All content tagged with: Islamophobia

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  • The Ban and its Enduring Bandwidth

    This Essay is a contribution the Michigan Journal of Race & Law’s special issue marking the 20th anniversary of September 11, 2001 and the ensuing War on Terror. It reflects on Executive Order 13769, widely known as the “Muslim Ban,” years after it was signed into law, as an extra-legal catalyst of state-sponsored and private Islamophobia that unfolded outside of the United States.

  • State Sponsored Radicalization

    Where was the FBI in the months leading up to the violent siege on the U.S. Capitol in 2021? Among the many questions surrounding that historic day, this one reveals the extent to which double standards in law enforcement threaten our nation’s security. For weeks, Donald Trump’s far right-wing supporters had been publicly calling for and planning a protest in Washington, D.C. on January 6, the day Congress was to certify the 2021 presidential election results. Had they been following credible threats to domestic security, officials would have attempted to stop the Proud Boys and QAnon from breaching the Capitol perimeter. Yet when the day came, the mob of pro-Trump extremists seemed to catch law enforcement by surprise. They seized the Capitol, ransacked congress members’ offices, and openly posted photos of their destruction and their weapons online. In the preceding two decades, the U.S. government has poured money into a behemoth national security apparatus. The FBI’s annual budget ballooned from $3 billion in 1999 to nearly $10 billion today. Much of this 300% increase went to countering terrorism with a mandate to surveil, investigate, and prosecute “homegrown terrorists.” In no uncertain terms, the directive was for the FBI to target Muslim communities.

  • A Religious Double Standard: Post-9/11 Challenges to Muslims’ Religious Land Usage

    Muslims in the United States face real limits on their religious freedom. Numerous influential individuals and organizations even posit that Islam is not a religion and that, therefore, Muslims do not have rights to religious freedom. The claim is that Islam is a political ideology that is intent on taking over the country and subverting Americans’ constitutional rights. This narrative has gained momentum since the attacks of September 11, 2001 and continues to be amplified and disseminated by a well-funded cadre of anti-Muslim agitators. One area where its effects can be seen clearly is in religious land use, where a concerted effort to deprive Muslims of basic rights frustrates the aims and principles of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA).

  • 9/11 Impacts on Muslims in Prison

    It is no understatement to say that September 11, 2001, is the most important date in the history of American Islam. From this day forth, Muslims would become a target for social wrath and become vilified like at no other time in American history. In one fell swoop, Muslims became the most feared and hated religious group in the country. While analysis of the impacts on Muslims tends to focus on Muslims outside of prison, it is critical to recognize that Muslims in prison were no exception to the post- 9/11 hostilities directed at Muslims. They experienced similarly heightened levels of Islamophobia and discrimination. The main goal of this essay is to consider the War on Terror in the prison context in the years following the events of 9/11. The work aims to assess how fear and anger seeped into prisons and became the means of repressing Muslims and casting them as a unique threat to national and institutional security. Although time has proved these attitudes unjustified and alarmist, they have taken a toll on those in prison and made life more difficult for individuals already existing in some of the harshest conditions in the country.

  • The World of Private Terrorism Litigation

    Since 9/11, private litigants have been important players in the “fight” against terrorism. Using several federal tort statutes, these plaintiffs have sued foreign states as well as other parties, like non-governmental charities, financial institutions, and social media companies, for terrorism-related activities. While these private suits are meant to address injuries suffered by plaintiffs or their loved ones, they often reinforce and reflect the U.S. government’s terrorism-related policies, including the racial and religious discrimination endemic to them. Indeed, much like the U.S. government’s criminal prosecutions for terrorism-related activities, private terrorism suits disproportionately implicate Muslim and/or Arab individuals and entities while reinforcing the belief that those groups are predisposed to engage in or support terrorism. This short Article provides a brief overview of the world of private terrorism litigation. It begins by describing the various federal tort statutes on terrorism—including their fraught relationship with foundational tort law norms. It explains the connection between those laws and the U.S. government’s terrorism prosecutions, as well as its other terrorism-related priorities. It ends by demonstrating how private terrorism suits reinforce discrimination and prejudice against Arabs and Muslims that are reflected in criminal terrorism prosecutions. In focusing on private terrorism litigation, this Article highlights how private parties are furthering the government’s counterterrorism work, as well as how private terrorism suits reinforce the state’s endemic discrimination against Arabs and Muslims in the counterterrorism realm.

