The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom

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About The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious

Product Description Why does a country with religious liberty enmeshed in its legal and social structures produce such overt prejudice and discrimination against Muslims? Sahar Aziz’s groundbreaking book demonstrates how race and religion intersect to create what she calls the Racial Muslim. Comparing discrimination against immigrant Muslims with the prejudicial treatment of Jews, Catholics, Mormons, and African American Muslims during the twentieth century, Aziz explores the gap between America’s aspiration for and fulfillment of religious freedom. With America’s demographics rapidly changing from a majority white Protestant nation to a multiracial, multireligious society, this book is an in dispensable read for understanding how our past continues to shape our present—to the detriment of our nation’s future. From the Back Cover "Sahar Aziz deftly examines the peculiar place of Muslims in the American imagination, studying a religious minority that has been treated as a racial minority, objectified as terrorist, denied the religious freedom our tradition celebrates, and instead subjected to the profiling, monitoring, and policing that our tradition has too often practiced. An essential book for understanding how American law and culture have constructed an image of the Muslim that bears no resemblance to reality and betrays our failure to practice what we preach."—David Cole, National Legal Director, ACLU, and author of  Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism “ The Racial Muslim provides the crucial historical and legal background of the links between white Protestant Christian supremacy in the US—which racialized not only Native Americans and African Americans as inferior but also American Catholics, Jews, and Mormons, not to mention East Asian immigrants—and the ongoing racialization in the US of Muslim immigrants and their American descendants. Meticulously researched and seamlessly written, Aziz’s book is crucial for all those concerned with how race and religion remain completely intertwined in American law and society today and how they are weaponized against American Muslims.”—Joseph Massad, Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University and author of  Islam in Liberalism "Aziz has written a fabulous book that highlights the inherent paradox that exists in America between commitment to religious freedom and rising levels of Islamophobia. Aziz traces the historical developments that produce today’s Racial Muslim . With sophisticated insights and empirical cases, Aziz unpacks the social and legal historical processes that reinforce the status quo. This book is a wonderful addition to the scholarship on Muslims in America."—Amaney A. Jamal, Professor of Politics at Princeton University and author of  Of Empires and Citizens:  Pro-American Democracy or No Democracy at All? "While Trump’s immigration rules targeting and excluding Muslim immigration were widely denounced, the origins of this travesty and other related anti-Muslim policies have not been fully excavated. The Racial Muslim performs this essential work in mapping how Muslim religious identity is racialized. Identifying the roles of distinct forms of Orientalism, American empire, Christian religious hierarchy and anti-Black racism that shape the concept of Muslim as a racial identity, Aziz provides powerful insight into the ways in which forms of racialization evolve. This book provides invaluable lessons for resisting white supremacy as an enduring yet shape-shifting feature of the American story."—Cheryl Harris, Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at UCLA School of Law " The Racial Muslim is a provocative argument and remarkable analysis of the connections and tensions between race and religion. Scholars like Sahar Aziz are more necessary than ever in these perilous times."—Ian F. Haney López, Chief Justice Earl Warren Profe