Copyright by Lamiyah Zulfiqar Bahrainwala 2016
The Dissertation Committee for Lamiyah Zulfiqar Bahrainwala Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation:
Where Time & Style Collide: The Muslim in U.S. Discourse
Committee:
Barry Brummett, Supervisor
Dawna Ballard
Joshua Gunn
Robert Jensen
Snehal Shingavi Where Time & Style Collide: The Muslim in U.S. Discourse
by
Lamiyah Zulfiqar Bahrainwala, B.A.; M.A.
Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
The University of Texas at Austin August, 2016
Dedication
To Abid and our littles.
Acknowledgements
Thank you, Barry Brummett, for being rigorous, caring, and never pushy.
Everyone should be lucky enough to have an advisor who returns drafts within hours, visits with soup, and puns relentlessly. Everyone should, but few will.
Dana Cloud, I see you. You are an incredible ally to students and women. Dawna
Ballard, you show everyone how trailblazing scholarship and kindness come together in the best of ways. Josh Gunn, you are a generous scholar and person and I hope I will always know you. Bob Jensen and Snehal Shingavi, you stuck with me and gave me straight talk when I needed it. I could not have asked for a better committee.
I am grateful for my Bahrainwala and Kagalwalla parents, siblings and grandparents. They may still think I’m getting a Master’s degree in literature, but their support is unflinching. Many people don’t have a family, and I have two wonderful and strange ones to call my own.
Thank you to my academic family at UT and Michigan State, and the UT
Graduate School for giving me a fellowship. My girlfriends Erin O’, Jenna Hanchey,
Kimba Studer, and my PLF ladies – your behind-the-scenes brilliance changed everything. Judith Caesar, my teacher and old friend, you are always in my corner and I am so fortunate.
v I talk a lot about Muslims in this dissertation, but one stands out in my life.
Yasmeen Kagalwalla, you are a powerful scholar and parent. We are all much better people for you.
Abid and Safiyyah, you are the lights of my life.
vi Where Time & Style Collide: The Muslim in U.S. Discourse
Lamiyah Zulfiqar Bahrainwala, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2016
Supervisor: Barry Brummett
This dissertation explores how the “Muslim problem” is constructed as uniquely urgent and hidden in the United States. The idea of impending Muslim attacks and the stealthy radicalization of Muslims are very real fears in the U.S. today. Sustaining these fears requires the exercise of considerable rhetorical ingenuity, and studying it requires looking beyond explicit anti-Muslim discourse to understand the momentum of this fear.
I advocate the use of two new methods to understand this dual construction of
“Muslim terrorism” as both urgent and concealed. I develop a temporal framework and a style-based lens to interrogate this construction. Scholarship acknowledges that counterterrorism discourse presents “Muslim terrorism” as urgent enough to justify preemptive measures. This language of urgency and preemption is deeply temporal, but there is little scholarship on the temporal component of anti-Muslim discourse. I apply my temporal framework to examine the coverage of the 2012 Sikh Temple Shooting to understand how temporal language can incite fear of Muslim in discourse completely unrelated to Muslims and Islam.
Meanwhile, I apply a stylistic lens to explore the construction of the “moderate”
Muslim, who acts as a foil to the hidden, non-American “Muslim terrorist.” The vii “moderate” Muslim discourse is produced by the status quo rather than U.S. Muslims themselves, and compels particular performances of citizenship from U.S. Muslims. Style mediates these performances of citizenship, and thus I apply my style-based lens to examine three examples of “moderate Muslims.” I examine the 2014 Miss America controversy; the stand-up comedy of Muslim comedian Azhar Usman; and the preaching style of Suhaib Webb, a renowned “moderate” American imam. By considering three case studies, I am able to present a rich analysis of the many performances of Muslim
“moderation” and its role in bolstering American exceptionalism. Thus, taken together, my temporal and stylistic approaches explain the momentum of fear towards Muslims in the U.S. and their role in bolstering American national identity.
viii Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ...... 1
Chapter 1: The Urgent, Hidden "Muslim Threat" ...... 13 Orientalism: A Foundation for Anti-Muslim Sentiment and Scholarship ....14 Temporality and Aesthetics in Orientalism Scholarship…………………...16 A Time to Kill: Temporality and the Urgency of the "Muslim Problem"….19 Beyond the Veil: Style & Aesthetics in Anti-Muslim Sentiment…………..20 Critics and Advocates of the "Moderate Muslim" Construct……………….23 Anti-Muslim Rhetoric vs. Anti-Muslim Discourse…………………………26 "Anti-Muslim Sentiment" vs. "Islamophobia"……………………………...31 The "Moderate" Muslim and the "Model" Minority………………………..35 Islam as Foreign, and the Rise of an "American Islam"…………………….41 A Temporal Analysis………………………………………………………..46 A Stylistic Approach………………………………………………………...47 Research Questions………………………………………………………….49 Chapter SUmmaries & Previews……………………………………………50
Chapter 2: An Islamic America? A Foundation for Anti-Muslim Sentiment…….53 Islam's Influence on American Identity Through History ...... ….. 54 A Dramatistic Understanding of "Terrorist" Motives………………………63 The Temporal Component of Affect and Terror Management……………..75
Chapter 3: Methods in Time and Style ...... 80 Temporal & Stylistic Approaches: A Rationale ...... 81 Muslims as Ticking Time Bombs: A Temporal Lens………………………84 Timescaping: How Far Does the "Wake" of 9/11 Stretch?...... 85 Urgency: The Always Imminent "Muslim Threat"…………………..91 Application of Temporal Lens: Case Study & Grounded Theory Analysis..94 Case Study: The 2012 Sikh Temple Shooting………………………..95 ix Grounded Theory Analysis & Coding………………………………..98 A Stylistic Framework to Examine the "Moderate" Muslim………………102 Scapegoating vs. Comic Framing: The Choice "Moderate" Muslims Face…………………………………………………………………..105 Style: Enabling Comic Framing for the Muslim "Moderate"………..108
Chapter 4: Mass Shooting or 9/11 Aftermath? Temporal Framing at Work ...... 115 The 2012 Sikh Temple Shooting Coverage ...... 115 The Timeline of the Shooting……………………………………….115 The Classic, "All-American" Hate-Criminal………………………..117 Victims & Reactions………………………………………………...119 The Timescape: Another Shooting, or 9/11 Aftermath?…………………..121 Urgency: When the Aftermath Implies Futuer Horror…………………….128 Implications: Epochality and Indictment…………………………………..133 Sikhism, Style, and the Scapegoating of Muslims…………………………140 An Aesthetic of "Peacefulness"…………………………………………….150
Chapter 5: The "Moderate" Muslim's Function in Nationalism ...... 154 The 2014 Miss America Controversy ...... 161 Choosing the Chains: When Muslims Deploy Comic Framing…………..174 Imam Suhaib Webb: Preaching (American Style)…………..……………186 Authenticity as a Muslim, Authenticity as an American……………190 Creating the "Moderate" through Masculinity, Coolness, and the Black Cause………………………………………………………………...194
Chapter 6: Beyond Anti-Muslim Narratives ...... 203 Pacing, Priming & Time Perspectives ...... 204 Pacing: The Counterpart to Narratives of Urgency………………....204 The Present-Fatalistic Muslim Terrorist…………………………….210 Constructing Motives in Anti-Muslim Attacks…….……………………..215 An Aesthetic of Peacefulness: Creating a Cowed Muslim Population……221 Motives and Moving Beyond 9/11………………………………………..224 A New Era of Hate………………………………………………………..227 x References ...... 231
Vita...... 255
xi Introduction
This project begins with the question: how has U.S. discourse been able to sustain such intense fear of Muslims? American Muslims have consistently been attacked, physically and discursively, since (and even before) 9/11, and these attacks peaked in
2015. Furthermore, a vast amount of capital goes into enforcing counterterrorism measures to prevent “radical Islamist” attacks. According to Pew Research, since 9/11 the
U.S. has spent more than $500 billion on intelligence, with $16.6 billion requested in
2013 for counterterrorism efforts alone (Pew Research Center, 2013). Intense fear is key to justifying such spending, i.e. intense fear of Muslim terrorism in particular. U.S. counterterrorism efforts focus on “monitoring and disrupting violent extremists and suspected terrorist groups” (Pew Research Center, 2013), and although this phrasing scrupulously avoids naming Muslims, the terms “extremists” and “terrorist” act as terministic screens to conjure their image. Terministic screens are symbols that select and reflect certain realities by deflecting others (Burke, 1966). In this case, the reality selected is that of the “Muslim terrorist,” even though non-Muslims are also subjected to heightened security measures.
This increase in attacks on Muslims along with a parallel increase in counterterrorism costs is ominous. It suggests that fear of Muslims is increasing, and consequently that the U.S. public is able to justify costly counterterrorism efforts even at the expense of civil liberties. In fact, a study on 9/11 trauma found that students who viewed footage of the Twin Towers collapsing endorsed civil liberties much more weakly than their peers (Choma et al, 2015, pg. 352). This reveals two factors about the “Muslim 1 problem:” one, that it is uniquely urgent; and two, that it is well hidden. In other words, there is always the looming threat of “Islamic terrorism,” but also that these “terrorists” are so well hidden that it justifies unprecedented levels of surveillance. It is this combination of urgency and concealment that forms the basis of this unabated fear. These are the two factors I examine to understand the mechanisms sustaining anti-Muslim sentiment. I apply a temporal approach to interrogate the notion of “urgency” and a stylistic approach to understand the notion of how Muslim bodies are “hidden” and
“revealed,” and how U.S. Muslims can “expose” themselves as non-threats.
