Imagining the Radicalized Muslim: Race,Anti-Muslim Discourse,and Media Narratives of the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombers

Abstract

The authors explore the production of anti-Muslim racial discourse through a study of media coverage of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, widely seen as among the most significant acts of “homegrown” (i.e., born and/or raised in Western societies) Muslim terrorism on U.S. soil since 9/11. Drawing on news accounts and accompanying online reader comments from the Boston Globe, CBS Boston, and the New York Times, the authors examine the emergence of frames and narratives about the perpetrators, two brothers who were long-time U.S. residents and Muslims of Chechen origin. Findings point to the development of a color-blind anti-Muslim racial discourse that simultaneously affirms Muslim difference and makes claims to an absence of hostility and discrimination toward Muslims through a narrative of radicalization. Informed by the field of terrorism studies and counterterrorism policy making, the narrative of Muslim radicalization draws attention to individual life trajectories in which psychological and theological factors combine with exposure to radical Islamist groups to propel young “homegrown” Muslims toward extremism and violence. The potential for this narrative to challenge notions of intrinsic Muslim difference is limited by its reliance on a series of nested binaries of good versus evil and the West versus Islam as well as the incorporation of a racialized notion of violent potential whereby Muslims are seen as intrinsically inclined toward extremist violence.

Keywords

Muslims racism media racial stereotypes terrorism discourse

The early twenty-first century has seen the visible rise of anti-Muslim racism. Across Western societies, Muslims are often seen as intrinsically different and legitimate targets of suspicion and state surveillance because of their proclivities for violence, radicalism, and terrorism (Meer 2013; Rana 2011; Taras 2013). Scholars note the prominence of a social imaginary of Islam that is anchored in the Muslim terrorist, a folk devil who is foreign, brown, savage, and violent (Rana 2011; Werbner 2013). In this article, we explore how this racialized imaginary takes shape in the aftermath of incidents of mass violence committed in the name of Islam by Muslims who are citizens and/or long-time residents of the United States. We do so through a study of mainstream media narratives and framings of the perpetrators of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, widely seen as one of the most significant acts of “homegrown” Islamic terrorism on U.S. soil since 9/11.

Incidents of terrorism such as the Boston Marathon bombings represent fertile ground for the cultivation and expression of racialized hostility toward Islam and Muslims. Our findings illuminate these processes, drawing attention to the development of a color-blind anti-Muslim discourse that simultaneously denies overt racism while asserting essential Muslim difference (Alsultany 2012; Meer 2013; Modood 2005; Taras 2013). A formative element in this discourse is a notion of “Muslim radicalization” informed by theories, developed in the field of terrorism studies and counterterrorism policy making, about the conditions and processes that drive Muslims into the world of radical Islamic terrorism (Brown and Saeed 2015; Kundani 2012). As shown in the case of the Boston Marathon bombers, news accounts of “homegrown” Muslim terrorists draw on these ideas to construct a narrative of Muslim radicalization moored in a series of familiar binaries—of good versus evil and the West versus Islam—that play out to affirm racialized Muslim difference. Thus, even as the radicalization framework offers a putative challenge to the notions of unchanging inhumanity and violence represented by the racialized imaginary of the Muslim terrorist, it also reproduces its core ideas. The story of the radicalized Muslim is anchored in deeply rooted Muslim inclinations toward extremism and violence that are offered as an explanation for what transpires. What results is a multilayered anti-Muslim racial discourse that both eschews discriminatory attitudes and upholds racialized difference.

Anti-Muslim Racial Discourse: From the “Muslim Terrorist” to the “Radicalized Muslim”

The racialization of Islam and Muslims is rooted in Western projects of race, imperialism, and Orientalism: “[Islamophobia] draws from a historical anti-Muslimism and anti-Islamism and fuses them with racist ideologies of the twentieth century to construct a modern concept” (Taras 2013:419). Scholars of anti-Muslim racism describe a core concept of intrinsic and oppositional difference, whereby Islam and Muslims are defined as homogeneous, inferior, and inherently inimical to Western civilization and its values of democracy, equality, and tolerance (Meer 2013; Modood 2005).

In the early twenty-first century, anti-Muslim racism is anchored in a global war on terror in which Muslims are the focus of a variety of Western governmental interventions that include racial profiling, surveillance, and targeting by security and intelligence forces (Bakalian and Bozorgmehr 2009; Cainkar 2009; Cole 2003; Selod and Embrick 2013). Informed by these political developments, Islam is the focus of an emotionally charged panic marked by racialized social imaginaries that are “formed out of fantasies, fears, symbols, caricatures, stereotypes, jokes, myths and nightmares of a threatening ‘Other’, as they are encapsulated in images of inhuman violence and a capacity for cruelty and violation” (Werbner 2013:451). At the heart of the racialized social imaginary of Islam is the mythical figure of the Muslim terrorist, a folk devil in the Western public imagination. Typically understood as male, he captures the inhuman savagery and evil that is consonant with terrorism, fusing these qualities with Islam and its followers (Devji 2014; Rana 2011). These constructions are supported by a terrorism discourse that describes the perpetrators of illegitimate political violence in a language of irrational evil (Stampnitsky 2014:4).

