Muslim racialization literature argues that a new racialized group emerged after 9/11, but does not examine how this group is positioned relative to US black–white binary racial logic. In fact, man...

Moving beyond (and back to) the black–white binary: a study of black and white Muslims’ racial positioning in the United States

https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/downloads/w6634464d

Beyond and Back to the Black-White Binary: Muslims and Race-Making in the United States

A liberal, state-sanctioned, ‘official’ antiracism structures academic and activist efforts to establish Islamophobia as a form of racism, as well as the conflict surrounding such efforts. This ess...

Official antiracism and the limits of ‘Islamophobia’

ABSTRACT How do counterterrorism policies in the United States reproduce anti-Black racism? Research on U.S. domestic counterterrorism post-9/11 has largely focused on the experiences of Muslim Americans while marginalising both overlapping and separate effects of counterterrorism policy on non-Muslim people of colour, particularly non-Muslim Black communities. I argue that domestic counterterrorism policy, as an act of determining what kinds of political contention the state finds non-threatening, has roots in the historical treatment of Black resistance and continues to derive power and legitimacy from oppressing Black communities. Using the case of the Black Liberation Army and its members, I show that federal counterterrorism institutions were shaped by opposition to Black liberation, alongside more well-studied threads of xenophobia and Islamophobia. This article thus extends understandings of discrimination and prejudice within the U.S. counterterrorism apparatus and advocates for greater attention to anti-Blackness not only in policing but in security institutions more broadly.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17539153.2022.2031132?needAccess=true

Terror as justice, justice as terror: counterterrorism and anti-Black racism in the United States

In Europe, the rise of populism is coupled with the rise of Islamophobia, vividly evident with exponential increases in votes for anti-Islam political parties in national elections. These parties portray Islam and Muslims as threats and maintain a position that Islam (as a religion and culture) is a threatening contrast to European values. By analysing Islamophobic discourses of the French National Front, Alternative for Germany and the Dutch Freedom Party, this article argues that Islamophobic populism targets not only Muslims, but also the incumbent leaders. By looking at the current dynamics of public opinion, this article explains how Islamophobic populism functions as an electoral strategy.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/16AEE46489964E56D21F1B54DA013E75/S0017257X19000356a.pdf/div-class-title-the-strategic-logic-of-islamophobic-populism-div.pdf

The Strategic Logic of Islamophobic Populism

Though Islamophobia has deep roots in both American culture and US society, its vitality in those domains is a result, at least in part, of the state repression of political dissent organized around Islamic symbols and themes. Long before 9/11, the US government was concerned about the possibility that Muslims on American soil would challenge the political status quo. Beginning in the 1930s, this fear resulted in formal government surveillance and prosecution of African American Muslim civil and religious organizations and their members. Organized and state-supported Islamophobia was not confined to the use of state surveillance, local police departments, and the US courts. After World War II, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) used mainstream media to prosecute a war of disinformation about Muslim groups, and by the 1960s, engaged in aggressive counterintelligence to repress what it deemed to be the threat of political radicalism among Muslim Americans.

Edward E. Curtis

Papers

The Black Muslim Scare of the Twentieth Century