Before I offer a few examples of anti-Muslim sentiment, let me take a moment to discuss how U.S. discourse constructs motives when it comes to attacks on Muslims. As with any other form of hatred, U.S. anti-Muslim sentiment varies massively in its recognizability. It is not always clear when Muslims are targeted, and it is even less clear when it becomes easier to target an individual because they happen to be read as
“Muslim.” This is significant because labeling anti-Muslim attacks has become a site of struggle in media discourse – the narrative immediately focuses on whether it was a “hate crime,” which is now a catchall phrase for the terrorizing of U.S. Muslims. This rush to categorize attacks on Muslims restricts the debate considerably. First, it promotes the idea that victims who are Muslims can only be victimized out of hatred, and never politics.
Second, it suggests that anti-Muslim sentiment is only present when presented, i.e. when it culminates in a physical or discursive attack on perceived Muslim bodies. This is a severely limited way to understand, and therefore combat, U.S. anti-Muslim sentiment, which is systemic and emerges in incidents and discourse not involving Muslims. And 2 finally, it means that while Muslims can unquestionably be terrorists, it becomes impossible to construe them as victims of terrorism. For these reasons, in this project I advocate the use of two unconventional approaches to critique anti-Muslim sentiment: a temporal approach, and a style-based approach.
To illustrate its slipperiness, let me offer a few incidents of anti-Muslim sentiment in order of increasing subtlety. Early in 2014, twenty D.C. Metro buses began running advertisements calling for an end to “all aid to Islamic countries.” The advertisements, which read “Islamic Jew-Hatred: It’s in the Quran,” were paid for by the American
Freedom Defense Initiative – an organization led by prolific anti-Muslim activist Pamela
Gellar. Gellar, who was also at the forefront of the 2010 “Ground Zero Mosque” protests, was also responsible for anti-Muslim advertisements in New York’s subway system in
2012. These advertisements read “IN ANY WAR BETWEEN THE CIVILIZED MAN
AND THE SAVAGE, SUPPORT THE CIVILIZED MAN. SUPPORT ISRAEL.
DEFEAT JIHAD” (BBC News, 2012). There is no doubt that this is explicit anti-Muslim sentiment: it explicitly mentions Islam and Muslims, associates them with savages, and makes a rallying call to unite against the “Islamic persecution” of Jews. However, not all anti-Muslim sentiment is as explicit as these advertisements. Let us consider the following story about how anti-Muslim bigotry is “corrected” by a subtler strain of bigotry.
In 2013, concerned father Thomas Prisock in West Cobb, Georgia, complained to the local school board about a children’s book about Islam his daughter had found at her school fair. Prisock was worried that the book would indoctrinate schoolchildren and 3 wanted administrators to pay closer attention to the books they made available. The book, called Golden Domes and Silver Lanterns: a Muslim Book of Colors, is an illustrated book describing the various colors of Muslim head-coverings, prayer mats, etc. Prisock argued that “that culture there doesn’t seem to have anything good coming out of it,”(School Library Journal, 2013) even though the book in question goes out of its way to separate Islam from “culture” and “ethnicity,” featuring illustrations of Caucasian
American-Muslims and head-coverings in various colors (and not just black abayas, which are region-specific garments). Fortunately, the school board rejected Prisock’s complaint. Unfortunately, they did so not by invoking the First Amendment, but by invoking “diversity.” Abi Nesmith, the president of the PTA that organized the book fair, stated that the elementary school had a “diverse” student population and that “about 65 percent of the school’s 956 students are not native English speakers” (Marietta Daily
Journal, 2013). Given that language is a cultural marker while religion is not, we see that
Nesmith clearly conflates ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity. In this case, while the father demonstrates explicit anti-Muslim sentiment, the PTA president demonstrates a subtler form of the same sentiment. He presents Islam as the religion of the “diverse” students, likely “non-native speakers” of English. This makes his anti-Muslim sentiment more difficult to identify, as it attempts to “correct” the more obvious bigotry of Mr.
Prisock. He construes Islam as a foreign religion, and its inclusion becomes a badge of approbation for the culture that values such “diversity.”
Now consider an incident of anti-Muslim sentiment that was so veiled that it would be invisible to onlookers. In 2011, I stopped at a grocery store near my home in 4 Howell, Michigan, with my mother-in-law who wears a headscarf. Howell is a small town of about 10,000, and the store employees knew me well enough. While the cashiers usually chatted with me as they rang up my purchases, this time they even avoided eye- contact. I couldn’t say I was surprised, because my mother-in-law’s headscarf not only marked her as Muslim, but probably “outed” me as Muslim as well. As an ethnic minority who didn’t cover her hair, I received friendly treatment at this store. When I suddenly became visible as Muslim, this changed. This change in behavior was likely only evident to me, as it was not obvious to my mother-in-law or bystanders and I doubt even the employees were cognizant of a change in their behavior. It was a microaggression, a much subtler, everyday form of degradation of a minority culture.
Microaggressions are the everyday verbal and nonverbal “environmental slights, snubs, or insults” that communicate hostile messages to target individuals based solely upon their marginalized group membership (Sue et al., 2007). What occurred in the grocery store was a microaggression as it was subtle, ambiguous, and likely unintended – and because it is salient, I should mention that it was triggered by my mother-in-law’s style, and called my apparent “non-Muslim” style into question as well. This incident is one illustration of how anti-Muslim sentiment does not always come from visible action, and can damage without being detected.
Lastly, my final example describes anti-Muslim sentiment that, interestingly, does not involve Muslims or Islam at all. When my family visits us in Austin, Texas, we would take them to Elevation Burger – a burger chain that emphasizes its sustainable, fresh ingredients. The chain has a presence in several major U.S. cities, and its website 5 advertises the freshness of its beef, which is free-range and hormone-free. But my family loved it for another reason: the stores in Austin used halal meat, i.e. meat slaughtered according to Islamic law. However, nowhere on the Elevation Burger website does it state that the meat is halal (although there was a small sign on the door at one of the branches). Rather, it is listed on zabihah.com – a Muslim-run website that identifies halal product suppliers and clients across the world. Not advertising their meat as halal suggests that Elevation Burger was perfectly willing to forgo the Muslim clientele it would obtain in order to dissociate itself from Islam. Therefore, this example bears all the classic signs of anti-Muslim sentiment – excluding Muslims and limiting their access to
Islamic products – without actually involving Muslim bodies or any mention of Islam. It is not a microaggression precisely, but it is an act of exclusion not even fully visible to
Muslim eyes. This makes it imperative to consider incidents and texts that are not related to Muslims or Islam when examining anti-Muslim sentiment.
In addition to showing the importance of examining seemingly unrelated discourse, the Elevation Burger example also demonstrates the importance of new ways of studying anti-Muslim sentiment. In particular, a stylistic analysis of Elevation Burger’s marketing would be useful in this case. This is because Elevation Burger markets its meat using all the tags that present is as high-quality, socially conscious, and therefore
“stylish:” their “About Us” page describes its product as “organic, sustainable and fresh,”
“healthier,” and “a burger that truly stood apart from the rest in terms of taste and sustainability” (Elevation Burger, 2016). Their “philosophy” page contains descriptions of their cattle as grass-fed, free-range, and organic (Elevation Burger, 2016). In other 6 words, it uses all the stylish tags that would appeal to U.S. white-collar meat-eaters who are interested in “class oriented,” “high quality” meat. However, there is a confusing twist: this stylish meat also happens to be halal. This is difficult to reconcile, because
Islam is not trendy. Yet the Islamic way of slaughter does yield meat that is sustainable, organic, humanely slaughtered, and free of blood clots – all characteristics that have become associated with social class. However, halal meat is typically inexpensive, which allows industries like Elevation Burger to reap larger profit margins by marketing it as more “socially conscious.” Therefore, Elevation Burger has discovered a cost-effective way to tap into the commercial appeal of “white collar meat” without having to pay for it, both financially and discursively. And Elevation Burger is not the only restaurant that does this – a number of nationally acclaimed restaurants in Austin “secretly” use halal meat to make their award-winning brisket or burgers. This is an interesting moment where anti-Muslim sentiment converges with style for the purpose of capitalism.
However, it would be difficult to recognize the implications of such an invisible moment of anti-Muslim sentiment without taking a stylistic approach.
While I have listed these stories in order of increasing subtlety, I also arranged them to encourage comparison. The first two stories target Muslims far more explicitly than the last two stories, but they also connote a temporal threat: that Muslim “culture” will “infect” U.S. values if not contained quickly. The United States must therefore act preemptively to defeat the “threat” of Islam, by “ending aid” to all “Islamic countries” (as the bus advertisements say), or eliminate any “indoctrinating” literature from school fairs to protect future generations of Americans. The temporal strain is subtle, but both stories 7 advocate action against Muslims and Islam even though there is no clear Muslim aggressor in those instances. The American Defense League and the father in West Cobb are not reacting to an instance of Muslim aggression; indeed, Muslims are conspicuously absent in both stories. Yet, they communicate the fear that the “savage” Muslim is prepared to attack Israel and the United States, and that the contagion of Islam can spread through contact with a children’s book on Islam. Media discourse on Muslims is rife with such preemptive language, characterizing the “radical Islam” as a “cancer”1 that must be eliminated before it overcomes the “host” country. Of course, such urgent medical- temporal rhetoric implies that eventually, one must also eliminate the “non-radical,” i.e.