Along with essential dispositions toward savagery and violence, the figure of the Muslim terrorist is a somatic imaginary in its evocation of visual images of an “enemy body” (Miles and Brown 2003; Rana 2011). In the contemporary United States, as suggested by those who are the target of anti-Muslim hate crimes and Muslim profiling at airports (Selod 2015), Muslims are widely understood to “look Middle Eastern or Arab” with perceived body features, such as brown skin color, that fuse with visible expressions of Muslim culture and identity, such as the hijab for women and the keffiyeh (Middle Eastern headdress) and beards for men. However, as with other racial signifiers, these visual cues and their significance are subject to contest, negotiation, and change. This quality of fluidity is underscored by the experiences of white converts to Islam who find their whiteness and its attendant privileges to be colored by their religious affiliation; Islamic religious affiliation is a racializing identity that has the potential to “darken” those who are white (Alam 2012; Franks 2000; Moosavi 2015). The racialized imaginary of the Muslim terrorist is thus anchored in a set of visual expectations that are both powerful and adaptable.

Even as the Muslim terrorist is imagined as foreign—a manifestation of dark forces outside the nation—the contemporary political landscape is marked by a rising anxiety about “homegrown” Islamist terrorism, or incidents of terrorism that are committed by Muslims who are citizens, born and/or raised within the nation. The policy response to these internally generated threats has included a strengthening of domestic Muslim surveillance programs; Muslim communities and institutions within the United States and Europe are the target of intense scrutiny as they are monitored and searched for “jihadist” networks, sympathies, and other signs of extremism (Brown and Saeed 2014; Coolsaet 2011; Kepel 2004; Kundani 2012; Neumann 2013).

Along with an intensification of state surveillance efforts, the concern with “homegrown” Islamic terrorism has been accompanied by a paradigm shift with largely unexamined implications for anti-Muslim racial discourse. Since the mid-2000s, the policy field of terrorism and security studies has moved toward a framework of “radicalization” (Kundani 2012). Rejecting conceptions of terrorism as a reflection of irrational inhuman evil, radicalization theories view terrorist engagements as outcomes of individual life journeys of pathology in which a mix of psychological, social, and theological factors play a role in driving people toward extremism and violence. The unfolding course of Muslim radicalization is conceptualized as one in which psychological predispositions to extremism and violence, along with exposure to “jihadist” social networks and religious beliefs guided by Salafi-based legalistic interpretations of Islam, coalesce to push individuals toward terrorist engagements (Brown and Saeed 2014; Kundani 2012; Neumann 2013).

The significance of the radicalization paradigm for the counterterrorism policy establishment is well established; we know far less, however, about the broader cultural impacts and consequences of these ideas for anti-Muslim discourse. By providing a narrative of individual development, the radicalization framework appears to undermine the simplistic coherence of the Muslim terrorist folk devil. In contrast to this static figure, a violent monstrosity “given” and unchanging, the idea of radicalization draws attention to the underlying life histories and circumstances that propel individual Muslims to develop the radical sympathies and allegiances that eventually lead them to terrorism. The narrative depicts a human past, the existence of a life that preceded the descent into extremism and monstrous violence. It also holds out the potential for reform; the developmental process of radicalization is subject to interventions that can alter its unfolding course. These possibilities raise questions about the racialized ideas of inherent and unchanging savagery and violence that are at the heart of the imaginary of the Muslim terrorist.

However, the radicalization paradigm holds the potential to not only disrupt established forms of anti-Muslim racial discourse but also to consolidate them by contributing to color-blind approaches of affirming Muslim difference. Color-blind racism refers to ways of affirming racial difference that rely on such ideas as individual merit and cultural tradition rather than biological determinism (Bonilla-Silva 2003; Goldberg 2008). Scholars of contemporary anti-Muslim discourse note the development of a color-blind rhetoric of differentiation, whereby Muslims are labeled as “good” or “bad” depending on whether they perform and prove their allegiance to the United States and other Western nations; the imperative to demonstrate such allegiance is ongoing, given that Muslim loyalty is always in question (Alsultany 2012; Mamdani 2002; Modood 2005). Studying portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in post-9/11 television dramas, Alsultany (2012) found that demonizing and sympathetic depictions work together to generate a color-blind anti-Muslim discourse. The “good Muslim” characters, whose presence offers proof of the multicultural tolerance of U.S. society, are shown as exceptional, patriotic Muslims. As they enact their commitment to the U.S. nation and Western values, they become a dramatic and legitimating counterpoint to the portrayals of Muslims as villainous enemies. The radicalization framework supports these dynamics by offering a legitimate color-blind means of distinguishing “good” and “bad” Muslims, that is, by their radicalization. Claims to an absence of discriminatory intent are bolstered by conceiving radicalization as an individual process, and bringing radicalized white supremacists into a common frame of reference. In short, the radicalization narrative has the potential to support depictions of “good” and “bad” Muslims, thereby contributing to the production of a color-blind anti-Muslim discourse that claims tolerance, even as it affirms racialized understandings of Muslims.

In this article, we consider the implications of the radicalization paradigm for anti-Muslim discourse. Whether through challenges to notions of intrinsic Muslim violence or contributions to the rhetoric of “good” and “bad” Muslims, how is the concept of radicalization incorporated into popular cultural narratives of Islam and Muslims? What are the ongoing tensions, contradictions and consequences of these radicalization narratives for the racialization of Islam and Muslims?

Methods

Our study of Boston Marathon bomber narratives draws on news reports and reader comments. The latter, part of the new world of participatory journalism, offers an extended lens into media frames, one that goes beyond the authoritative voices of established news sources (Maratea 2008). Reader comments thus offer insight into emergent discursive themes and contests. However, the use of reader comments as a data source is also challenged by the absence of social and demographic information about those who are behind them. News sources are increasingly likely to monitor and block comments that are offensive or inappropriate and also make comments publicly inaccessible, thus offering only partial access to the range of comments that are actually submitted (Hughey and Daniels 2013). These issues make it difficult to evaluate the origins and representativeness of the authors of the comments, thereby limiting the usefulness of reader comments as opinion data or measures of the public scope and strength of particular opinions.

