The Racial Muslim When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom

"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 Professor of Public Law, University of California, Berkeley and author of Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America

"In this wide-ranging study, Aziz elegantly tracks the intersections of religion and race in America, describing their historical entangling and meticulously demonstrating how that background has framed the current campaign against Muslims in America and led to the normalization of a racial Islamophobia. This is strong scholarship, brimming with insight and perfectly timed for the current American conversation about race and religion."—John Corrigan, Lucius Moody Bristol Distinguished Professor of Religion and History at Florida State University

"Deftly weaving her exhaustive research on the discrimination faced by Catholic, Mormon and Jewish Americans through the course of our history with the Islamophobia of recent decades, Professor Aziz powerfully highlights the disparity between our noble ideals and the painful realities of intolerance that continue to plague our society. With her cogent and sophisticated analysis, Professor Aziz seamlessly intertwines the past and the present to critique efforts at Protestant Christian hegemony with the perpetuation of anti-Black racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and other forms of hate. In the process, her intersectional understanding of the struggle for equality makes a vital contribution to the literature on issues of race, religion and discrimination. The Racial Muslim is a clarion call warning us that, despite all of the progress we have made, the path to justice is not linear and there remains a great deal of work to be done." —John Tehranian, Paul W. Wildman Chair and Professor of Law, Southwestern Law School, and author of Whitewashed: America's Invisible Middle Eastern Minority

"With a comprehensive eye, Sahar Aziz situates the current rash of Islamophobia in the long and troubled history of American race relations, and reminds us about how far we have not come. This will be the go-to volume on the topic for many years to come."—Tom Ginsburg, Leo Spitz Professor of International Law, Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Research Scholar, and Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago Law School

"If a book needed to be written after the Trump presidency, it is this one. In this bold and compelling book, one of the foremost critical race scholars of our time analyzes the ways that the religious Muslim has become a suspect, if not a criminal, category in the American mind. Fluid, honest, insightful, and often dazzlingly brilliant, this book is a must read for anyone who cares about religious freedom, racism, and the future of the United States."—Khaled Abou El Fadl, Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law

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.