“moderate” cancerous cells to ensure long-term survival. At any rate, it is undeniable that the sense of fear necessary to sustain expensive counterterrorism measures rests on the
American public’s certainty that future terrorist attacks are forthcoming. I will describe the scholarship concerning temporal language in counterterrorism policies in the following chapter, and establish a need for the temporal study I conduct in Chapter 4.
Meanwhile, the other two stories I described operate through style to marginalize
Muslims. My mother-in-law’s headscarf, and “stylish” and socially conscious meat- consumption undergirds the anti-Muslim sentiment in both those instances. There is clearly a stylistic component to anti-Muslim sentiment, particularly visible in the trope of the veiled and oppressed Muslim woman. However, the exploration of style in anti-
Muslim sentiment is largely (though not exclusively) preoccupied with the female body
1 Activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali uses this phrasing (http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/07/22/ex-muslim- author-radical-islam-is-a-cancer-that-needs-to-be-cut-out/), along with the Wall Street Journal’s Fethullah Gulen (among many others) (http://www.wsj.com/articles/muslims-must-combat-the-extremist-cancer- 1440718377) 8 and/or “Muslim fashion,” as I will discuss in my literature review in the next chapter.
However, we need a more pluralistic application of style when exploring anti-Muslim sentiment, particularly if it can reveal anti-Muslim sentiment in unrelated discourse.
Additionally, one of the most powerful rhetorical weapons disciplining the American
Muslim body – the “moderate Muslim” trope – covertly relies on style. In Chapters 3 and
5 respectively, I develop and apply a stylistic framework to examine the various permutations of the “moderate Muslim” and its role in shielding anti-Muslim sentiment from being dismantled.
I wanted to illustrate two points through these four stories. First, it is important to consider how anti-Muslim sentiment functions in events and discourse that do not involve
Muslims. And second, due to this, the logical thing to do is develop new ways of seeing anti-Muslim sentiment. After all, the expectation of extreme anti-Muslim sentiment (as peddled by folks like Pamela Geller) helps mask microaggression against Muslims, or otherwise dismisses them as trivial. Therefore, through these stories, I am illustrating not just the range of discursive violence against U.S. Muslims, but also its persistence in less obvious realms: in the food industry, in the realm of aesthetics and style, in education, and so on. For these reasons, there is a real need to apply diverse approaches to critique anti-Muslim sentiment, and this includes drawing on methods from style and temporality studies.
The four stories I describe here also introduce the various issues that I address throughout this dissertation. It demonstrates how extreme anti-Muslim rhetoric precludes our ability to assess the more “reasonable” brand of bigotry that often emerges to correct 9 the former. This is evident in the story about the father who objected to the children’s book about Muslims, and whose explicit bigotry was “corrected” by the school board’s more “moderate” values. The same story also bring up the notion of U.S. exceptionalism, which is present in the PTA president’s argument about U.S. schools being committed to
“diversity.” The stories also show that Islam’s “foreignness” is a foregone assumption, and that Muslims themselves, who can be victims of hate crimes, cannot be victims of terrorism on US soil. They also demonstrate that anti-Muslim sentiment targets Muslims rather than Islam, as veiled or bearded Muslim bodies are clearly unwanted in restaurants and grocery stores. They demonstrate that anti-Muslim sentiment is not just hidden in microaggressions, but also embedded in completely unexpected realms (like the food industry). Once again, when Muslims are marginalized in texts that have nothing to do with Muslims and Islam, and when anti-Muslim rhetoric become portable, it is necessary to introduce new ways to interrogate this rhetoric.
These stories show the pervasiveness of U.S. anti-Muslim sentiment, but that is hardly a case I need to make. Anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. is present and pervasive.
I am also not going to make a case that scholarship on anti-Muslim sentiment is missing.
Both popular and scholarly critics have discussed the bigotry that U.S. Muslims face. The
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU), and Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) keep a close watch on instances of anti-Muslim discrimination, and the public backlash that often follows outrageous hate speech against Muslims shows that explicit prejudice is generally unacceptable.
Meanwhile, rhetoric scholars have examined more subtle tropes in U.S. anti-Muslim 10 sentiment, including Orientalist, nationalist, and “terrorism” tropes (which I will touch upon in the following chapter). There is no doubt that journalists and academics have been attending to the alarming rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. However, as new permutations of anti-Muslim sentiment develop, it is necessary to continue developing new tools to dismantle such bigotry. When anti-Muslim sentiment acts through microaggressions, or operates outside anti-Muslim discourse, those are clear symptoms that such bigotry is adapting in order to remain concealed. It is no longer enough to simply focus on explicit anti-Muslim attacks, and it is necessary to focus on what creates the impetus for anti-Muslim attacks before the attacks take place.
In the following chapter, I establish scholarly tendencies to examine anti-Muslim sentiment in particular ways and explain where my project intervenes in this body of scholarship. Anti-Muslim sentiment itself is not static; it continually adapts based on the rhetorical exigency of the moment, and anti-Muslim rhetoric continually self-modifies to shield itself against criticism. When anti-Muslim sentiment becomes recognizably racist and Orientalist, those engaging in Muslim hate-speech learn to avoid employing any race-based terms in their rhetoric. For instance, the Transportation Security
Administration (TSA) website scrupulously avoids race-based language and says explicitly that they do not “conduct ethnic or religious profiling” and in fact employ
“multiple checks and balances to ensure profiling does not happen” (Religious & Cultural
Needs, 2014). However, immediately above this statement on the TSA website is a section stating that those wearing “loose fitting garments” (like abayas, for instance) may be subjected to a secondary security check. In this way, the TSA employs the rhetoric of 11 style and consumption to avoid being criticized for racial and religious profiling.
Therefore, the primary goal of this project is to introduce two novel methods of interrogating anti-Muslim sentiment. The secondary goal is to understand how it operates outside anti-Muslim texts. Taken together, these two goals address how U.S. discourse constructs the “Muslim problem” as a uniquely urgent and concealed threat.
In Chapters 2 and 3, I provide a theoretical foundation and establish the methods I will use to examine my texts, and in Chapters 4 and 5 I apply these methods to various case studies. Finally, Chapter 6 reiterates key findings and ends with a discussion about how U.S. discourse constructs the motives of “Muslim terrorists.”
12 Chapter 1: The Urgent, Hidden “Muslim Threat”
In my introduction, I described four examples of anti-Muslim sentiment that varied greatly in recognizeability. Yet, they all contribute to the idea that the threat of
“Muslim terrorism” is both uniquely urgent and stealthy – it sneaks its way into school books and how “we” manufacture our meat, and demands constant vigilance. Therefore, it is reasonable to air anti-Muslim sentiment even in the absence of a Muslim aggressor, because the threat of “Islamic terrorism” is ever-present. The stories demonstrate microaggressions against Muslims, as well as how it flourishes in unlikely places like the food industry. Because anti-Muslim sentiment is sheltered in these unlikely places, we need to devise new methods to expose it. Therefore, this dissertation makes a methodological intervention by examining anti-Muslim rhetoric using unlikely methods.
The goals of this chapter are three-fold. First, I will explain where I am making interventions in current scholarly conversations, i.e. I will explain where this study contributes to the scholarship and why we need a diversity of approaches to study anti-
Muslim sentiment. Second, I will establish some key terms I will use throughout my dissertation. Many of these key terms become the premises on which I build the arguments that follow in later chapters. Finally, I will present my guiding research questions and preview the remaining chapters in this dissertation.
I have mentioned that I will apply a temporal and stylistic lens to examine anti-
Muslim discourse in Chapters 4 and 5. While these approaches may seem unconventional, the canonical scholarship on anti-Muslim sentiment does contain strands of temporal and stylistic themes, though not always analyses. More recent scholarship has 13 just about begun to consider aesthetics and temporality, but as I describe later, they do so narrowly and focus on counterterrorism discourse rather than anti-Muslim sentiment. In this section, I will outline seminal work that continues to guide scholarship on anti-
Muslim sentiment today, and identify moments that create a space for temporal and stylistic analyses. In doing so, I hope to demonstrate the need for my methodological intervention, and how this intervention can contribute fresh ways to challenge anti-
Muslim sentiment.