The primary focus of our study is on news items that appeared from April 18 (the day photographs of the suspects were released) to April 22, 2013, although our analysis is also informed by a reading of materials across a broader span of time. This five-day period, a time of dramatic unfolding events, was one of intensive media coverage and high levels of public interest in the bombings. Using the term “Boston Marathon bombing,” we conducted searches filtered by time period on the websites of the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and the online news site, CBS Boston. As a leading local paper, the Boston Globe is especially prominent in its coverage of the bombings, often serving as a primary source for other news outlets. The New York Times is a major, frequently cited international news source that plays an agenda-setting role, ranking second in digital traffic among U.S. papers (Markens 2011; McCombs 2006; Pew Research Center 2015). Both are viewed as politically liberal and, in the case of the New York Times especially, geared toward an elite readership; paid subscriptions are required to gain full access to content, and only registered paid readers can post comments. To diversify our sources, we looked at CBS Boston, a national online news site affiliated with the local WBZ television and radio stations, and with an open comments section.

News items on the Boston Marathon bombers declined after the 2013 capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and remained sparse until 2015, when he was put on trial. The sentencing phase of Dzhokhar’s trial (April 8 to May 15, 2015), during which the jury deliberated on a sentence for him of lifetime imprisonment or death by lethal injection, saw a sharp spike in news reports and comments on Dzhokhar’s motivations and character. Thus, as a source of supplementary information, we examined reports and comments from the sentencing phase of Dzhokhar’s trial from April 8 to May 15, 2015. Our analysis of these materials was a strategically focused one in which we examined narrative themes previously identified from our examination of the April 18 to 22, 2013, news period.

In total, we examined 329 news reports from the two time periods, 247 from 2013 and 82 from 2015. Of the more than 12,000 reader comments that accompanied these reports and were available to us, we narrowed our analysis to those (n = 784) that commented directly on the marathon bombers in some manner, whether it was to condemn them or to provide information and views about their identity, character, and motives. The comments that we did not analyze touched on a range of topics, from the actions of the Boston police to gun control to the medical condition of victims of the bombings; none of these referred to the Tsarnaev brothers or their actions in either the comments themselves or in the strings of exchanges around them. We refrained from engaging in numerical analysis of particular themes in the comments, given an absence of information that would enable us to assess their significance as measures of the strength of these themes in public opinion.

Using a grounded theory approach that develops theoretical constructs inductively, we qualitatively coded all of the news reports and the comments about the bombers. Coding was conducted by two of the authors who, at each stage of data analysis, followed a systematic procedure of exchanging coding schemas and refining them after independently coding the same segments of data and comparing the results. We began with a close reading of all the materials, searching for words, terms, phrases, and patterns of language that might give them a particular perspective. When applicable, we coded reader comments for the presence of multiple themes rather than classifying comments according to one. On the basis of these initial codes, we searched the data for explanatory frames or ways of understanding the Tsarnaev brothers in relation to their violent actions. At the next stage, we explored narrative developments of these explanatory frames, looking for how they were situated within the sequence of events (Riessman 1993). We focused our attention here on the news articles rather than on reader comments; the brief, reactive, and disjointed qualities of the latter make them less suitable for narrative analysis. However, in our examination of reader comments, we took note of reactive dialogue as reflected in comments directed either toward the news article under which it was published, or to the comments made by other readers. Although we did find instances of such dialogue, we also found a large proportion of the reader comments to not be specifically directed toward anyone in particular; in some cases, these were geared toward imagined friends or (more often) foes on the political left or right (Szpunar 2013).

Our analysis of news accounts and reader comments is divided into chronological sections that plot a series of discursive contests involving both the Muslim terrorist and the radicalized Muslim. The first (“Who Did It?”) examines speculative framings of the identity of the bombers from April 15 (when the bombings occurred) to April 19 (the capture of the bombers), revealing the power and significance of the Muslim terrorist as a set of assumptions that come into play in the aftermath of mass violence. This period was characterized by intense speculation until, on April 19, the attackers had been identified as young Muslim men of Chechen origin whose “homegrown American” backgrounds and visually white features were a source of tension in public efforts to locate them within the imaginary of the Muslim terrorist.

The second section (“Why Did They Do It?”) turns to the narratives and frames that emerged in the immediate days following the capture of Dzhokhar (April 20 to April 22). At this time, there was a search for explanations for what had driven the Tsarnaev brothers to commit this heinous crime. Anchored in a framework of radicalization, news coverage offered life-history accounts of the genesis of the brothers, from quite unremarkable residents of Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Islamic terrorists.

A final “Postscript” section looks at the sentencing phase of Dzhokhar’s trial in the spring of 2015, a watershed in the story of the Boston Marathon bombers. We focus our attention here on the presence and development of the themes that had appeared earlier, in the days following the bombings. Despite the defense team’s efforts to portray Dzhokhar as a “normal” teenager who was led into the path of extremism and carnage by his older brother, the jury upheld the death sentence for him. At the conclusion of the trial as depicted in news reports, the previously prominent narrative of radicalization was overshadowed by the figure of Dzhokhar as the convicted Islamic killer—an embodiment of the racialized imaginary of the Muslim Terrorist.

“Who Did It?”

