Full 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.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword by John L. Esposito
Introduction
1 • When American Racism Quashes Religious Freedom
2 • The Color of Religion
3 • Racialization of Jews, Catholics, and Mormons in the Twentieth Century
4 • From Protestant to Judeo-Christian National Identity: The Expansion of American Whiteness
5 • Social Construction of the Racial Muslim
6 • American Orientalism and the Arab Terrorist Trope
7 • Fighting Terrorism, Not Religion
8 • Officiating Islamophobia
9 • Criminalizing Muslim Identity
10 • The Future of the Racial Muslim and Religious Freedom in America
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
