Abstract
The city of Christchurch, New Zealand, was forcefully brought into the international spotlight on 15 March 2019 after a white nationalist entered two mosques and started firing on unarmed worshippers on a Friday, the day of communal worship. The rationale for this deliberate, calculated attempt to inflict harm upon the Muslim community was documented in a sixteen-thousand word manifesto (see Tarrant 2019). Although this manifesto purported to espouse the beliefs of a single individual, it in fact foregrounded the ideological bedrock that has become known as “Islamophobia.”
Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics is a recent addition to the growing research on the widespread increase of anti-Muslim bias (i.e., Islamophobia) in post-9/11 American politics (see Tyrer 2013; Kundnani 2014; Lean 2017; Love 2017; Beydoun 2018). In undertaking such a treatment of Islamophobia in the United States, Nazia Kazi necessarily contextualizes precisely how the national narrative against Muslims and their faith has developed, ultimately framing her discussion of this complex narrative in eight thematic chapters of roughly equal length.
Chapter 1 begins by contrasting the global media response to two separate, significant acts of terrorism that took place in November 2015: one in Burj al-Barajneh, Lebanon and the other in Paris, France. Kazi assigns the term “social silence” to the stark difference in media attention and uses this as her entrance into a deeper discussion of the definition of Islamophobia, the criteria for “looking Muslim,” and the great deal of diversity within what has frequently and unsuitably been called the “Muslim World.”
Chapter 2 broaches the nomenclature associated with President Trump’s proposed—and then later approved after multiple iterations—plan to ensure domestic safety from Muslim terrorism through extreme vetting. Next, Kazi facetiously observes that since many recent incidents of terrorism were committed by Muslims, it would seem obvious to employ greater caution when identifying with this particular group. Highlighting the absurdity of such assumptions, she then argues critically that this approach is never employed when such acts are committed by Caucasians and/or Christians, ultimately calling such a reactive response uninformed and based on unsubstantiated claims about a supposedly homogenous group of believers. These misunderstandings are amplified by issues of hypervisibility and the superficiality of Americans’ interest in Islam before this interest is rationalized as perceptually necessary for one to comprehend the reasons for events like 9/11.
Chapter 3 discusses the historical and contemporaneous presence of Muslims in the United States by confronting the spread of ethnonationalism and the threat of the continued propagation of a master narrative that denies the integral role of Muslims in the history of this country since its very inception. As a gateway into the broader perception of Muslims throughout the nation, this chapter compares the public self-presentation of prominent Muslims, including Lebanese-American model Rima Fakih, Olympic athlete Ibtihaj Muhammad, and Islamic scholar Hamza Yusuf. It is precisely through the contrasting public perception of these individuals that one arrives at Kazi’s ultimate conclusion: “Whitening Islam means making it palatable for America” (51). This rests upon the widespread assumption that “Muslims” and “America” are fundamentally incompatible, a topic engaged in greater detail throughout the remainder of the chapter.
Chapter 4 capitalizes upon Yusuf’s sentiment by sharing the words of former Presidents Bush and Obama, both of whom attempted at various stages to “humanize” Islam. The problem for Kazi, however, is that such responses have frequently contributed to Islamophilia, which results in an archetypically defined “good” Muslim, a practice she implicitly claims is equally as damaging as Islamophobia. The chapter closes by examining the formation of such archetypes through other ethnic corollaries (e.g., “Asian American”) and the generalized behaviors that serve as “markers of legitimacy.”
Chapter 5 is, above all, the book’s strongest chapter. It begins with a quote by Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American political activist, which expresses simultaneous opposition to those who espouse Islamophobic beliefs and unity with those who are the recipients thereof. In this chapter, Kazi offers a profoundly poignant discussion not only of the implications of the word jihad but also of society’s understanding of racism (i.e., as an attitudinal stance or a systematic process) and how this has larger implications for Islamodiversion. For example, attention is given to the significance of the month of Ramadhan but not to western intervention in Muslim-majority countries.
Chapter 6 opens with a quote by Khizr Khan, a Pakistani-American man whose son was killed during the Iraq War. Kazi utilizes this quote strategically to explicate precisely how the aforementioned markers of legitimacy can be readily employed in understanding societal positioning. In this case, the loss of life experienced by the Khans demonstrated their loyalty to the United States, which superseded their role as religious Other and allowed them to become “Muslim Cheerleaders” for governmental involvement. It is precisely the possibility of discriminating between “good” and “bad” Muslims that Kazi believes allows Americans to justify or fulfill their “Thirst for War.” This point is taken up in the remainder of the chapter through a larger discussion of imperialism.