Searching for the Enemy Body

On April 15, 2013, at the annual Boston Marathon, one of Boston’s most iconic and beloved public events, tragedy struck. As runners began crossing the finish line, two pressure-cooker bombs exploded, killing two and injuring 264 others. The intervening hours and days between the bombing on April 15 and the release of suspect photographs on the afternoon of April 18 were a time of intense public speculation within a vacuum of information about the perpetrators. News reports compared the marathon bombings with the 9/11 attacks as well as assaults on allied forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, noting similarities such as the use of pressure-cooker bombs in both settings (Arsenault and Murphy 2013; Sacchetti 2013). The shadow of the Muslim terrorist was especially striking in what Volpp (2014) described as the campaign of “technologically enabled vigilantism” in which public sleuths relied heavily on visual cues of the “enemy body” (p. 2211). On social media outlets such Reddit and 4chan, photos of suspects were submitted along with circled notations of why they were suspicious, which included references to them as “brown” (Volpp 2014). A string of false accusations ensued, including one directed at a Saudi Arabian student who had come to Boston to study English and another involving an Indian American student who had been missing from his campus. On April 18, the New York Post ran a front-page cover (“Bag Men: Feds Seek These Two Pictured at Boston Marathon”) with a photograph of two unsuspecting Moroccan American high school track athletes from a running club who later brought a defamation suit against the paper.

On the afternoon of April 18, a dramatic sequence of events began to unfold. The Federal Bureau of Investigation released photographs and surveillance video of two suspects who had been at the marathon finish line prior to the bombing. Flashing constantly on news screens, the images of men wearing baseball hats and carrying backpacks were the subject of intense public scrutiny, registering more than 2.5 million Web hits by the late afternoon (Volpp 2014:2210). Observers such as CNN anchor Erin Burnett expressed surprise about the identity clues offered by the photographs: “These two kids look like they’re very, very stereotypically from here” (CNN 2013). Twitter posts were filled with bewilderment about the ethnicity of the two men (Hauser, Preston, and Somaiya 2013). Defying the “enemy body” of the Muslim terrorist, the two men in the pictures wore baseball caps and jeans, and they did not dress in Arab garb, sport beards, or look “brown.” Rather, they appeared to be quite “white”: “Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City–white as they come. . . . My point is I see college kids straight up. Not what I expected” (CBS Boston 2013d:comment).

By late evening, the two men of white appearance were identified as the brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, residents of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and ethnic Chechens who came to the United States from the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan in the early 2000s (Arsenault 2013). In the late hours of April 18, the brothers shot a police officer and carjacked a black Mercedes. In the shootout that ensued, Tamerlan died and Dzhokhar escaped. On the evening of April 19, Dzhokhar was finally captured, after a massive manhunt. He was found in a residential area, hiding in a dry-docked boat. On the walls of the boat from which he was eventually captured, Dzhokhar had scrawled a message that the bombings were committed in retaliation for U.S. militarism and the killing of fellow Muslims: “We Muslims are one body, you hurt one you hurt us all” (Globe Staff 2014). By drawing attention to Muslim loyalties and grievances as a motivation for the attacks, these events affirmed the Muslim terrorist as a perspective of relevance. At the same time, there were ways in which the Tsarnaevs did not easily fit into this imaginary, especially with respect to the “enemy body” of the Muslim terrorist.

White Caucasian Muslim Terrorists

The release of the photographs on April 18, followed by the capture of Dzhokhar on April 19, shifted the discourse about the perpetrators. Prior to these events, discussions of “who did it” unfolded in an informational vacuum in which the Muslim terrorist operated as a broad assumption, an anchor for speculation on who was responsible for the attack. After the release of the photographs, these discussions came to include debates about the identity of the Tsarnaevs in relation to the Muslim terrorist in ways that revealed its visual character.

Although the bombers did not appear to have any formal ties to Islamic terrorist groups, they were Muslims who frequented “jihadist Web sites” and expressed anger toward the United States for policies in Afghanistan and Iraq (Schmitt and Schmidt 2013). If the narrative of the Muslim terrorist was supported by these circumstances, the apparent “whiteness” of the bombers and its violation of the assumption of a “brown” enemy body introduced a note of uncertainty. A further layer of complication grew from the reports that the bombers were from Chechnya. The northern Caucasus is a region unfamiliar to many Americans, a fact that is underscored by the confusion expressed on social media at this time between the Czech Republic and Chechnya, leading the frustrated Czech Republic ambassador to issue a statement emphasizing that the two were different entities (Newcomb 2013). But if Chechnya is not well known, the term Caucasian is part of popular racial discourse and is widely understood to mean “white,” despite the fact that the two terms have not always been viewed as synonymous by courts in their decisions about access to U.S. citizenship (Kibria 1988). Further buttressing the brothers’ seeming “whiteness” were reports of Chechnya’s location in Eastern Europe and proximity to Russia. In the United States today, persons of Eastern European and Russian origin are racially categorized as “white,” notwithstanding the deeply contested history behind these understandings.

Also shaping the public effort to racially locate the Tsarnaevs was the fact that in the case of Dzhokhar especially, these were young men who had lived and grown up in the United States and seemed well versed in Western culture. These biographical details violated the “foreignness” of the racial imaginary of the Muslim terrorist, a disjuncture that was strengthened by the bombers’ white look; they were Muslims who did not fit the stereotypes of Muslim appearance. In the summer of 2013, Rolling Stone magazine became the center of a controversy when it ran a lead story on Dzhokhar (Reitman 2013) with a cover that was judged (on the basis of sales) by AdWeek as the “Hottest Cover of the Year.” The image that appeared on the cover did not fit the stereotypes of a Muslim look; it showed an attractive (“rock star”–like) young man with long, tousled curly hair, “a boy who looks like someone we might know” (Stern 2013). The cover was criticized for glamorizing a terrorist and giving him celebrity status, leading several local retailers to pull the issue of its shelves (Wolfson 2013).

