“Muslims are continuously asked to condemn these acts—and, thus, demonstrate their loyalty to their nation—but their condemnations seldom reach a wider audience” (53). The fact that Muslims always have to justify their religion and themselves as being non-violent or radical is a clear sign of Islamophobia. It would be ridiculous and offensive to ask a Jewish or Christian person to justify their religion. I found it interesting how the article mentioned that Americans post 9/11 were not willing to give up their individual civil liberties for supposed safety, although they were fine with collective liberties being breached especially when it targeted Arabs or Muslims, etc. The one thing I think this article understates is the shear amount and level of violations of law and morality that the U.S. and other allied governments committed in its post 9/11 craze, which they used to justify such violence. The CIA outsourced the kidnapping and torture (sometimes to death) of people (many innocent) for years without any consequence. “These detentions were, and continue to be, shrouded in secrecy, since the Patriot Act made it legal to hold individuals indefinitely and without formal charges, so long as the attorney general has “reasonable grounds” to believe the individuals are involved in terrorism” (61). I see such a parallel between what this article describes and what is happening today under the Trump Administration, where hundreds of student visas are being revoked for seemingly no justifiable or legal reason, dozens of students like Mahmoud Khalil are being illegally detained and deported without due process and many just for the act of criticizing Israel in any way or being a person of color/Arab. It’s interesting how they talk about the “susceptibility” of Muslims to extremism, especially when we know the numbers on who commits the most domestic terrorist attacks in America is white men, often Christians. As mentioned in the article, this seems almost deliberate. When stating the U.S. representative, “There is no equivalency of threat between al-Qaeda and neo-Nazis, environmental extremists, and other isolated madmen. Only al-Qaeda and its Islamist affiliates in this country are part of an international threat to our nation” (64). By targeting minority groups, the real threat to both these groups and the country is shrouded and protected by the government and the law–that being White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis. I remember in particular the Charleston White Supremacist Rally in 2017. Finally, the article mentions the Muslim Ban, how many supported it until it actually came into fruition. I’m not super surprised by this as I agree that people are heavily influenced by rhetoric of their Political Elites like Donald Trump. Only when the result is felt do they change their mind, kind of similar to the Tariffs that were implemented/not implemented/implemented again. I only worry that what America “wants” really is this racialized violence and stripping of constitutional rights.
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