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

Abstract

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.

From Interpersonal Violence to Institutionalized Discrimination: Documenting and Assessing the Impact of Islamophobia on Muslim American

“…Others said their experiences with Islamophobia have motivated them to become politically engaged, such as registering voters, organizing awareness events regarding Islamophobia, and advocating on behalf of Muslim Americans. The range of responses to Islamophobia, from withdrawing and vigilance in public spaces to activism, have been documented in other studies on Muslim Americans and discrimination (Al-Faham, 2021;Hobbs & Lajevardi, 2018)…”

“…Critics of the CVE program have raised concerns regarding the perpetuation of negative stereotypes regarding Muslims and Islam, and profiling of Muslim school children (Patel & Koushik, 2017). Other federal surveillance efforts have included the deployment of informants to infiltrate mosques, where informants have spied on mosque attendees and in some cases enticed mosque members to carry out domestic terrorist acts (Al-Faham, 2021;Szpunar, 2017). Finally, a recent example of government sanctioned Islamophobia is "Executive Order 13769 -Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States" also known as the "Muslim Travel Ban", which banned travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, and Yemen (White House, 2017).…”

(Dis)courtesy Bias: “Methodological Cognates,” Data Validity, and Ethics in Violence-Adjacent Research

“…Scholars may approach these challenges from any number of angles, ranging from emphasizing the importance of trust-based, credible, and/or working local relationships (Al-Faham, 2021, p. 5; Fujii, 2017; Thomson, 2010) to relying on sub-national comparisons (Giraudy et al, 2019; Snyder, 2001), employing sophisticated quantitative analysis (Hoover Green & Ball, 2019; Price et al, 2014), or practicing data triangulation, especially via mixed-methods or multi-epistemological research (Davenport & Ball, 2002; Driscoll, 2021; Khoury, 2020; Thachil, 2014, 2017; Thaler, 2017, 2019). Yet, the difficulties associated with conducting research in these locales are often understood as uniform, intrinsic characteristics that influence researcher-participant relations in predictable, blanket, and consistent ways across populations of interest.…”

“…For example, Soss (2002, 2013) demonstrates how single mothers who apply for food stamps within the US welfare system and have generally intrusive, dehumanizing, and negative encounters with case workers, including “feeling like a number,” then associate those feelings with the US government as a whole. Al-Faham (2021, p. 5) explains that during research on the heavily surveilled American Muslim community, she faced initial resistance and ongoing questions, including inquiries regarding her research motivations and calls to prove her Muslim-ness, in part due to how her position as a researcher was similar to that of state informants. In criminology and sociology, “prisonization” denotes a process by which “inmates internalize an institutional rhetoric that diverges from what they may have personally experienced,” which in turn affects research interactions (Schlosser, 2008, p. 1514–1515).…”

Hate, amplified? Social media news consumption and support for anti-Muslim policies

“…Allport 1954;Fuochi et al 2020;Pettigrew 1998;Pettigrew and Tropp 2006;Saleem et al 2016). With respect to Muslims specifically, scholars find that group threat yields support for policies like headscarf bans, restrictive anti-Muslim travel policies, and heightened policing of Muslim communities (Aizpurua et al 2017;Al-Faham 2021;Strabac and Listhaug 2008;Van der Noll 2010). In short, when the media serves as a primary source of information about an out-group, individuals are likely to hold both implicit and explicit prejudicial views towards this group.…”