As the focus of attention shifted from “Who did it?” to “Why did they do it?” the struggle to make sense of the Tsarnaev brothers as both Muslim and white, a struggle embedded in the racialized social imaginary of the Muslim terrorist, continued to shape discussions. The tentative whiteness of the bombers buoyed efforts to consider explanations that went beyond the logic of the Muslim terrorist. However, even as media accounts turned to narratives of radicalization, the Muslim terrorist was never far off, lurking beneath the surface.

“Why Did They Do It?”

In the days following the death and capture of the Tsarnaev brothers, the mainstream media drew on a variety of sources, from the Twitter postings of Dzhokhar to the press remarks of family members, to offer biographical sketches. Framed by the lens of radicalization and nested in the liberal discourse of distinction between radical Islam and Islam, news reports and reader comments reflected on what had led the brothers down the path of destruction. At the heart of these narratives is a notion of binary difference that signals a “clash of civilizations.” The story of “Islam versus America/West,” nested in the age-old saga of good versus evil, takes form through a series of compelling individual dramas of conflict and opposition. In the comments sections, a backlash to these narratives and their humanizing implications appeared as angry readers asserted the Muslim terrorist as an explanation that required no further explanation.

A Tale of Two Brothers and Racist Backlash

A tale of two brothers, specifically of two brothers of polar opposite temperaments, was a prominent theme in early news accounts. Tamerlan, the older brother, is described as angry, frustrated, and socially isolated, an immigrant who never assimilated and remained a foreigner, a point supported by his failed attempt to gain U.S. citizenship. He is quoted as saying: “I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them” (Russell et al. 2013). In contrast, Dzhokhar (or “Jahar” in his simplified American name), who came to the United States at the age of eight and naturalized in 2012, is a typical American teen who is “laid back” and fond of parties and smoking marijuana; his friends describe him as “sweet” and popular and find it difficult to believe that he would commit these terrible atrocities. Dzhokhar is both American and likable in nature, in contrast to Tamerlan, who is foreign and unpleasant. The Boston Globe reported that Tamerlan was so vile as to even be disliked by his relatives:

The question that remains is why the siblings would attack their adoptive nation. But a picture began to emerge Friday of Tamerlan Tsarnaev as an aggressive, possibly radicalized immigrant who may have ensnared his younger brother—described almost universally as smart and sweet—into an act of terror. “I used to warn Dzhokhar that Tamerlan was up to no good,” Zaur Tsarnaev, who identified himself as a 26-year-old cousin, said in a phone interview from Makhachkala, Russia, where the brothers briefly lived. “[Tamerlan] was always getting in trouble. He was never happy, never cheering, never smiling. He used to strike his girlfriend. . . . He was not a nice man.” (Arsenault 2013)

Anchored in the timeless drama of good versus evil, the dichotomy of the “sweet American” and “aggressive immigrant” signals the “clash of civilizations” and foregrounds conversion and movement from one side to the other through the vehicle of brotherly relations. This dichotomy, and the explanatory frame of “older brother’s evil influence” that it supports, is enabled not only by Dzhokhar’s youth but also his “white look.” Insofar as these visual perceptions violate expectations of the “enemy body,” they ease the development of understandings of Dzhokhar that do not conform to that of the Muslim terrorist. During Dzhokhar’s 2015 trial, his defense lawyers, in an effort to spare him from the death penalty, depicted him as a hapless teenager who was steered toward a course of radicalization and violence by his evil older brother. But these ideas were visible even in the immediate aftermath of the bombings, reflecting what Volpp (2014) describes as “a striking amount of public sympathy” (p. 2217) for Dzhokhar:

In no way shape or form do I condone any of the actions taken by the younger brother, and I think he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent, but I almost feel sorry for him. When you read all the accounts from his acquaintances and family, it sounds like he was a good kid led astray by his older brother. (Seelye, Rashbaum, and Cooper 2013:comment)

If “the tale of two brothers” generated sympathy for Dzhokhar, it also provoked backlash. Many readers were filled with rage about the biographical reports that humanized Dzhokhar and even suggested that he was, at least at one time, a “normal American kid.” In the course of expressing their anger at these depictions, the following comments affirm the close relationship of Islam and Muslims to terrorism, as well as the fundamental incompatibility of Muslim and American identities: “A Muslim is NOT a normal American and never will be. Muslims are terrorists as they are directed to be if they follow the Koran, period” (CBS Boston 2013a:comment); “They [Boston Globe] have to keep painting a picture of a poor, cute little boy who lost his way. . . . As opposed to a demented, hateful Muslim terrorist” (Wen and Valencia 2015:comment).