Chapter 7 addresses the perception that President Trump is the sole cause of the rise of nationalism, the continued involvement of the American military in many countries of the Middle East, and the promulgation of anti-Muslim bias. In fact, Kazi suggests that it is misinformed at best and counterproductive at worst to argue that America is not the same as it used to be; rather, this is the America that has always been. She remarks that President Trump is a convenient scapegoat until one recognizes that former Presidents Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and Obama all contributed in their own ways to create this America.
Chapter 8 concludes the book by reminding the reader of the importance and necessity of critical thinking skills when engaging a topic such as Islamophobia. Whether as an independent thought process or through institutionalized practices at the level of the state, Islamophobia is informed not only by historical engagements but also by contemporaneous fearmongering (“a troubling mix of social factors”) that results in ideological positioning of friend and foe, ally and enemy, non-Muslim and Muslim, non-terrorist and terrorist, “us” and “them.”
For producing such a remarkably personable, straightforward treatment of Islamophobia in the United States, Nazia Kazi must be commended. She has elucidated how the national narrative surrounding Muslims has been methodically constructed in such a way that the average American ignores the everyday injustices committed against Muslims while simultaneously acknowledging that two-thirds of the “Axis of Evil” are Muslim-majority countries. Additionally, she has defined, bifurcated, and exemplified such prejudice into (a) independently held beliefs and (b) state-sponsored practices, an important and oftentimes conflated distinction. Furthermore, Kazi has demonstrated clearly how recognition and understanding of past involvement in intelligence gathering and militaristic engagements inform present circumstances: “Will we recognize that the violence of terrorism, though atrocious, is hardly senseless? That, given the histories that have inspired terrorism, this violence almost makes perfect sense?” (115). Still, there are a few (compounded) areas for revision and consideration in future work.
First, the title indicates that equal attention will be given to Islamophobia, racial issues, and global politics. Nevertheless, the majority of this text focuses almost exclusively on anti-Muslim prejudice and the role of imperialism. Consequently, there appears to be a disconnect between the book’s title and content, as the resulting text is principally a scathing condemnation of American interventionism and an explication of Islamophobia, but only secondarily an overview of racial tension and politics on a global scale.
Second, as a result of this disconnect, the topic of “race” becomes peripheral and is referenced only when convenient or as an expression of the author’s professed frustration noted in the introduction. One outcome of this decision is that the core intersectionality of race and religion in the United States is never truly engaged. For instance, while the second chapter introduces the Black Lives Matter movement and discusses not only systematic police brutality against African Americans (cf. Khan-Cullors and Bandele 2018) but also the long history of government surveillance, the reader is never told that this same group represents one-fourth of all American Muslims and actually represents the largest percentage of reverts to the faith (cf. Bagby, Perl, and Froehle 2001; see also Smith 2009, 76ff). If Hamza Yusuf’s quote truly is accurate, then the interconnectedness of race and religion are especially noteworthy in this context. Furthermore, although other scholars are referenced in various chapters to remind the reader of the historical participation of Muslim Americans in the military, the consistent, not insignificant presence of Muslims in this country since the earliest European expeditions and the expansive utilization of the Middle Passage (see, e.g., Gomez 1994) remains unengaged.
Third, Kazi’s fourth chapter accounts for possible stances toward Muslims in the form of a binary opposition: Islamophobia versus Islamophilia. She clarifies immediately that both of these perspectives are problematic and that the rationale for neither is tenable. In particular, she characterizes the latter as “a way to insert Muslims into the conversation simply and uncritically, without challenging the underlying realities of anti-Muslim racism” (64). But that’s not really what Islamophilia is: On the contrary, as Shryock (2010, 12ff) writes, it is the “generalized affection for Islam and Muslims.” Consequently, what the author presents as Islamophilia is actually a form of neoliberal apologism, neither a general interest in or appreciation of Islam nor a critical, intellectually informed defense of Islam. Although this might seem unnecessarily pedantic, socioculturally entrenched ideologies are more complicated—at least underlyingly—than a simple self-positioning in support of or in opposition to a particular group.