ORIENTALISM: A FOUNDATION FOR ANTI-MUSLIM SENTIMENT AND
SCHOLARSHIP
Perhaps the most significant scholarship that aids the study of anti-Muslim sentiment is Orientalism. Broadly, Edward Said, who produced the founding scholarship, describes Orientalism as a created body of theory and practice that puts the Westerner in a series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing the upper hand
(1978). Western perspectives present the Orient, or “Other,” through very particular depictions of sexuality, gender, racial, and cultural identity. These depictions essentialize and homogenize the Other, and Said believed that depictions of the Orient were deeply invested in maintaining colonial relationships and preserving material interests. In the 50s and 60s, Cheikh Anta Diop continued studies in Orientalism, arguing that African cultural identities that are contiguous were deliberately, arbitrarily broken down by
“race,” thus implying a primacy of race over culture (1954). In 1974, Marshall Hodgson intervened in the shortsighted “Western” approaches to Islamic studies, which primarily 14 focused on the Arab world as the locus of Islamic thought. He also made an important distinction between “Islamic” and “Islamicate” phenomena, the latter simply being the cultural remnants in areas where Muslims were culturally dominant (1974). Current anti-
Muslim sentiment in the U.S. erases this distinction, of course, deliberately presenting
Islam as preceding, or standing in for, culture and even race. More recent scholarship on anti-Muslim sentiment also applies and furthers the framework of Orientalism to examine the representation of Muslims in imperialism, war, and popular media contexts, while continuing critiques of the “clash of civilizations” rhetoric (see Gusterson, 2012; Mills,
2012; Chowdury, 2012; Kumar, 2012, among others).
Even this absurdly brief overview of Orientalism scholarship shows that it counters tropes present in modern anti-Muslim discourse. First, it critiques the racialization of the (Muslim) Other (also addressed by Tyrer, 2013; Rana, 2011; Garner
& Selod, 2014, among others). I argue in Chapter 5 that this utterly flawed racialization particularly hurts “model minorities” in the U.S. Second, it attacks the premise that
Western civilization is implicitly, unquestionably superior. And third, it addresses the conflation of Islamic principles and Muslim and regional cultures. The last point is especially important because a common critique of current anti-Muslim sentiment is that it generalizes a few extremist examples to a population of 1.6 billion Muslims. However, a better counterargument is to point out that individual or regional culture is often presented as Islamic practice. For instance, the abaya or black robes that Muslim women wear are unique to specific Arab nations rather than Islamic doctrine. Muslim men and women practice modesty very differently across Islamic sects and Muslim nations, and 15 these differences – which have a distinctly stylistic component – demonstrate culture and fashion rather than Islamic principles. Pointing out this difference between Islamic doctrine and individual and regional cultures is a far more effective counterargument when addressing anti-Muslim sentiment.
Additionally, Orientalism is undoubtedly the forerunner for current American exceptionalism discourse, which I describe and interrogate in Chapters 2 and 5 respectively. Orientalism places the Occident in a position of power and moral superiority over the Orient. Meanwhile, American exceptionalism rests on the belief that the US is a “morally elevated” nation with people “set apart from the rest of the world and living in a land of opportunity that is the envy and aspiration of humankind”(Ivie and
Giner, 2009, pg. 361). Exceptionalism appears to be a direct descendent of Orientalism.
Edward Said writes that Orientalism reveals the Occident’s willingness or intention to understand the Orient (1978, pg. 12, emphasis in original), and he finds that ultimately
Orientalism is based on self-affirmation rather than objective exploration. This preoccupation with self-affirmation (and later, exceptionalism) is a key component to understanding the production and role of the “moderate” Muslim, which I address in
Chapter 5.
TEMPORALITY AND AESTHETICS IN ORIENTALISM SCHOLARSHIP
So far I have talked broadly about Orientalist tropes, and how they emerge in current anti-Muslim sentiment. Now, I want to point out some temporal and stylistic moments in the study of Orientalism. To begin with, Orientalists use a “colonizer’s 16 Islamophobic temporal template” (Khaldoun, 2012, pg. 109) which presents the Orient as still trapped in the Dark Ages. The “Muslim world” is packaged as temporally and spatially distant from the “modern world” (Khaldoun, 2012, pg. 108), and is thus unable to modernize. Meanwhile, in Terrifying Muslims Junaid Rana gestures toward a temporal element in the Orientalist construction of the “Muslim threat;” he describes how an event like 9/11 was constructed as a “racial event” rather than terror event, thus helping unify moments across history (2011, pg. 52). As a result, he argue, the post-9/11 Muslim is
“suffused with the potential of terror…through the broad danger of an Islamic peril” (pg.
53, emphases mine). Thus Rana gestures towards the future-oriented nature of the
“Muslim peril” – an ongoing fear that continually “forebodes the possibility of terrorism”
(pg. 54).
Meanwhile, Orientalism reveals a preoccupation with aesthetics in its characterization of (violent) Muslim masculinities. In particular, scholars have attended to the expectations of Muslim machismo (Aslam, 2012), the aesthetics underlying
“deviant” Muslim masculinities (Puar, 2007) and the stylistic demonstration of Muslim masculinities in times of imperialism, nationalism, and war (see Kimmel, Hearn, and
Connell, 2005). Meanwhile, Orientalists are also fascinated by the aesthetics of Muslim female subjugation. The most recognizable symbol of this subjugation, the headcovering, is sartorial after all. Reina Lewis tries to interrupt this Orientalist reading of Muslim modesty by examining how Muslim women style their public modesty using fashion as her analytical lens (2015). Furthermore, scholars have posited that there are “aesthetic assemblages” that enable Islamic violence through visual media, such as jihad and martyr 17 videos uploaded to YouTube (Crone, 2014). The scholarly conversation on Orientalism does acknowledge the work of temporality and aesthetics in creating a Muslim Other, but
I am calling for a more sustained use of these approaches to critique anti-Muslim sentiment. As I mention in my introduction, the presentation of “Muslim terrorism” as a uniquely urgent yet hidden threat makes such approaches logical and necessary, particularly since I will argue that the “moderate Muslim” myth – one of the most effective weapons produced by anti-Muslim sentiment – is founded on political aesthetics. I will briefly explain the terms “political aesthetics” and “style” later in this chapter, and more thoroughly in Chapter 3.
So far, I have touched on seminal works that act as a foundation for current scholarship on anti-Muslim. I also identified moments where this foundation acknowledges the role of temporality and aesthetics in perpetuating anti-Muslim sentiment. However, I mentioned earlier that some recent studies have begun to observe the influence of temporality and aesthetics in the scholarly conversation about the
“moderate” Muslim, as well as anti-Muslim rhetoric in general. I say anti-Muslim rhetoric instead of anti-Muslim discourse here because anti-Muslim rhetoric reliably emerges in seemingly unrelated realms: immigration policy, counterterrorism measures, race discourse, and nationalism. Yet, these discourses do work together to reproduce anti-
Muslim sentiment while protecting it from detection. Later in this chapter, when I establish the key terms of my debate, I will also make a distinction between anti-Muslim rhetoric and discourse. In the next section, however, I present the literature that sets a precedent for my methodological intervention. 18
A TIME TO KILL: TEMPORALITY AND THE URGENCY OF THE “MUSLIM
PROBLEM”
In this section, I describe studies that address the role of temporality in anti-
Muslim sentiment to establish a foundation for my temporal approach in Chapter 4.
These studies address temporality on two levels: the use of temporal language, and how the passage of time affects perceptions of the “Muslim threat.” These studies, however, explore counterterrorism narratives rather than anti-Muslim discourse directly. These discourses do not mention Islam or Muslims. However, the “Muslim terrorist” body has become embedded in “terrorism” rhetoric, and so counterterrorism discourse inevitably evokes the specter of the Muslim. This makes counterterrorism narratives salient in the study of anti-Muslim sentiment.
Perhaps the most relevant study I encountered states that narratives of time shape security practice. A sense of emergency is embedded into the language of counterterrorism law, which demands an immediate response to an attack while anticipating future attacks (Fisher, 2013). Although the author does not mention Muslims, she focuses on “counterterrorism law,” a discourse that is haunted by the specter of the
“Muslim terrorist.” Meanwhile, one study finds that the fear of terrorism is sustained through a “future-orientedness,” an expectation of future attacks to come (Frank, 2015).
Consequently, counterterrorism policy begins to favor “pre-emptive” action through policies like racial profiling (Heath-Kelly, 2012). Critics of anti-Muslim sentiment have long said that sting operations and similar “pre-emptive” measures – which is a 19 temporally fraught term – violate civil rights. However, another study finds that individuals express a willingness to compromise civil rights to assist counterterrorism measures (Choma et al, 2015). The same study finds that viewing clips of the 9/11 attacks increased present distress, although those who viewed other fear-inducing clips from horror movies did not express a similar distress (2015). This demonstrates that 9/11 or
Muslim-related terror attacks engender a uniquely powerful anguish in audiences, and annually memorializing the 9/11 attacks serves to extend this national trauma, sustain fear, and justify expensive, pre-emptive counterterrorism measures.
Though few, these studies detecting temporality in counterterrorism language are important and encouraging. They set the stage for developing a temporal methodology to examine anti-Muslim sentiment. However, it is also important to go beyond counterterrorism discourse and examine temporal constructions in anti-Muslim rhetoric.
In Chapters 3 and 4, I develop a temporal framework and examine news reports to understand how temporal manipulation can indict Muslims in events completely unrelated to Muslims and Islam. This will explain how the “Muslim problem” becomes uniquely urgent and how the state can endlessly manufacture fear using temporal means.
This can pave the way for interrupting such temporal practices in future discourse.