Noting the visibility of violent racist rhetoric on online forums, Hughey (2012) argues that these virtual spaces have become a place for taboo racist talk disallowed in the mainstream public sphere. In fact, explicit anti-Muslim rhetoric, replete with vituperative denunciations of Islam and Muslims as violent, hateful and opposed to the West, formed a constant oppositional backdrop to the more nuanced narratives about the role of Islam in the bombings that were offered by such mainstream outlets as the Boston Globe and the New York Times. These racialized expressions of hostility toward Muslims gained legitimacy and strength from the powerful emotions in which they were wrapped; the outrage and heartbreak felt over the senseless sufferings of the victims of the bombings. Under these conditions, those who searched for explanations rooted in the life circumstances of the brothers were often angrily accused of sympathizing with them and thereby smearing the memory of the victims of the bombings. A string of comments in which the youth, vulnerability, and seeming promise of Dzhokhar were discussed elicited a strong rebuke from a reader:

Again, this mysterious sympathy for a depraved killer. Has everyone forgotten Jeff Bauman and his two missing lower legs? The lifetime of pain and physical and emotional challenge ahead of him? Everyone else killed and maimed in this disgusting and psychopath-level display of callousness and cruelty? (Comment, Hauser et al. 2013)

Backlash comments mired in deep-seated hostility toward Islam and Muslims were ongoing, offering a sobering reminder of the continued significance of the Muslim terrorist, even as mainstream media reports turned to narratives of radicalization. Walther et al. (2010) noted that when placed against an authoritative source of information such as a published news article, online comments have the “potential to complicate or subvert the intended effects of central messages by juxtaposing contradictory sentiments of other users alongside of the central messages that a persuasive source intends to convey” (p. 269). These ideas underscore the need to see the element of openly virulent anti-Muslim commentary that we uncovered as part and parcel of the discursive field of the mainstream news media, a marginalized yet constant undertone within it.

From Aspiring American to Committed Muslim: Tamerlan’s Failures and Turn to Islam

The biographical sketches of the Tsarnaevs that appeared in news reports were also grounded in a narrative of failed assimilation resulting in a “turn to Islam.” Assimilation is conceptualized here in binary, zero-sum terms, as an outcome of successful integration into America that is contradicted by involvements with Islam. Anchored in the radicalization paradigm and focused on the experiences of Tamerlan, the story that emerges is of a life gone awry, of an individual’s spiraling experiences of failure and frustration culminating in horrific choices and outcomes. If, in the tale of two brothers, the “clash of civilizations” is expressed in the opposing characters of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan, in the tale of failed assimilation, the binary nature of American and Muslim identities plays out in the twists and turns of Tamerlan’s life. Couched in the language of an individual’s failures and shortcomings, the narrative affirms racialized Muslim difference in color-blind terms.

Tamerlan arrived in the United States in his late teens with dreams of a professional career in boxing. Encouraged by his parents, he worked hard to cultivate his boxing skills, and in 2009 he won the New England Golden Gloves championship. But a major disappointment followed when Tamerlan found himself disqualified from moving forward to the national Tournament of Champions because he was not a U.S. citizen. The disqualification marked the start of a downward spiral as Tamerlan dropped out of competitive boxing, withdrew from community college, and distanced himself from friends. He also began to cultivate a visibly Islamic way of life. He stopped going to parties, cut off ties with friends, and took up studying the Koran and praying five times a day. Neighbors report that he had grown a beard and started wearing long white Arab clothing in the year prior to the bombings, “a striking change for the once hip-looking, urban young man” (Russell et al. 2013).

The narrative of Tamerlan’s failed assimilation is one of movement from aspiring American to committed Muslim: “As his religious identification grew fiercer, Mr. Tsarnaev seemed to abandon his once avid pursuit of the American dream” (Sontag, Herzenshorn, and Kovaleski 2013). Anchored in the vision of a “clash of civilizations,” the movement is so utterly complete as to not allow hybridity or middle ground. This image of a binary path appears not only in accounts of Tamerlan, but also in that of other members of his family, including his wife Katherine Russell. After marrying Tamerlan in 2010, Katherine, a white woman from an upper-middle-class family in suburban Rhode Island, seemingly underwent a quick and dramatic transformation. She married, converted from Catholicism to Islam, and adopted the conservative Arab dress of a long black robe and head covering that clearly signal her Muslim identity.

The narrative of dramatic transformation, nested in the binary of the American and the Muslim, is also one that fosters the normalization of Islamic extremism. Among the notable features of the story of Tamerlan’s failed assimilation is the simultaneity of his subsequent turn to Islam and his radicalization. At no point is his involvement with Islam viewed to have been a potential route for him to actually cope with his frustrations in a healthy manner and to effectively integrate into American life. Instead, the turn to Islam is shown as the critical turning point in the story of his descent into violence. To be sure, news accounts and reader comments from a liberal stance are careful to describe Tamerlan’s motivations for the attack to be rooted in “radical Islam” rather than in “Islam” more generally. However, these distinctions blur as they are placed within the story of failed assimilation and turn to Islam in which the latter is associated if not equated with a turn to radicalization and violence. Describing Tamerlan’s growing dedication to Islam, a New York Times article noted:

That devotion, and the suspected radicalization that accompanied it, was a path he followed most avidly only after his more secular dreams were dashed in 2010 and he was left adrift. His trajectory eventually led the frustrated athlete and his loyal younger brother, Dzhokhar, to bomb one of the most famous athletic events in this country. (Sontag et al. 2013)

Reader comments also drew on this idea of a chain of events that started with Tamerlan’s failures followed by a turn to Islam and terrorism. However, in contrast to the relatively nuanced tone of the news reports, the comments could be quite blunt about the turn to Islam as the key hinge that had moved Tamerlan toward violence. Radicalization and Islam are made equivalent here in that the religious engagements of Muslims are a signal of their radicalization:

His brother was a failed boxer, failed student, unable to make friends. He was in a foreign country that did not “accept” him. What does he do? He turns to Islam and turns into a sociopath. He acts revenge on the people that “shunned” him. (CBS Boston 2013c:comment)

The Lurking Muslim Terrorist and Chechen Origins

The tale of failed assimilation, like the tale of two brothers, provoked a stream of angry backlash comments mired in anti-Muslim rhetoric. But the backlash here included not just a strategy of denial as described earlier, but one of merger, whereby the narrative of failed assimilation was incorporated into that of the Muslim terrorist. At the heart of this merger was a notion of dormant Muslim savagery in which the violence that is committed by Muslims is “something inherent in the religion, rendering any Muslim a potential terrorist” (Poole 2002:4).

