The tone of this book is set on its first page. As the second plane collided with the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Yassir Morsi whispered to himself: what have we done? (3). The rest of the book responds to this whisper; it deconstructs the utterance as the scene of a colonial interpellation and tracks out the political permutations available within it. Ultimately Morsi’s effort is to de-naturalize (bring into view, render explicit) the powerful, racialized psychodynamics of that moment in which, as he writes, “I knew of a responsible Other.”
Radical Skin, Moderate Masks: De-radicalising the Muslim and Racism in Post-racial Societies