Between Society and the State: Gendered Racialization and Muslim Americans

Al-Faham, Hajer; Ernst, Rose

doi:10.1108/s1059-433720160000070011

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…As a group, they exhibit extensive heterogeneity with respect to race and ethnicity, as well as other markers of identity (Pew Research Center 2017). Despite this variation, scholars researching American Muslims have identified patterns of racialization rooted in religious identity (Jamal 2009;Selod 2014;Al-Faham and Ernst 2016;Abdul Khabeer 2017;Merseth 2019). For American Muslims, Jamal (2009, 204) explains, racialization is based less on phenotype and more on "assumptions about culture and religion."…”

Section: Surveillance Of American Muslimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Researching American Muslims: A Case Study of Surveillance and Racialized State Control

Al-Faham¹

2021

Perspect. polit.

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How does surveillance shape political science research in the United States? In comparative and international politics, there is a rich literature concerning the conduct of research amid conditions of conflict and state repression. As this literature locates “the field” in distant contexts “over there,” the United States continues to be saturated with various forms of state control. What this portends for American politics research has thus far been examined by a limited selection of scholars. Expanding on their insights, I situate “the field” in the United States and examine surveillance of American Muslims, an understudied case of racialized state control. Drawing on qualitative data from a case study of sixty-nine interviews with Arab and Black American Muslims, I argue that surveillance operated as a two-stage political mechanism that mapped onto research methodologically and substantively. In the first stage, surveillance reconfigured the researcher-researchee dynamic, hindered recruitment and access, and limited data-collection. In the second stage, surveillance colored the self-perceptions, political attitudes, and civic engagement of respondents, thereby indicating a political socialization unfolding among Muslims. The implications of this study suggest that researchers can mitigate against some, but not all, of the challenges presented by surveillance and concomitant forms of state control.

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Section: Surveillance Of American Muslimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Researching American Muslims: A Case Study of Surveillance and Racialized State Control

Al-Faham¹

2021

Perspect. polit.

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“…They are racialised as much through their non-white national and ethnic origins, as through simplified elisions of their religious and cultural difference; a merger, as Lewis (2003, p. 877) points out, between ‘old notions of race as a biological characteristic [and] new notions of culture as a marker of difference’ (cited in Al-Faham & Ernst, 2016, p. 128). Further, Al-Faham and Ernst (2016, p. 128, citing Purkayashta, 2012, p. 62) assert that ‘Islam is treated as a religion that “promotes tendencies toward violence and terrorism” and … Muslim[s] are marked as having particular “phenotypes, cultures, nationalities and acts”.’ Hence racialising Muslims serves an ideological purpose. Razack (2007, p. 18), speaking of Shari’a in a Canadian context, argues that citizenship is based on an elusive notion of ‘modern’ liberal democratic values, while ‘pre-modern’ religious allegiance is attributed to Muslims.…”

Section: Multiculturalism In Theory and Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Muslims are also constructed as representing a deep and challenging diversity. They are racialised as much through their non-white national and ethnic origins, as through simplified elisions of their religious and cultural difference; a merger, as Lewis (2003, p. 877) points out, between 'old notions of race as a biological characteristic [and] new notions of culture as a marker of difference' (cited in Al-Faham & Ernst, 2016, p. 128). Further, Al-Faham and Ernst (2016, p. 128, citing Purkayashta, 2012) assert that 'Islam is treated as a religion that "promotes tendencies toward violence and terrorism" and … Muslim[s] are marked as having particular "phenotypes, cultures, nationalities and acts".'…”

Section: Multiculturalism In Theory and Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

The limits of multiculturalism in Australia? The Shari’a flogging case of R v. Raad, Fayed, Cifci and Coskun

Dagistanli

Possamaï

Turner

et al. 2018

The Sociological Review

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This article focuses on the marginal extremities – the limits – of Shari’a practices in Australia, through the example of a criminal case in which four Sydney-based Muslim men whipped a Muslim convert to punish him for his excessive consumption of drugs and alcohol. The men claimed they acted in line with the doctrines of Shari’a practice to ‘purify’ or absolve the victim of his sins. While the case was tried before a magistrate in a lower court, it is argued in this article that its social and political significance was wider, reaching into contemporary debates around multiculturalism and immigration from non-western, non-liberal and mainly Muslim nations. Mainstream media and political narratives viewed the whipping as an example of the moral dangers of accommodating Shari’a norms, eliding the differences between peaceable Shari’a and its violent extremities, while situating the case at the limits of multicultural accommodation. This article interrogates the objectionable margins of some cultural practices through this limit case. At the same time it questions the limits or limitations of a multiculturalism that homogeneously views the practices of entire ethnic or religious groups as violent and incommensurable with dominant norms, while using these understandings as a justification for marginalising these groups.

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“…The qualities ascribed to Muslims include fundamentalism (Selod 2015, 80;Shylock 2010, 2), cultural backwardness (Fadda-Conrey 2011, 534;Naber 2006, 243;Shylock 2010, 2), violence (Naber 2000;Cainkar 2006, 247), cruelty (Naber 2000, 52), incivility (Fadda-Conrey 2011, 534), and anti-Semitism (Shylock 2010, 2). This racialization is also gendered, with Muslim men ascribed with misogyny and violence, and Muslim women with oppression (Al-Faham and Ernst 2016;Naber 2006). Underlying this ascription of cultural difference in Islamophobia is also a belief about racial hierarchy in the United States and the relationship of race to American-ness: as Akhtar (2011, 786) argues, 'becoming an American is strongly linked to whiteness'.…”

Section: Lived Religion: Ascriptions Of Difference and The Racializatmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Charles Taylor (1994, 25) argues, 'a person or group of people suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves. 'The distortion to Muslim American self-imagining translates into a different, more constrained mode of being in public space that largely impacts those from working-class backgrounds(Naber 2006) or women(Al-Faham and Ernst 2016; Naber 2006).Naber's (2006, 245) research with American Muslims post September 11, 2001 demonstrates how those from working class backgrounds tended to experience Islamophobia in more 'violent and life threatening' ways than Muslims from middle and upper class backgrounds. Working…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

National security, Islamophobia, and religious freedom in the U.S.

Hancock

2017

Journal of Religious and Political Practice

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A central argument in Hurd's (2015) Beyond Religious Freedom is that the religious freedom policy framework pursued by the United States not only entrenches lines of division between religious faiths, but also is constructive of those very divisions. Where foreign and domestic policies purport to promote tolerance and respectful pluralism in the name of religious freedom, Hurd (2015, 41) contends they instead create 'new forms of social friction defined by religious difference.' Utilizing Hurd's (2015) categories of Official, Governed, and Lived religion I examine Islamophobia and the racialization of Muslims in the United States and demonstrate how overidentification with religious groups can exacerbate social tensions; how the 'agenda of surveillance' (Hurd 2015) disproportionately targets Muslims in the United States; and argue that recourse to law and policy alone in response to anti-Muslim discrimination is unlikely to transform social attitudes towards Muslims. Finally, I utilize a contemporary reworking of Adam Smith's sympathetic imagination and radical democratic theory to propose an alternative pathway towards dissolving the pejorative ascription of difference to religiously othered individuals.

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Between Society and the State: Gendered Racialization and Muslim Americans

Cited by 5 publications

References 7 publications

Researching American Muslims: A Case Study of Surveillance and Racialized State Control

Researching American Muslims: A Case Study of Surveillance and Racialized State Control

The limits of multiculturalism in Australia? The Shari’a flogging case of R v. Raad, Fayed, Cifci and Coskun

National security, Islamophobia, and religious freedom in the U.S.

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