In this narrative of violent potential, Tamerlan’s failures may have made him angry and frustrated but it was his predisposition to violence as a Muslim that was the key to his actions. The suggestion is that deeply-rooted Muslim savagery can lie submerged and inactive under certain conditions, but it is always there beneath the surface, easily provoked by failures and frustrations. In the course of condemning the marathon bombers, the following depicts Muslims as prone to frustration and fits of violence:

Like the Fort Hood shooter, no matter how much we try to appease Islamists and welcome them into our society, their easily offended sensibilities cause them to sympathize with extremism. And disgruntled Islamists will take up the bomb or the gun to get vengeance on their offended sensibilities. (CBS Boston 2013a:comment)

And similarly, “He [Tamerlan] is just more proof any Muslim jihadist can go off the rails any time—no warning. Muslim derangement syndrome” (CBS Boston 2013a:comment).

The notion of deep-seated, primordial Muslim violence is reinforced in media narratives of the marathon bombers through reference to their Chechen origins. The Tsarnaev brothers were ethnic Chechens who had spent their early years in various parts of southern Russia, including the Republic of Dagestan, where Tamerlan had gone for a six-month visit in 2012. News reports offered extensive information on Chechnya as part of the biographical background of the brothers (Filipov 2013). With such descriptions of Chechnya as “the most dangerous heart of darkness in the world” (Russell et al. 2013), reports place a spotlight on the long history of war and conflict with Russia and the powerful rise of Islamic militancy and terrorism in the region. Chechnya was described in a New York Times article as:

One of the darkest corners of nationalist and Islamic militancy [with] a campaign for separatism and vengeance responsible for some of the most unsparing terrorist acts of recent decades. Fired by a potent mix of blood codes, separatist yearnings and Islamic militancy, Chechen groups have staged a string of intermittent but spectacular attacks in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia since the 1990s. (Baker and Chivers 2013)

Depictions of a deep-seated Chechen history of violence, terrorism, and Islamist militancy are a potent backdrop against which to infuse the story of the Tsarnaev brothers with the trope of the Muslim terrorist and the ideas of primordial violence that are part of it. The identification of the bombers as “Chechen” and “Muslim,” closely accompanied by “terrorist” and “radical,” were often of a simultaneous and interchangeable quality. Urging President Obama to declare Dzhokhar Tsarnaev an “enemy combatant” (a status that allows questioning without a lawyer and other protections of the criminal justice system), Senator Lindsey Graham declared, “Chechens are all over the world fighting [along] with Al Qaeda” (Savage 2013). The notion of a seamless association between Chechnya and Islamic terrorism was also voiced by commenters: “I hope you are ready for an extended wave of these kinds of attack by this kid’s father and his associates. Chechen militants are some of the most violent Islamic terrorists on the planet” (CBS Boston 2013b:comment); “They [Tsarnaev brothers] were radicalized Chechen Muslims who were born in Dagestan and in fact returned there, apparently, for training. . . . Radical Islam is and continues to be a threat to Americans” (Schmitt and Schmidt 2013:comment).

The idea of a deeply rooted, inherent violence meshes comfortably with the framework of radicalization and the institutional policies of the war on terror, specifically of surveillance and profiling of Muslims that have been part of it. That is, the search for radicalizing and radicalized Muslims is one in which all Muslims are legitimately suspect even when overt signs are absent, given inherent tendencies that make them susceptible to radicalization and the call to violence.

Postscript: The Muslim Terrorist in Court

In March 2015, almost two years after the bombings, the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev began with testimony from witnesses, including some who were injured in the blasts. After convicting him of capital crimes, the jury deliberated on the death penalty sentence for him, eventually deciding to uphold it. Public opinion in Massachusetts, a state that has not favored the death penalty in the past, had been divided on the issue, with some arguing that lifetime imprisonment was a harsher and more effective punishment for Dzhokhar than death (Allen 2015; Valencia 2015a).

In making its case against the death penalty, the defense team drew on narrative themes that had appeared in the media in the first weeks after the bombings. These included the “tale of two brothers” in which Dzhokhar was shown as the young man growing up in a troubled family from a violent region of the world, and falling under the influence of his evil older brother Tamerlan (Wen and Valencia 2015). Ultimately, however, the jury found Tamerlan’s influence to be an unsatisfactory explanation for Dzhokhar’s actions. A Boston Globe piece highlighted the failure of the defense team to offer a convincing story of radicalization: “In the end, it seems jurors were convinced that Tsarnaev was once a good kid who turned into a depraved terrorist, but they lacked a believable explanation about how this evolved psychologically” (Wen 2015).

