparate national crusades against a single depersonalized Arab object #expands (0.70) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1176