BEYOND THE VEIL: STYLE & AESTHETICS IN ANTI-MUSLIM SENTIMENT
Now that I have discussed the extant scholarship on temporality, I want to address the scholarship concerning my second analytical lens: style and aesthetics in anti-Muslim
20 sentiment. Specifically, I want to examine their role in the “moderate” Muslim construct, and I will discuss the scholarship on “moderate Muslims” in the next section.
I have thus far been using the terms “style” and “aesthetics” in tandem, but I am not suggesting that they are the same. Style is a systematic language that embodies an aesthetic, and is usually expressed aesthetically. Clothing, carriage, grooming, and any attempts to inscribe ones body (intentionally or unintentionally) with social class and values, are all components of style. Meanwhile, aesthetics is an affective representation of values, which is then expressed through style. In other words, the form (i.e. style) follows value (Ewen, 1988). Political aesthetics thus emerge over time, where the affective power of aesthetics becomes central to developing nationalisms (Sartwell, 2010, pg. 49) to create a “dream of wholeness” (Ewen, 1988, pg. 79). Fashion, meanwhile, is a smaller, embodied subset of style that appropriates style and/or represents what is currently popular. I offer these quick definitions (which I flesh out in Chapter 3) to point out that the literature on anti-Muslim sentiment appears to branch out into two categories: fashion, and political aesthetics.
Many scholars have examined Muslim fashion, primarily focusing on women and the sartorial expression of modesty. Countless scholars have examined the politics of
Muslim veiling practices, but a few scholars have also addressed the Muslim veil’s presence in the fashion industry (Lewis, 2007; Unal & Moors, 2012). The literature also attends to variations in regional Muslim fashion (Osella & Osella, 2007; Tarlo & Moors,
2013; Jan & Abdullah, 2015) and the formation of Western-Muslim fashion (Mossière,
2012; Tarlo, 2010), as well as the emergence of a wealthy, “luxurious” modesty by 21 particular Muslim women (Al-Mutawa, 2013). It was interesting to note that these studies primarily focused on Muslim female fashion, and little was said about Muslim male modesty. Yet, Muslim men as also supposed to be “hijabi,” a term that has come to mean
“headscarf” but actually refers to general modesty and chastity. Muslim men are expected to “veil” their cheekbones with facial hair, avoid tight clothing, and eschew silk clothing and gold jewelry. This oversight in the literature is understandable, as scholars are forced to respond to the excessive Western fascination with the veiled Muslim female. However, it is a significant oversight and one that I attempt to address when I examine the styles
(sartorial and otherwise) of two notable “moderate” Muslim men in Chapter 5.
The second category that emerges in this scholarship explores the political aesthetics guiding the representation of the Muslim identity. Scholars have noted how
Muslims position themselves in or against social movements relating to Islam (Al-
Mahadin, 2015), as well as Muslim speakers’ use of aesthetic, non-rational tools like
“charisma” to mobilize audiences (Barzegar, 2014). Finally, while there was a lot of discussion of Islamic art and architecture, one particular study examined how 9/11 impacted Muslim artists’ identities and consequently their art (Jiwa, 2004). However, these discussions of “political aesthetics” do not address how U.S. ideology is inscribed onto “moderate” Muslim style and performance, although some of the literature on fashion discusses how Muslim women express their own political-Islamic aesthetic through clothing. And unfortunately, I found no real examination of the style of
“moderate” Muslims, even though that is salient to the production of a “good Muslim” image. Hijab is modesty expressed partly through clothing, and is a highly politicized 22 symbol of Islam expressed through style. I am arguing that performance of “moderation” is a similarly politicized, and is also expressed through style to conform to a national aesthetic. If veils and headscarves are recognized as countering Western aesthetic
(including the national aesthetics of the U.S.), it is just as important to examine how
Muslims conform to the national aesthetic through style. Therefore, in my analysis of three “moderate” Muslim case studies in Chapter 5, I hope to understand how U.S.
Muslims perform “moderation” through style to blend into the national political aesthetic.
CRITICS AND ADVOCATES OF THE “MODERATE MUSLIM” CONSTRUCT
In this section, I describe what scholarship has said about the “good” or
“moderate” Muslim, since it is the construct I examine with my stylistic approach in
Chapter 5. I should say that not all scholars see this term as problematic. Many “experts” use the term “moderate” as a legitimate term for critiquing Islamic practice. In particular, feminist activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali uses this term in earnest, but only to say that a
“moderate” Islam is a myth because Islam is inherently extremist (2015). Meanwhile, public intellectuals Irshad Manji and Mohammed Dajani argue that a “moderate Islam” can only be achieved through reformation (2015). Prominent German sociologist Bassam
Tibi suggests that the only way “moderation” can be achieved is by imposing policies of compulsory cultural assimilation on Muslim and Arab immigrants to Europe (1998). His rhetoric harkens back to Bernard Lewis’s arguments that the “East” and “West” are at moral odds with each other. Meanwhile, the language of reformation and feminism crop up repeatedly in the arguments for Muslim “moderation.” It is important to note that 23 scholars do not universally see this construct as flawed, as I demonstrate how it is fraught throughout this dissertation.
However, happily, a large number of academics have pointed out why the
“moderate Muslim” construct is troubling. Critics have pointed out that representation of
“moderate” Muslims and Islam have become a mechanism to force compatibility with
Western social life and elicit affirmations of citizenship and belonging (McGinty, 2012).
U.S. Muslims are obligated to prove their “credentials” by joining together to battle “bad
Muslims”, thereby making the distinction between “good” and “bad” political rather than cultural or religious (Mamdani, 2005, pg. 15) To minimize marginalization, Muslims conform to align with the perceived values of liberal democracy (Eickelman and
Piscatori, 2004) and engage in ahistorical essentialism of their own identities (Kahani-
Hopkins and Hopkins, 2002). Therefore, the “moderate” Muslim has less to do with religion than it does to do with performing good citizenship as well as an “imperative patriotism” that demonstrates Muslims’ peacefulness and loyalty while avoiding dissent against state policies (Maira, 2009, pg. 634). Additionally, the framework of “good” and
“bad” Muslims obscures issues of class and labor, particularly since representations of
Muslim spokespersons in the media tend to be “often elite, generally elegant, and always portrayed as recognizable to American viewers” (Maira, 2009, pg. 636). This is necessary to provide a contrast to the “alien, sometimes bearded, often working-class Muslim and
Arab immigrant men who speak in foreign accents and pose a threat to womanhood” (pg.
636). Here, we see not only the burden that the “moderate” narrative places on Muslims, but also the role of style and social class in creating this narrative. As a result, and under 24 pressure to demonstrate “moderation,” U.S. Muslims have developed a uniform vocabulary to avoid accusations of terrorism: they assert their individual humanity and ordinariness; state their investment in interfaith relations; and articulate an “American
Islam” (McGinty, 2012, pg. 2959). In the “moderate” Muslim case studies I examine in
Chapter 5, we will see that the counternarratives by Muslims are rife with these terms, anxiously reinforcing their loyalty to the United States.
Interestingly enough, those who criticized the “moderate Muslim” construct used the term “good Muslim” rather than “moderate Muslim” in their critiques, perhaps to emphasize their skepticism. However, those who do not see a problem with this construct use the term “moderate Muslim.” Overall, though, there has been sustained scholarly attention on the “moderate Muslim” discourse, and scholars generally agree that it forwards a political and social agenda rather than a religious one. The result is that U.S.
Muslims feel compelled to perform in a very particular, homogenized way to fulfill the criteria of the “moderate” who subscribes to a narrowly defined “American Islam.” This constitutes assimilation at best, and erasure at worst.
However, it is important to examine specific “moderate” Muslim figures to understand, concretely, how they perform “moderation,” particularly through style. First, what stylistic choices do they make – either sartorial, language-based, or in the articulation of a national ethos – to align themselves with liberal democracy? Second, once we have an understanding of what “moderation” looks like, what do these performances reveal about the status quo that exacts these performances? As I mentioned earlier, Orientalism aims to affirm the “superior” values of the Western observer rather 25 than explore the Eastern Other in earnest. I believe Orientalism shares this particular goal with the creation of the “moderate” Muslim; the goal is to construct an ideal, unattainable Muslim who reflects (and affirms) the superior ethos of the status quo. It is these two objectives that guide my analyses in Chapter 5, where I examine how the
“moderate” reinforces U.S. exceptionalism through a particular performance of style.
In these brief literature reviews, I have described the founding scholarship on anti-Muslim sentiment and identified moments where it leaves a space for intervention using temporal and stylistic approaches. Not only is there a space for such interventions, there is a fresh need to develop new methods to address evolving U.S. anti-Muslim sentiment. Public conversations about anti-Muslim sentiment happen in the wake of attacks on Muslims, and this frustrates me. It reinforced my desire to develop an analytical frame to recognize patterns in discourse that precede such attacks. In other words, how might we recognize structures that set-up anti-Muslim sentiment? The first step is to recognize that anti-Muslim rhetoric can operate well outside discourse related to
Muslims and Islam. This has become possible because there is a distinction between anti-
Muslim rhetoric and anti-Muslim discourse. I describe these terms in the next section, and then follow with some key terms and premises that I use throughout this project.
