Blood Sacrifice and the Myth of the Fallen Muslim Soldier in US Presidential Elections after 9/11

One ultimate sign of political assimilation is the willingness of citizens to sacrifice themselves in battle for their nation. This chapter reveals the promise and limits of US liberalism by examining how the blood sacrifice of two fallen soldiers—Kareem Khan and Humayun Khan—was imagined in mythic terms during the US presidential elections of 2008 and 2016. The chapter argues that in focusing on the incorporation of foreign Muslim blood into the nation, American politicians offered a partial, ambiguous acceptance—one that both included and excluded Muslims from the American body politic. It explains how the racialization of Muslim Americans render even sacred acts of assimilation ineffective in the struggle for political assimilation.

Malcolm X and the Islamic Politics of Global Black Liberation

This chapter asserts that it was Malcolm X rather than the Nation of Islam that offered a more direct, radical challenge to US Cold War politics. It questions the conventional view that Malcolm X’s 1964 hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, was the ultimate symbol of his spiritual journey from street hustler to Nation of Islam minister and finally Sunni Muslim believer. Instead, the chapter shows how Cairo, not Mecca, was the real center of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz’s newfound identity as a Sunni Muslim. For Shabazz, the Islamic socialism and Afro-Asian solidarity of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt rather than the monarchical, conservative ideology of Nasser’s Saudi Arabian rivals represented the heart of Islamic religion and the key to the liberation of all people of color. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the effects of travel abroad on shaping Muslim American political consciousness.

Introduction

The place of Muslims in the United States is a bellwether for the nation’s purported embrace of liberal values such as freedom of speech and religion, equal justice under law, and equal opportunity. The main argument of the book is that dominant forms of American liberalism, which are invested in anti-Black racism and American empire, have prevented the political assimilation of Muslim Americans. Muslim Americans have sometimes resisted and more frequently accommodated American liberalism, but, in either case, they have never been afforded full citizenship.

Conclusion

The destiny of US democracy is tied to what some have called “the Muslim question,” that is, the question of whether Muslims will be allowed to become full social and political citizens. This chapter analyzes the activism of Linda Sarsour as an example of how Muslim Americans might challenge some of the most powerful, conventional bipartisan platforms of contemporary US politics while also pledging their allegiance to the country and its liberal ideals. It suggests that the normalization of loyal dissent is necessary to the survival of liberalism.

The Transnational Ethics of Four Muslim American Women in Jordan

This chapter begins with a description of the shifting terms of Muslim American political engagement in the 1970s as Muslim immigration increased and many African American Muslims sought a rapprochement with American liberalism. It shows how the attacks of 9/11 shifted concerns of US policymakers away from African American Muslim men toward Muslim women who wore head scarves and toward “brown” Muslims--those perceived to be from Arab and South Asian backgrounds. Exploring responses to this changing political landscape, this chapter provides an in-depth examination of four Muslim American women who theorize alternatives to an American nationalism defined largely in terms of the war on terror and Islamophobia. Like the previous chapter, it analyzes how their travel to a Muslim country—in this case, Jordan—shapes their political consciousness. The chapter shows how their ethics, unlike that of Malcolm X, sustains political loyalty to the United States and avoids the call for political revolution while also articulating a hope for change in the US war on terror and other foreign policies.

The Nation of Islam and the Cold War Liberal Consensus

This chapter reveals the moment when a Muslim American political vision first became consequential in national politics. Known for its radical resistance to white supremacy, US foreign policy, black Christianity, and the liberal dream of racial integration, the Nation of Islam was perceived as a threat to the ideological foundations of US liberalism, which rested on (1) anticommunism and the suppression of political dissent both at home and abroad, (2) on the rhetoric of equal rights under the law and sometimes racial integration, and (3) on federal welfare programs. This chapter also shows how the Nation of Islam’s leadership assimilated to other modes of Cold War liberalism: it policed its members’ sexuality; it embraced the dream of black capitalism and encouraged entrepreneurship; it used the US courts to argue for freedom of religion and framed its activities as the exercise of that freedom; and it forbade its members from engaging in violent revolution or even nonviolent political resistance against many of the very liberal institutions that it identified as a religious evil.

The Political Assimilation of Muslim Americans

An examination of the anti-Muslim reactions to the political career of US Rep. André Carson (D-Indiana) indicates the challenges facing Muslim Americans who desire political assimilation into the United States. This chapter analyzes formal Muslim American political participation in the twenty-first century and the anti-Muslim discrimination, originating at both popular and governmental levels, that in design or effect rejects Muslim American assimilation.