  • Origin Stories: Critical Race Theory Encounters the War on Terror

    Stories matter. They matter to those intent on maintaining structures of power and privilege, and to those being crushed by those structures. In the United States, the space to tell, and to hear, our stories has been expanding. This means that the histories and lived realities of those who have been excluded, particularly people of color, are seeping into mainstream discourse, into the books our children read, the movies and television shows they watch, and the many websites comprising social media. Critical race theory has played a role in this expansion. It insists that we recognize the legitimacy of the stories of those deemed “Other” because they have been erased or distorted beyond recognition in the dominant narrative. 3 Critical race theory has helped ensure that the legacies of genocide and broken treaties, of the cruelties imposed upon enslaved persons, of the forced inclusion and exclusion of those regarded simply as disposable labor, have worked their way into the realm of what can be talked about. Critical race scholars have exposed immigration injustices and called out xenophobia and Islamophobia. All this discomfits those who benefit, or believe they benefit, from the status quo.

  • Executive Disorder: The Muslim Ban, Emergency Advocacy, and the Fires Next Time

    On January 27, 2017, one week into his presidency, Donald Trump enacted Executive Order No. 13769, popularly known as the “Muslim Ban.” The Order named seven Muslim-majority nations and restricted, effective immediately, the reentry into the United States of visa and green card holders from these states. With the Muslim Ban, President Trump delivered on a central campaign promise, and as a result, injected Islamophobia into American immigration law and policy. The Muslim Ban had an immediate impact on tens of thousands of Muslims, directly affecting U.S. visa and green card holders currently outside of the country, while exacerbating fear and hysteria among immigrant and citizen Muslim populations within the country. This Essay memorializes the advocacy taken by the authors in the immediate wake of the Muslim Ban, highlighting the emergency legal and grassroots work done by the authors during a moment of national disorder and disarray, and within Muslim American communities, mass confusion and fear. This Essay highlights efforts, coalition building, and the necessary resources that contributed to the effective defense and education of impacted Muslim populations. It further examines the heightened vulnerabilities of and compounded injuries to often-overlooked Muslims at the intersection of race and poverty, as a consequence of Islamophobic policies such as the Muslim Ban.

  • Coercive Assimilationism: The Perils of Muslim Women’s Identity Performance in the Workplace

    Should employees have the legal right to “be themselves” at work? Most Americans would answer in the negative because work is a privilege, not an entitlement. But what if being oneself entails behaviors, mannerisms, and values integrally linked to the employee’s gender, race, or religion? And what if the basis for the employer’s workplace rules and professionalism standards rely on negative racial, ethnic or gender stereotypes that disparately impact some employees over others? Currently, Title VII fails to take into account such forms of second-generation discrimination, thereby limiting statutory protections to phenotypical or morphological bases. Drawing on social psychology and antidiscrimination literature, this Article argues that in order for courts to keep up with discrimination they should expansively interpret Title VII to address identity-based discrimination rooted in negative implicit stereotypes of low status groups. In doing so, the Article brings to the forefront Muslim women’s identity performance at the intersection of religion, race, gender, and ethnicity—a topic marginalized in the performativity literature. I argue that Muslim female employees at the intersection of conflicting stereotypes and contradictory identity performance pressures associated with gender, race, and religion are caught in a triple bind that leaves them worse off irrespective of their efforts to accommodate or reject coercive assimilationism at work.

  • The USA Patriot Act: A Policy of Alienation

    This Article provides a brief overview of how Muslims were treated after 9/11. It documents how the USAPA and related measures have been used to monitor, investigate, detain, and deport Muslim U.S. citizens in violation of their civil rights. Of particular importance, is how the life circumstances of the Muslims in America have changed for the worse as a result of zealous enforcement and discriminatory application of the USAPA. In so doing, this Article seeks to provide concrete facts and a rich context to ascertain the implications of 9/11 on American society.