ANTI-MUSLIM RHETORIC VS. ANTI-MUSLIM DISCOURSE
I make a distinction between anti-Muslim discourse and anti-Muslim rhetoric.
Both perpetuate anti-Muslim sentiment, but the latter can actually exist separate from the former. Anti-Muslim discourse, which usually excludes the voices of U.S. Muslims, 26 explicitly addresses “Muslim problems” and/or “Islamic issues.” For instance, the 2010
“Ground Zero Mosque” controversy and the San Bernardino shooting were presented as
“Muslim issues” (rather than a zoning issue or a gun-violence problem). But a subtler, more surprising example was the criticism of Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton aide and wife of disgraced politician Anthony Weiner, who stayed by her philandering husband’s side and was thus characterized as an “oppressed” Muslim woman. All these are examples of anti-Muslim discourse ranging in explicitness, and they almost always contain familiar tropes in anti-Muslim rhetoric: the subjugated Muslim woman, the idea that Islam is a uniquely violent and sexist religion, etc.
However, while anti-Muslim discourse typically contains anti-Muslim rhetoric, the latter is not always part of the former. This means that anti-Muslim rhetoric exists in discourses that are independent of “Muslim events” and “Islam issues.” Consider the
2012 Sikh Temple Shooting of Wisconsin, for instance. During this tragic event, a member of a White supremacist gang opened fire on a Sikh Temple during services, killing six worshippers. Ostensibly, this event has nothing to do with Muslims or Islam in the United States; the perpetrator had no documented anti-Muslim tendencies, nor was the temple in a Muslim-dense area. However, as I describe in Chapter 4, the terms
“Muslims” and “Islam” cropped up several times, along with repeated descriptions of
Sikhism as a “peaceful” religion. There were also several dozen mentions of “9/11.” The news reports contextualized these references by explaining that Sikhs are often mistaken for Muslims in the post-9/11 landscape, and have been victims of hate crimes. While this is undeniably true, such a contextualization is damaging for two reasons: first, it implies 27 that the very presence of Muslims in the U.S. is responsible for certain tragedies. Second, it suggests that Sikhs are distinct from Muslims because they subscribe to a “peaceful” religion. Therefore, Muslims become incriminated in an event that has nothing to do with them, and such incrimination is facilitated by anti-Muslim rhetoric. In other words, unlike anti-Muslim discourse, anti-Muslim rhetoric is portable: it can indict Muslims in events unrelated to Islam. In fact, it can indict Muslim without even mentioning them. I argue that temporal management contributes to such “indictments” in my analysis of the Sikh
Temple Shooting in Chapter 4.
This distinction between anti-Muslim rhetoric and discourse, unfortunately, is not something anti-Muslim sentiment scholarship has noted. However, this phenomenon – where a certain group is invoked without ever being mentioned – is addressed in scholarship about postcolonial aid and Africa. In Brand Aid: Shopping Well to Save the
World, Richey and Ponte note that we are so “saturated” with certain images about Africa that they are always in our collective subconscious (2011, pg. 33). This saturation is so complete, in fact, that international aid organizations do not need to use images of hungry, dark-skinned children because they will automatically be invoked. This is precisely the effect of current U.S. anti-Muslim discourse on the U.S. subconscious: we are so saturated with images of Muslims men as terrorists and Muslim women as subjugated that that specter is everywhere present, not needing explicit mention.
Comedian Stephen Colbert alluded to this idea in the wake of the 2011 Norwegian Terror attacks, noting that the U.S. media (including the Washington Post, the Wall Street
Journal, and Fox News) was quick to blame “Muslim terrorists” because the attacks were 28 so clearly “Mus-lish” (2011). As it turned out, the perpetrator, Anders Behring Breivik was a staunchly anti-Muslim, White Christian male. In this way, Colbert gestures to the distinction between anti-Muslim discourse and anti-Muslim rhetoric: even if these news reports hadn’t mentioned jihadists or Al-Qaeda, the nature of certain terrorist acts would still invoke “Muslims.”
Anti-Muslim rhetoric survives outside “Muslim issue” discourse due to ideographs, particularly the ideograph “terrorism.” Michael Calvin McGee describes ideographs as a link between language and ideology – an ideology encapsulated by a word, phrase, or slogan (1980). Ideographs are built on the premise that certain words make certain thoughts “thinkable,” and as they gain momentum they force certain
“thoughts” to become associated with certain terms. Kenneth Burke would describe ideographs as “terministic screens” – terms that necessarily deflect certain meaning in order to reflect other meaning (1966). I bring up these terms because, historically, ideographs have demonstrated remarkable power to mobilize communities: they are familiar and recognizable, and are entrenched in public imagination. In the U.S., terms like “freedom” and “rights” are examples of such terms, and their purposeful use in social movement slogans triggers conveniently abstract ideology. Similarly, the term
“terrorism” has become ideographical because it triggers beliefs about specific acts and actors. For instance, the unmarked term “terrorist” is an ideograph for a non-U.S. citizen; when U.S. citizens commit acts of terrorism, news media describe them as “domestic terrorists.” Furthermore, if an actor does not fit a specific ethnic and gender profile, it is more difficult to label their actions as terrorism (domestic or otherwise) at all. For 29 instance, the term “hate crime” was used to describe the 2012 Sikh Temple shooting, as was the 2014 shooting at a Kansas Jewish community center. Meanwhile, because 9/11 has become the paradigm of terrorism in contemporary U.S. imagination, its perpetrators have become prototypes for terrorists (although the development of these prototypes began well before 9/11). Therefore, it is these prototypes that are invoked by the ideograph “terrorism.”
Once again, I bring up the concept of ideographs because of its role in developing anti-Muslim rhetoric, which can function separately from anti-Muslim discourse. Just as
Muslims were incriminated despite having no connection to the Sikh Temple Shooting, so, too, they are incriminated by allegedly “unmarked” terms like “terrorist.” Anti-
Muslim rhetoric is more insidious than anti-Muslim discourse because it relies on associations and thus eludes detection. Anti-Muslim discourse, when it is blatant, can seem less credible to a discerning audience. However, anti-Muslim rhetoric is easier to perpetuate for the opposite reason: it is difficult to recognize. Furthermore, it is difficult to remove the “coding” embedded in ideographs like “terrorism,” making our very language fraught. As a result, anti-Muslim rhetoric becomes much more difficult to combat, particularly in media texts. Journalists may not necessarily be trying to indict
Muslims when they use the term “terrorist,” but the association is still there.
I believe this distinction between rhetoric and discourse persists, in part, because anti-Muslim sentiment targets Muslim bodies rather than Islam. It is much easier to invoke and therefore attack Muslim bodies rather than a set of religious principles. While anti-Muslim discourse focuses explicitly on Muslims, anti-Muslim rhetoric is able to 30 invoke anti-Muslim sentiment implicitly. This focus on Muslims (rather than Islam) is one of the reasons I use the term “anti-Muslim sentiment” rather than “Islamophobia” in this dissertation, and I explain this distinction in the next section.
“ANTI-MUSLIM SENTIMENT” VS. “ISLAMOPHOBIA”
I use the term anti-Muslim sentiment rather than Islamophobia in this dissertation, even though the latter is more popular. I regret this choice each time I have to type it out, but the fact is that “anti-Muslim sentiment” is a far more accurate term for this project.
One critique of the term “Islamophobia” is that it implies a fear rather than a hatred of
Islam, but I think this is just semantics and audiences recognize what the term actually means (just as the term “homophobia” was usually understood as hatred rather than fear of gender non-conformity). However, I want to spend a few moments describing why I choose the term “anti-Muslim sentiment” as well as define it in this section.
My study of anti-Muslim sentiment focuses on bodies: “moderate” bodies that represent an ideal, American Islam; minority bodies that are mistaken for Muslims; victims who should have been Muslim, and the phantom of the Muslim terrorist that haunts various narratives. Therefore, I needed to use a term that foregrounds the Muslim body, and the term “anti-Muslim sentiment” does just that. I define anti-Muslim sentiment as the prejudice against Muslims, and I examine it in U.S. contexts. This is a deliberately simple definition. I avoid using the terms “hatred” and “bigotry” in the definition because although anti-Muslim sentiment is often both those things, it varies enormously in intensity and intent. The Elevation Burger example in my introduction 31 does not strike me as hate-filled, bigoted, or even necessarily intentional – but it is rooted on a foundation of prejudice. Scholars argue that anti-Muslim sentiment in mainstream
America does not arise from traumatic personal experiences, but rather distant social experiences that mainstream American culture has perpetuated (Gottschalk and
Greenberg, 2008, pg. 5). This suggests that it is the experience of seeing and possibly interacting with Muslim bodies that cause an anxiety of Muslims. Other scholars have similarly eschewed the term “Islamophobia” and defined anti-Muslim sentiment as
“indiscriminate negative attitudes or emotions directed as Islam or Muslims” (Bleich,
2012, pg. 182). Furthermore, the “moderate Muslim” phenomenon is a product of anti-
Muslim sentiment that aims to discipline the Muslim body; it has nothing to do with
Islam. Therefore, I chose a term that highlights U.S. Muslim bodies as the locus of physical and discursive attacks, and that counterterrorism discourse aims to discipline these bodies rather than adapt Islamic doctrine.