The absence of a compelling narrative of Dzhokhar’s radicalization facilitated the use of the racial imaginary of the Muslim terrorist to understand his actions. The idea of Dzhokhar as the embodiment of monstrous inhuman savagery was sharpened by media reports that closely scrutinized his behavior and presentation in court. News reports suggest that the jury’s final decision on May 15, 2015, to uphold the death sentence was shaped by Dzhokhar’s apparent lack of remorse for his crimes, an assessment that was tied to his presentation of self in court after almost two years in custody, much of it in solitary confinement (Wen 2015). Court drawings of Dzhokhar portray a lanky bearded young man dressed in a dark blazer and open-collared shirt. He remained silent in the course of the trial, with an expression described as “inscrutable,” “impassive,” “flat,” “stoic” (Wen and Valencia 2015). His lack of emotion, even during gut-wrenching testimony from witnesses, offered evidence of his lack of humanity: “To not shed a tear when faced with the human devastation evidenced before him shows he has no compassion for his victims, no remorse for his actions. . . . This guy is a monster” (Wen 2015:comment).

On June 24, just before he was formally sentenced to death, Dzhokhar made his first public statement during his month-long trial. He spoke in an “affected” foreign accent that he had not had before the bombings (CBS News 2015). As he offered an apology for the suffering he had caused he also affirmed his religious commitment: “Tsarnaev repeatedly referred to his religion, opening and closing his statement by praising Allah—surprising some of his former close friends who said they don’t recall him being so devout” (Wen and Valencia 2015). Dzhokhar’s public presentation of himself here, as “foreign” and deeply driven by Islam, contrasted sharply with earlier reports of him as a popular and attractive young man in college, fond of partying and smoking pot.

The public spectacle of Dzhokhar’s 2015 legal trial shifted media narratives of the Boston Marathon bombers away from the radicalization frame and toward that of the Muslim terrorist. Several developments coalesced to inform this shift: Dzhokhar’s court performance of his “Muslimness,” his poker-faced demeanor, his seeming lack of remorse for his crimes, and the jury decision in favor of the death sentence, signaling his complete and irremediable guilt. Embedded in declarations of devotion to Islam, Dzhokhar’s statement of apology at the conclusion of the trial seemed to signal the final scene in the drama of his metamorphosis, from “American kid” to the “Muslim terrorist.” The words of U.S. District Judge O’Toole, delivered at the official sentencing, underscored the stripping away of his human past:

Whenever your name is mentioned, what will be remembered is the evil you have done. No one will remember that your teachers were fond of you . . . that your friends found you funny and fun to be with. . . . What will be remembered is that you murdered and maimed innocent people and that you did it willfully and intentionally. (Valencia 2015b)

Conclusions

News accounts and reader comments on the perpetrators of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings offer a window into the development of anti-Muslim racial discourse. By focusing on a case of homegrown Islamic terrorism and its specific history, we gain a perspective that is in-depth and attentive to nuance, contest, and change. Concurrently, this approach raises questions about generalizability or the extent to which the discursive dynamics reported here are also present in other cases of “homegrown” Islamic terrorism. We note the need for studies of media framings across different cases of terrorism and types of terrorist perpetrators, including but not limited to those involving Muslims. Research that compares the narratives of radicalization that emerge in response to rampage school shootings by young white men (Frymer 2009; Rocque 2012) with those committed by young U.S.-born and/or raised Muslim men can be especially useful in illuminating the dynamics of Muslim racialization in these accounts. Given the vast and heterogeneous nature of the contemporary media landscape, we also see the need for studies that examine radicalization narratives across a range of news outlets.

Contemporary forms of anti-Muslim discourse incorporate “Muslim radicalization,” a concept that arises within a volatile political context that includes the war on terror, the rise of “homegrown” Islamic terrorism, and the development of regimes of domestic Muslim surveillance (Brown and Saeed 2014; Cainkar 2009; Kundani 2012). Our findings suggest that in media forums, accounts of “Muslim radicalization” are integrated in the form of a narrative of an individual’s descent into the evils of radicalization that revolves around a series of nested binaries: good versus evil and the West versus Islam. The products of this integration are simple, familiar, and broadly appealing stories that both avoid explicit racism and also affirm the intrinsic violence and savagery of Islam and Muslims. In this color-blind anti-Muslim discourse, radicalization as a narrative outcome is preceded by a fork in the road, a point at which Muslims are faced with a dichotomous, all-or-nothing choice of assimilating into Western values or engaging with Islam; there is silence on the possibilities of pluralistic forms of integration for Muslims. In addition to contributing to the marginalization of Muslim American identities, these Muslim radicalization narratives are a source of support and legitimacy for the growth of policies and movements of immigrant exclusion and surveillance, including President Trump’s 2017 proposals for bans on the U.S. entry of visitors and refugees from six Muslim-majority countries.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We thank Mehdi Bozorgmehr and Phil Kasinitz for encouraging us to pursue this analysis and Matthew Hughey and Ashley Mears for their comments on earlier versions of this article.

Author Biographies

Nazli Kibria is a professor of sociology at Boston University. A scholar of global migration, families and identity formations, her recent books include Muslims in Motion: Islam and National Identity in the Bangladeshi Diaspora and Race and Immigration (with Cara Bowman and Megan O’Leary). Current projects include a study of transnational families and sibling relationships, as well as the development of theories of intersectional stigmas and racial identities.

Tobias Henry Watson is a PhD candidate in sociology at Boston University. He received his BA in sociology from the University of Warwick and an MA in migration studies from the University of Sussex. His research examines policies, practices, and discourses surrounding refugee resettlement, with a particular focus on how these factors crystalize into the groups and individuals selected for resettlement.

Saher Selod is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Simmons College. Her research interests are in race and ethnicity and religion. Her research examines how Muslim Americans experience racialization in the United States via their surveillance. Her book Forever Suspect: Racialized Surveillance of Muslim Americans in the War on Terror is forthcoming with Rutgers University Press.

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