Confronting Islamophobia in the United States
Framing civil rights activism among Middle Eastern Americans
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5778780 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Erik Love (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 3-4 |
| Pages | 401-425 |
| Publication date | 2009-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Patterns of Prejudice (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-322X • E-ISSN: 1461-7331 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00313220903109367 |
| OpenAlex | W2087606854 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 47 |
In recent years, significant research on Islamophobia has created an important literature about anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim discourses in the United States. However, the term 'Islamophobia' has come to refer to racialized bigotry, discrimination, policies and practices directed towards a range of groups, Muslim and otherwise. Love establishes racial formation as a conceptual framework for understanding Islamophobia in the United States, beginning with an examination of the linked and racialized history of American communities with ancestry in North Africa and southwestern Asia, that is, Middle Eastern Americans. He then explores the roots of Islamophobic discourses in the United States in terms of popular culture stereotypes, discriminatory state actions and bigotry, including hate crimes. This leads to a discussion of anti-Islamophobia civil rights activism situated within the historical context of organizational responses to racialized discrimination in the United States. The analysis shows that it remains unclear whether diverse and historically divergent Middle Eastern American communities will remain divided along national-origin, religious, cultural and class lines. Taking historical models of advocacy into account, Love suggests three likely avenues for advocacy organizations that confront Islamophobia in the United States. Keywords: advocacyanti-Muslim prejudicecivil rightsIslamophobiaMiddle Eastern Americansracial formationracializationracism Acknowledgements I am grateful to the Richard Flacks Democracy Fund and the National Science Foundation for supporting this research. I wish to thank Lisa Hajjar, Kathleen Moore and Howard Winant for advice on earlier drafts and related analyses. The author accepts sole responsibility for the final version. Notes 1Edward Said, 'The imperial bluster of Tom Delay', Counterpunch, 20 August 2003, available at www.counterpunch.org/said08202003.html (viewed 12 May 2009). 2Michael Ellison, 'Sikh shot dead in US "retaliation" attack', Guardian, 17 September 2001, 10. 3Despite the term's offensive colonialist origins, for want of a better alternative, for brevity's sake and in part because it reflects the contemporary mainstream American definition, the term 'Middle East' will be used in this article to refer to Northern Africa and Southwestern Asia, and 'Middle Eastern Americans' can be defined as members of the diverse groups of immigrants and their descendants who identify with or trace their heritage to those regions. 4Although surveys provide conflicting numbers, it appears that South Asians constitute the largest subgroup among Muslim Americans. Most studies indicate that the majority of Arab Americans are non-Muslims, but this may have changed over the past decade. See Yasmeen Shaheen-McConnell, 'Arab Americans: demographics', 2003, available on the Arab American Institute website at www.aaiusa.org/arab-americans/22/demographics (viewed 12 May 2009); Pew Research Center, Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream (Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center 2007), 15, available on the Pew website at www.pewresearch.org/pubs/483/muslim-americans (viewed 12 May 2009); and Philippa Strum, 'Executive summary', in Philippa Strum and Danielle Tarantolo (eds), Muslims in the United States: Demography, Beliefs, Institutions (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars 2003), 1-4. 5Racial scapegoating in the United States, as a method of producing white American solidarity and nationalism, dates back to the founding days of the nation. See Anthony Marx, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of the United States, South Africa, and Brazil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998). 6Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd edn (New York: Routledge 1994). 7Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd edn (New York: Routledge 1994), 78-89. 8David Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic Books 1995); Yen Le Espiritu and Michael Omi, '"Who are you calling Asian?" Shifting identity claims, racial classifications, and the Census', in Paul M. Ong (ed.), Transforming Race Relations: A Public Policy Report (Los Angeles: LEAP Asian Pacific American Public Policy Institute and UCLA Asian American Studies Center 2000). 