If we consider the role of citizenship in terrorism discourse, it, too, reinforces that anti-Muslim sentiment is about Muslim bodies rather than Islamic doctrine. The very body itself is required to perform citizenship, and American-Muslim bodies are denied the experience of citizenship when labeled a terrorist. This is unique to Muslims who are accused of terrorism, because the citizenship of mass shooters, non-Muslim terrorists, and even American war criminals (like those who operated in Abu Ghraib and Afghanistan) was never questioned. However, citizenship is called into question in the case of
American terrorists if they are Muslim, and it is not difficult to identify someone as a terrorist if they are Muslim. It is a terrifying Catch-22. I bring all of this up because it is 32 only bodies (and not a religion) that can be denied citizenship, civil rights, the right to due process, and so on. Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was initially denied his
Miranda Rights because even though he was a U.S. citizen, his citizenship was discursively erased when his body was identified as “Muslim” and “terrorist.” As Susan
Jeffords argues, revoking citizenship is a function of labeling an act “terrorism,” as it makes the actor’s prior “performance of citizenship” an “act of deceit” (2012, pg. 78). In
“The Citizen and the Terrorist” (2002), Leti Volpp argues that nationalist discourse exerts so much control over terrorism discourse that it has managed to subordinate certain components of citizenship, such as nationality and civil rights, to another component of citizenship: identity. However, Muslims can “regain” citizenship through very particular performances of “moderation,” and as I discuss in Chapter 5, these performances too play out on the body.
At this point, I do want to explain what constitutes the Muslim “body” since it is the locus on which discursive violence plays out. First, due to the racialization of the
Muslim body, non-Muslims are stitched into the community of U.S. “Muslims.” This includes Christian Arabs and Hindu South-Asians. Meanwhile, other Muslim bodies that don’t fit the racial parameters are excluded, such as Indonesian and Malaysian bodies.
This makes anti-Muslim sentiment twice as successful at undermining Muslims. And second, anti-Muslim sentiment also targets Muslim structures as it does Muslim bodies.
Surveillance extends to mosques, prayer areas, and Muslim schools in the U.S. (among other locations) have also fallen under surveillance. Early in 2014, a few New Jersey
Muslims filed charges against the NYPD for their “unconstitutional” surveillance of 33 mosques and Islamic schools (Al Jazeera, 2014). Meanwhile, the 2010 “Ground Zero
Mosque” controversy erupted in part due to outrage over the size of the proposed structure. Its opponents were incensed that a 13-storey Muslim community center would be so close to hallowed ground, i.e. the Twin Towers site. In his public address against the proposed center, Newt Gingrich argued:
And now we’re being told that what we should have is a mega-mosque, a
13 story tall mosque and community center…there are over a hundred
mosques in New York City…over half the mortgages in the United states
have mortgages held by Saudi Arabia […]. Sharia is not just a tiny thing.
The largest provider of Sharia financing in the world is a government
owned institution, AIG (Gingrich, 2010, emphases mine).
Gingrich uses several size descriptors in this short quote, and he is clearly incensed by the size of the proposed center. The center’s size ought to have been irrelevant, but it clearly mirrors the emphasis on the visibility of styles that runs through anti-Muslim rhetoric.
Even buildings associated with Muslims become sutured to the Muslim body, extending the arena for discursive violence. The spread of “Islamic contagion” presents even inanimate structures like mosques and schools as appendages on the Muslim body. While the “Ground Zero Mosque” was ultimately completed, it was under the conditions of its critics: the name was changed to “Park 51” and the center itself has no minarets or domes. The community center was disciplined just as the Muslim body is, and effectively 34 rendered “moderate.” Once again, I bring this up because I wish to emphasize the importance of new ways of seeing anti-Muslim sentiment. Recognizing that the Muslim body is an assemblage of structures helps explain the urgency sustaining anti-Muslim discourse.
THE “MODERATE” MUSLIM AND THE “MODEL” MINORITY
The section above describes my preference for the term “anti-Muslim sentiment” because it emphasizes that Muslim bodies rather than Islam are targeted by U.S. counterterrorism and nationalism discourse. In this section, I define the terms “moderate
Muslim” and “model minority” and explain their function in anti-Muslim sentiment.
Althusser explains that for an individual to internalize ideology, s/he must be confronted by it in multiple venues via multiple agencies in a process called overdetermination (1984). This overdetermination has yielded the fantasy of the
“moderate Muslim,” a product that disciplines the Muslim body in the United States. The
“moderate Muslim” is, on the most basic level, a tokenized Muslim; s/he is found wherever the status quo is under pressure to share “privilege, power, or other desirable commodities with an excluded group” (Cloud, 1996, pg. 9). The “moderate Muslim,” then, is one who is “operating on the turf of the dominant group under license from it”
(1996, pg. 9). While the “ideal” Islam is apolitical and propagates values of love and unity (Mohamed, 2015), the “moderate Muslim” is one who is “peaceful,” strenuously denounces “radical Islam” (Scharbrodt, 2011), and attempts to integrate him or herself into U.S. society. These demands are deliberately kept vague because it leaves the 35 Muslim body open for disciplining in any number of ways: on the basis of grooming, attire, and visibility. The veil becomes a symbol of subjugation, the beard an implied threat, and public prayer a form of dangerous organization.
In this way, the burden of performing “moderation” falls on Muslims, but they have no control over whether they will be identified as moderate. The beard may be shaved, the veil removed, the religious ritual abandoned, but that does not guarantee approval of the dominant group. For instance, Muslim organizations are continually under pressure to “denounce” terrorist attacks, which they do strenuously. However, right-wing media still continue to say that they don’t hear “moderate Muslims” condemning terror attacks, even though that is a burden only the Muslim community is forced to carry. When the “Ground Zero Mosque” was proposed, Sarah Palin famously urged “peaceful Muslims [to] refudiate [sic]” it. The implication was that those who did not “refudiate” the structure were, by definition, not “peaceful.” By marking only a select group of Muslims as “peaceful,” Palin implies that the unmarked term “Muslim” equates with violence. Therefore, proving ones moderation is a constant burden for U.S.
Muslims, but they can never self-identify as “moderate.” As some scholars have noted, for many government leaders today the goal is not making Muslims feel as home in foreign societies, but rather making sure their societies “produce the right kind of
Muslim” (Haddad and Golson, 2007 pg. 488).
Raymie McKerrow identifies such naming as a central symbolic act of a nominalist rhetoric (1989, pg. 105). Nominalism asserts that general abstractions (e.g.
“moderate Muslims”) exist, but they do not actually correspond to concrete realities. 36 Unfortunately, it is clear that the naming of Muslims as “moderate” or “peaceful” is grounded in nominalism, as it groups individuals together on the basis of a general abstraction that can have no concrete reality. This is because while the “moderate
Muslim” narrative purports to be about sharing “American” values, it is actually embedded in cultural and racial oppression. Therefore, the “moderateness” of Muslims plays out on their bodies, because the bodies become symbols of integration (or of dissent). The Muslim who is not a recognizable ethnic minority and is able to speak unmarked American English is more likely to be recognized as “moderate.” This is not regardless of their values; rather, their bodies stand in for their values.
Therefore, we can see that “moderation” is contingent on the (in)visibility of
Muslims, or of particular bodies constructed as Muslim through race and style. For example, even though Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world, it is not the
Indonesian body that is recognized and quarantined as “Muslim” (although they still undoubtedly experience other forms of racism). Consider the confusion of the conservative news media when the ethnicity of the Boston Marathon Bombers was not immediately apparent. The bombers were Chechen and therefore Caucasian, but because they were Caucasian they could not readily be identified as “Muslim.” However, when they were eventually “outed” as Muslim, they could no longer be “white” or “American.”
So instead, the media crowed that while the brothers may have “technically” been
Caucasian, they were not “white.” Joan Walsh seems to address this paradox when she asks:
37 So why are the Tsarnaev brothers not white, at least to right-wingers? Is it
only because they’re Muslim? Muslim immigrants? Or is it because
they’re “bad,” and whiteness must be surrendered when white people are
bad? (2013)
Walsh’s questions echo the argument Colette Guillaumin makes in Racism, Sexism,
Power & Ideology (2002). Guillaumin argues for the primacy of the signifier rather than the signified, or racism before race, when she suggests that one was black because one was enslaved (and not vice-versa) (pg. 6). She states that the “hypostasis of race and biophysical syncretism” are key traits of racist ideology because they are “unconscious, experienced as natural, spontaneous and self-evident” (pg. 36). Stuart Hall bolsters this theory, saying that ideologies “work” by constructing for their subjects (1981, emphasis mine). Therefore, rather than preceding it, the American Muslim was product of U.S. anti-Muslim sentiment.
