Saher Selod

Prejudice against Muslims has a long and complex history. In recent decades, discrimination, violence, and human rights abuses against Muslims have taken a significant turn, with rising reports and discussions of Islamophobia across the globe. However, much of the conversation has missed the key features of this increasingly insidious phenomenon. This original book puts race at the center of the analysis, exposing the global racialization of Muslims. With special attention paid to the United States, China, India, and the United Kingdom, the authors examine both the unique national contexts and – crucially – the shared characteristics of anti-Muslim racism. They uncover how a range of counterterrorism policies, from hyper-surveillance to racialized policing, and the ensuing representation of Islam, have taken a decisive role in shaping social life for Muslims and have worked across borders to justify and institutionalize an acceptable, state-sponsored face of racism. Ultimately, A Global Racial Enemy argues that anti-Muslim animus is a symptom of a global and powerful form of twenty-first-century racism.

Prejudice against Muslims has a long and complex history. In recent decades, discrimination, violence, and human rights abuses against Muslims have taken a significant turn, with rising reports and discussions of Islamophobia across the globe. However, much of the conversation has missed the key features of this increasingly insidious phenomenon. This original book puts race at the center of the analysis, exposing the global racialization of Muslims. With special attention paid to the United States, China, India, and the United Kingdom, the authors examine both the unique national contexts and – crucially – the shared characteristics of anti-Muslim racism. They uncover how a range of counterterrorism policies, from hyper-surveillance to racialized policing, and the ensuing representation of Islam, have taken a decisive role in shaping social life for Muslims and have worked across borders to justify and institutionalize an acceptable, state-sponsored face of racism. Ultimately, A Global Racial Enemy argues that anti-Muslim animus is a symptom of a global and powerful form of twenty-first-century racism.

The declaration of a “War on Terror” in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks brought sweeping changes to the American criminal justice and national security systems, as well as a massive shift in the American public opinion of both individual Muslims and the Islamic religion generally. Since that time, sociologist Saher Selod argues, Muslim Americans have experienced higher levels of racism in their everyday lives. In Forever Suspect, Selod shows how a specific American religious identity has acquired racial meanings, resulting in the hyper surveillance of Muslim citizens. Drawing on forty-eight in-depth interviews with South Asian and Arab Muslim Americans, she investigates how Muslim Americans are subjected to racialized surveillance in both an institutional context by the state and a social context by their neighbors and co-workers. Forever Suspect underscores how this newly racialized religious identity changes the social location of Arabs and South Asians on the racial hierarchy further away from whiteness and compromises their status as American citizens.

The declaration of a “War on Terror” in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks brought sweeping changes to the American criminal justice and national security systems, as well as a massive shift in the American public opinion of both individual Muslims and the Islamic religion generally. Since that time, sociologist Saher Selod argues, Muslim Americans have experienced higher levels of racism in their everyday lives. In Forever Suspect, Selod shows how a specific American religious identity has acquired racial meanings, resulting in the hyper surveillance of Muslim citizens. Drawing on forty-eight in-depth interviews with South Asian and Arab Muslim Americans, she investigates how Muslim Americans are subjected to racialized surveillance in both an institutional context by the state and a social context by their neighbors and co-workers. Forever Suspect underscores how this newly racialized religious identity changes the social location of Arabs and South Asians on the racial hierarchy further away from whiteness and compromises their status as American citizens.