9John Tehranian, 'Selective racialization: Middle-Eastern American identity and the Faustian pact with whiteness', Connecticut Law Review, vol. 40, no. 4, 2008, 1-33 (2). 10I raise this issue here only tangentially to counter briefly the frequent claim that an era of 'colour-blindness' has begun in which race no longer matters. For a more thorough discussion, see Junaid Rana, 'The story of Islamophobia', Souls, vol. 9, no. 2, 2007, 148-61. 11Sylviane Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York: New York University Press 1998); Aminah Beverly McCloud, 'Islam in America: the mosaic', in Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Jane I. Smith and John L. Esposito (eds), Religion and Immigration: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Experiences in the United States (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press 2003), 159-74 (160). 12Karen Leonard, The South Asian Americans (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 1997), 39-84; Amir Marvasti and Karyn McKinney, Middle Eastern Lives in America (Lanham, MD and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield 2004), 3-40; Mohammad T. Mehdi, 'Arabs and Muslims in American society', in Wilbur C. Rich (ed.), The Politics of Minority Coalitions: Race, Ethnicity, and Shared Uncertainties (Westport, CT: Praeger 1996), 249-56 (249). 13Kathleen Moore, Al-Mughtaribun: American Law and the Transformation of Muslim Life in the United States (Albany: State University of New York Press 1995), 47-67. 14Kathleen Moore, Al-Mughtaribun: American Law and the Transformation of Muslim Life in the United States (Albany: State University of New York Press 1995), 29. 15There is extensive scholarship on the 'racial pre-requisite cases' involving Middle Eastern immigrants. See Sarah Gualtieri, 'Strange fruit? Syrian immigrants, extralegal violence and racial formation in the Jim Crow South', Arab Studies Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 3, 2004, 63-85; John Tehranian, 'Compulsory whiteness: towards a Middle-Eastern legal scholarship', Indiana Law Journal, vol. 82, no. 1, 2007, 11-17. 16Gualtieri, 'Strange fruit?', 1; Moore, Al-Mughtaribun, 47. 17Marvasti and McKinney, Middle Eastern Lives in America, 19-21. 18Islamophobia also affects non-immigrant Muslim Americans; the work of these groups to confront Islamophobia will be discussed below. 19Prema Kurien, 'Religion, ethnicity and politics: Hindu and Muslim Indian immigrants in the United States', Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 24, no. 2, 2001, 263-93; Karen Leonard, 'South Asian religions in the United States: new contexts and configurations', in Gita Rajan and Shailja Sharma (eds), New Cosmopolitanisms: South Asians in the US (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 2006), 91-114. 20Leonard, The South Asian Americans, 77, 82. 21Shaheen-McConnell, 'Arab Americans: demographics'; Michael Suleiman, 'Introduction: the Arab immigrant ex perience', in Michael Suleiman (ed.), Arabs in America: Building a New Future (Philadelphia: Temple University Press 1999), 1-24. 22Randa A. Kayyali, The Arab Americans (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 2006), 33-4. 23Sally Howell and Andrew Shryock, 'Cracking down on diaspora: Arab Detroit and America's "war on terror"', Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 76, no. 3, 2003, 443-62 (446). 24Marvasti and McKinney, Middle Eastern Lives in America, 3-8. 25See Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Not Quite American? The Shaping of Arab and Muslim Identity in the United States (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press 2004); Kathleen M. Moore, 'Muslims in the United States: pluralism under exceptional circumstances', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 612, no. 1, 2007, 116-32; and Karen Leonard, Muslims in the United States: The State of Research (New York: Russell Sage Foundation 2003). 26Pew Research Center, Muslim Americans, 1. 27Sherman A. Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 2005), 23. 28See Fachrizal Halim, 'Pluralism of American Muslims and the challenge of assimilation', Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, vol. 26, no. 2, 2006, 235-44; Moore, 'Muslims in the United States'; Rana, 'The story of Islamophobia'. 29Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books 1979). 30Norman Daniel, Islam and the West: The Making of an Image (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1960); John Victor Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press 2002). 31Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 2002), 3. 32Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press 2001), 112-25. 33Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press 2001), 82-3. 34Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Islamophobia: Making Muslims the Enemy (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield 2007), 118-25. 