The Troubling Consequences of Seeing Muslims as a Racial Group

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How can a country supposedly founded on principles of religious freedom be so quick to support policies that violate the civil rights of Muslims? That’s one of the questions at the heart of a new book, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom, by Rutgers law professor Sahar Aziz.

The Racial Muslim proposes an answer: that some American politicians and institutions have perpetuated a narrative that Islam is not a religion, and thus doesn’t deserve such protections. In this view, Islam is instead a political ideology, and Muslims—in reality worshippers from diverse racial backgrounds—are viewed as a racial group, subject to racist discrimination. This phenomenon is different from religious bigotry, which tends to focus on theological arguments about why a particular set of beliefs is wrong, the book argues; here, Aziz sees a situation in which Muslims as a group are assigned a set of negative traits, such as the false notions that they are inherently untrustworthy, uncivilized and violent.
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Read More: Black and Non-Black Muslims Confront a Complicated Relationship With Policing and Anti-Blackness

The founding director of the interdisciplinary Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights, Aziz draws on her expertise in national security and civil rights to explore the history and current manifestations of Islamophobia in the U.S. She writes about the mechanisms targeting Muslim Americans, from surveillance to government watch lists to immigration restrictions, that have ramped up since 9/11. Her book also steps back to compare the plight of Muslims to other religious groups that have historically faced discrimination in America, such as Catholics, Mormons and Jews. The lawyer, whose family immigrated to the U.S. from Egypt when she was a child, was inspired by her own experiences to pursue a career confronting civil rights issues in the U.S. “I was indoctrinated by American schools into believing that America was…

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Source : time