35Jack G. Shaheen, Abscam: Arabiaphobia in America, ADC Issues (Washington, D.C.: American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee 1980). 36Jack G. Shaheen, 'Reel bad Arabs: how Hollywood vilifies a people', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 588, no. 1, 2003, 171-93. 37Brian Keith Axel, The Nation's Tortured Body: Violence, Representation, and the Formation of a Sikh 'Diaspora' (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2001); Tony Ballantyne, Between Colonialism and Diaspora: Sikh Cultural Formations in an Imperial World (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2006). 38Axel, The Nation's Tortured Body, 79-120. 39Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & the Oklahoma City Bombing (New York: ReganBooks 2001), 249. 40Kevin Fedarko, 'Who wishes us ill?', Time Magazine, 29 July 1996. 41Nabeel Abraham, 'Anti-Arab racism and violence in the United States', in Ernest McCarus (ed.), The Development of Arab-American Identity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1994), 159; Nadine C. Naber, 'Ambiguous insiders: an investigation of Arab American invisibility', Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 23, no. 1, 2000, 37-61 (42-3). 42Hussein Ibish, 'Islamophobia', manuscript (publication forthcoming by the Muslim Public Affairs Council). 43Juan Cole, 'Blowback from the GOP's holy war', Salon.com (online), 1 February 2008, at www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/02/01/islamophobia/index.html (viewed 13 May 2009). 45Anne Norton, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2004), 210-11. 44Anne Norton, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2004), 114. 46David Frum and Richard Perle, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror (New York: Random House 2003), 35. 47Norton, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire, 178-9. 48Aladdin Elaasar, Silent Victims: The Plight of Arab & Muslim Americans in Post 9/11 America (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse 2004), 80; Mohamed Nimer, 'Muslims in American public life', in Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad (ed.), Muslims in the West: From Sojourners to Citizens (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 2002), 169-86 (178). 49Sunaina Maira, 'Youth culture, citizenship and globalization: South Asian Muslim youth in the United States after September 11th', Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 24, no. 1, 2004, 221-35. 50Anny Bakalian and Mehdi Bozorgmehr, 'Government initiatives after the September 11th attack on America', in Pyong Gap Min (ed.), Encyclopedia of Racism in the United States (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 2005). For more on how the 'no-fly' lists were created, see Anny Bakalian and Mehdi Bozorgmehr, Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans Respond (Berkeley: University of California Press 2009), 182-4. 51David E. Kaplan, 'Nuclear monitoring of Muslims done without search warrants', USNews.com (online), 22 December 2005, at www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/nest/051222nest.htm (viewed 14 May 2009). 52James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, 'Bush lets U.S. spy on callers without courts', New York Times, 16 December 2005, A1. 53Makeba Hunter Scott, 'Non-Muslim men allege profiling at Giants game', The Record (Bergen Country, NJ), 12 November 2005, A1. 54See Amnesty International, Threat and Humiliation: Racial Profiling, Domestic Security, and Human Rights in the United States (New York: Amnesty International USA 2004), available on the Amnesty International website at www.amnestyusa.org/racial_profiling/report/rp_report.pdf (viewed 14 May 2009). 55The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 'Questions and answers about the workplace rights of Muslims, Arabs, South Asians, and Sikhs under the Equal Employment Opportunity laws', 14 May 2002, available on the EEOC website at www.eeoc.gov/facts/backlash-employee.html (viewed 1 4 May 2009). 56Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports, Hate Crimes Statistics, 2006 (2007), available on the FBI website at http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2006/index.html (viewed 14 May 2009). 57Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports, Hate Crimes Statistics, 2001-6, available on the FBI website at http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm (14 May 2009). 58See Hussein Ibish (ed.), Report on Hate Crimes and Discrimination against Arab Americans: The Post-September 11 Backlash (Washington, D.C.: American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee Research Institute 2003); The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States, annual report compiled (since 1996) by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Washington, D.C., available on the CAIR website at www.cair.com/CivilRights/CivilRightsReports.aspx (viewed 14 May 2009). 59Leonard, Muslims in the United States, esp. appendices. 60Muslim American Society, 'TSA develops new procedure for screening religious headwear at US airports', 28 October 2007, available on the MAS website at www.masnet.org/takeaction.asp?id=4464 (viewed 14 May 2009). 61Muslim Public Affairs Council, 'MPAC signs onto D.C. area civic engagement program', 24 October 2007, available on the MPAC website at www.mpac.org/article.php?id=550 (viewed 14 May 2009). 62Federal Bureau of Investigation, 'Seeking information: domestic bombing', available on the FBI website at fbi.gov/wanted/seekinfo/odeh.htm (viewed 14 May 2009). 63Joe Stork and Rene Theberge, 'Any Arab or others of a suspicious nature ...', MERIP Reports, no. 14, 1974, 3-6, 13. 64Marvasti and McKinney, Middle Eastern Lives in America, 111. 65Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities (Philadelphia: Temple University Press 1992); Aihwa Ong, 'Cultural citizenship as subject-making: immigrants negotiate racial and cultural boundaries in the United States', Current Anthropology, vol. 37, no. 5, 1996, 737-62; Felix M. Padilla, Latino Ethnic Consciousness: The Case of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press 1985); Eugeen E. Roosens, Creating Ethnicity: The Process of Ethnogenesis (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications 1989). 66Omi and Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 56. 67Espiritu, Asian American Panethnicity, 3. 68Importantly, the role of African American Muslims in anti-Islamophobia coalitions remains largely unexamined. Despite that frequent omission, there are some excellent analyses of Middle Eastern American identity formation: Anita Famili, 'What about Middle Eastern American ethnic studies', 17 May 1997, abstract available on the University of California, Irvine Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program website at www.urop.uci.edu/symposium/past_symposia/1997/ablist3.html (viewed 14 May 2009); Bruce B. Lawrence, New Faiths, Old Fears: Muslims and Other Asian Immigrants in American Religious Life (New York: Columbia University Press 2002); Marvasti and McKinney, Middle Eastern Lives in America; Tehranian, 'Selective racialization'; Leti Volpp, 'The citizen and the terrorist,' UCLA Law Review, vol. 49, 2002, 1575-99. 69G. Patricia de la Cruz and Angela Brittingham, The Arab Population: 2000: Census 2000 Brief (Washington D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau 2003), available on the Census Bureau website at www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-23.pdf (viewed 14 May 2009). 70For details, see UCLA and CUNY's joint database project, Middle Eastern American Resources Online, at www.mearo.org (viewed 14 May 2009). 71For details, see the commission's webpage at www.middleeastern.maryland.gov (viewed 14 May 2009). 72Andrew Shryock, 'The moral analogies of race: Arab American identity, color politics, and the limits of racialized citizenship', in Amaney Jamal and Nadine Naber (eds), Race and Arab Americans before and after 9/11: From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press 2008), 81-113. 73Andrew Shryock, 'The moral analogies of race: Arab American identity, color politics, and the limits of racialized citizenship', in Amaney Jamal and Nadine Naber (eds), Race and Arab Americans before and after 9/11: From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press 2008), 111-12. 74Andrew Shryock, 'The moral analogies of race: Arab American identity, color politics, and the limits of racialized citizenship', in Amaney Jamal and Nadine Naber (eds), Race and Arab Americans before and after 9/11: From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press 2008), 112. 75Tehranian, 'Selective racialization', 2. 76Debra Minkoff, 'From service provision to institutional advocacy: the shifting legitimacy of organizational forms', Social Forces, vol. 72, no. 4, 1994, 943-69; Debra Minkoff, 'Bending with the wind: strategic change and adaptation by women's and racial minority organizations', American Journal of Sociology, vol. 104, no. 6, 1999, 1666-703. 77More details on SALDEF's history are available on the organization's website at www.saldef.org (viewed 14 May 2009). 78More details are available on the organization's website at www.mpac.org (viewed 14 May 2009). For additional information on MPAC's history, see Leonard, Muslims in the United States, 18. 79More details are available on the organization's website at www.karamah.org (viewed 14 May 2009). 80Minkoff, 'Bending with the wind', 1673. Additional informationNotes on contributorsErik Love Erik Love is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara
Context (archaeology) · Framing (construction · Human rights · Islam · Islamophobia · Political science · Politics · Racism · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
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| Unique citing works | 47 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3,13 |
| Citation span | 2011 - 2025 (15) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 44 |