I have so far discussed the role of visibility in the “moderate” Muslim fantasy, as well as the impetus for its creation. Now, I want to discuss the role of the model minority in rendering the “moderate” Muslim visible. First, it is important not to confuse model minority with moderate Muslim because the latter is at best tolerated. Meanwhile, a model minority is an ethnic, racial, or religious minority group that has the approval of the status quo because it has attained greater success than the average population. Factors like income, education, criminal activity and divorce (or lack thereof) are used to determine whether a minority fits within a model minority group. Undoubtedly, East 38 Indian-Americans are a clear model minority in the United States: they are overrepresented in high-income professions like medicine and engineering, and they have significantly lower divorce rates and involvement in criminal activity. If fact, East-Indian
Americans are arguably the most successful ethnic minority in the United States in terms of income, overtaking Asian-Americans by a significant gap (Pew Research Center,
2012). And because their bodies are ethnically marked, they can be readily identified. I should say that immigration procedures contribute vastly to making East Indians a model minority, as only Indians with a certain degree of education and wealth are able to pursue
U.S. citizenship. Additionally, I am not suggesting that East Indians are not subject to racism in the U.S.; they most certainly are, but as a group they also face a lesser evil of being aligned with positive stereotypes.
But what does this have to do with the “moderate” Muslim fantasy? The two are intimately connected, to the detriment of the “model” minority. After 9/11, the Muslim body was made visible in a most unlikely way: through ethnicity. Ethnic markers became indicators of religious beliefs, while language, skin color, clothing, and even nationality were sutured together to yield a contiguous group of “Muslims.” East Indians, and South
Asians in general, began to find themselves mistaken for “Muslims” and “Arabs” – the latter terms used interchangeably. Suddenly, South-Asians found their comfortable status as “model” minorities being subsumed by the larger fear of Muslims. This artificial connection between religion and ethnicity was troublesome for East Indian-Americans, who were not formerly identified as “Muslim.” Therefore, it became important for these communities to dissociate from “Muslims” through style, just as “moderate” Muslims 39 began to dissociate themselves from “radical Muslims” through style. This included highlighting ethnic and immigrant heritage over American identity through style, in order to reclaim the “model minority” title. I demonstrate this argument in Chapter 5, where I argue that Miss America’s first Indian-American winner highlighted her Indian heritage through style to dissociate herself from Muslims and reorient the audience.
Naturally, East Indian-Americans do not cease to “be” model minorities in these situations; rather, their ability to be identified as such began to fail. Suddenly, being
“recognized” as Muslim became a very real fear for South-Asian Americans, and the need to disidentify as Muslim became critical. After the Sikh Temple Shooting in 2012,
Sikhs began to appear in news media carrying slogans that read “don’t hate me, I’m
Sikh.” Finally, and rather ironically, although Hispanic Americans rarely received the benefits of “passing” as Indian-Americans before 9/11, post-9/11 fear-mongering has also grouped them into the category of “potential terrorists.” Because the Hispanic population is far larger than the East-Indian population in the U.S., East-Indians are more likely to be mistaken for Hispanic than vice-versa. I first noticed this tendency to dissociate from
Muslims at a University of Texas at Austin workshop in December 2013 about combating anti-Muslim sentiment: several Hispanic students in the audience said they were attending so that they could learn how to “stop being recognized as Muslim.” In the midst of all this disidentification, one key fact is swept away: it is not criminal to be
Muslim.
The Muslim moderate, and the model minority – it is not a coincidence that more than one narrative idealizing minorities emerges in U.S. discourse. Both these narratives 40 make a claim at exceptionalism, which furthers U.S. nationhood. It says that the United
States has the most exceptional Muslims (when they are “moderate”), and the most exceptional minorities. As I mentioned earlier, exceptionalism is a descendant of
Orientalism, as the latter posits that Western values are always superior to the East.
Exceptionalism is also a handmaiden to nationalism. If nationalism argues for “us” versus
“them,” exceptionalism says the “us” is better than the “them.” Orientalism, meanwhile, defines the “them,” but only in relation to the “us.” As Stuart Hall points out, this is precisely how hegemony works: it attempts to frame all competing definitions of the world within its range (1977). Therefore, when I say that the “moderate” Muslim construct furthers exceptionalism, I am also saying that it is critical to U.S. nationalism.
It seems paradoxical to say that Islam, which is purportedly “foreign” to the
United States, is necessary for bolstering U.S. nationalism. While the “foreign” aspects of
Islam are used to throw “American values” into sharp relief, a particular, state-sanctioned performance of “moderate” Islam is required to reinforce U.S. values. But what if we questioned the very premise that Islam is not a foreign religion? In the next section I complicate this premise to show not just the long history of Islam in the U.S., but its role in shaping the Founding Fathers. This is important because even critics of anti-Muslim sentiment fail to question this premise, and instead defend Muslims’ right to live and practice Islam in the U.S. The argument would look very different if Islam was never assumed to be foreign, or that “American Islam” is not a recent development.
ISLAM AS FOREIGN, AND THE RISE OF AN “AMERICAN ISLAM” 41 Anti-Muslim discourse purports that Islam is a foreign evil, and as I discussed above, the act of terrorism usually calls the terrorist’s citizenship into question even when they are American. There is an element of validity to this assumption that terrorists (if
Muslims) are probably not American; more than 60% of U.S. Muslims are first or second generation immigrants (Pew Research Center, 2015), and are likely people of color who have migrated from Muslim-majority nations. However, the majority of these Muslims
(approximately 70%) are U.S. citizens. Therefore, alleging that Islam and Muslims are fundamentally foreign is simply not true.
However, because anti-Muslim discourse is built on so many faulty premises about race, culture, and citizenship, it distracts critics from arguing against the premise that Islam is not a foreign religion. In fact, even though Islam was not founded in the
United States, it is still an American religion. In her book Thomas Jefferson’s Quran:
Islam and the Founders, historian Denise Spellberg makes the radical argument that mainstream Islam was not only present in pre-bellum America, but also influenced the founding principles of the U.S. She points out that Founding Fathers Washington,
Madison and Jefferson were key advocates of Muslim rights (2013, pg. 8), and imagined future Muslim citizens of the US to be White (pg. 8). This, ironically, actually indicates that the Founding Fathers envisioned Islam as an indigenous and lasting presence in the newly minted nation. This surprising racialization of Muslims in the 18th century runs contrary to the racialization of U.S. Muslims today, who are now constructed as “non-
White.”
42 But perhaps most importantly, Spellberg offers evidence that the Founding
Fathers used the Qur’an and Islamic principles as tools to develop the national identity of the Confederation. Jefferson was known to own multiple copies of the Qu’ran, some of which he heavily annotated. While Jefferson did not have a wholly positive view of
Islam, he appeared to turn to the Qu’ran to establish judicious civil rights for the various communities populating the Colonies. Spellberg notes that Jefferson had Islam on his mind when he called for a separation of religion and State, as he was worried that the diversity of religion in the nation could become dangerous (2013, pg. 95). Once again, we not only see an early presence of Islam in the U.S., but also its role in developing fundamental American values: the right to religious freedom. This makes the current intolerance of Islam in the U.S. even more confounding.
Spellberg notes that nationhood and the superiority of Christianity began to be conflated in the 18th century (pg. 38), and this became the forerunner of the exceptionalism rhetoric we see today. This early iteration of American exceptionalism rhetoric encouraged religious intolerance. However, at the same time, prominent thinkers like John Locke, Edward Bagshaw and Edward Pococke were advocating for greater religious tolerance. The evidence Spellberg offers reminds us that not only was Islam not the foreign religion current anti-Muslim sentiment would have us believe, but also that
Western intolerance of Islam was not linear and did not go unchallenged.
If we undermine this very persistent but tenuous notion of Islam as a “foreign” religion, it would undermine the vast majority of anti-Muslim discourse in the United
States. Currently, critics of anti-Muslim sentiment argue that Islam has a place in the U.S. 43 due to foundational U.S. principles, particularly freedom of religious practice. That is certainly the argument Obama made when he defended plans to build the “Ground Zero
Mosque.” However, it is also clear that Muslims are persecuted when the status quo perceives Islamic practice as undermining normalized values. This indicates that normalized values in the United States are deeply religious, despite claims of secularism.
This is quite obvious; one look at policies regarding LGBTQ and reproductive rights confirms this. The double standard is clear: religious ideology is irrational and undemocratic when it exists in “Muslim” countries, but necessary to preserve national identity in “developed” nations like the United States.
In recent years, however, narratives about an “American Islam” have gained visibility. In her introduction to The Cambridge Companion to American Islam, Julianne
Hammer makes the forceful case that the term “American Islam” is a worthy one as it
“implicitly rejects the assumption that Muslims are somehow a temporary…phenomenon in America, as implied in terminology such as “Muslims in America” (2013, pg. 9).
Hammer is one of few scholars who echoes Spellberg’s conviction that the Founding
Fathers had studied, and were influenced by, Islamic doctrine. Meanwhile, several researchers have addressed the Islam of African-America (McCloud, 2014; Gomez,
2005), and certainly describing “Black Islam” is a safe way of forwarding the radical idea that Islam was present at the inception of the nation. Meanwhile, recent scholarship notes the desire for Muslim leaders to show that Islam is compatible with U.S. values, and that
Western Muslims have developed new, creative expressions of Islam that undermine the
“clash of civilizations” rhetoric (Jones, 2013). As I mentioned earlier, others have noted 44 that the development of an “American Islam” has created a particular language Muslims use to describe their observance of Islam. (see McGinty, 2012). Imam Suhaib Webb, the prominent American leader who I take up as a case study in “moderation” in Chapter 5, is one of the most vocal proponents of an “American Islam.” He notes that Muslims have been part of the U.S. cultural fabric for a long time, and he challenges those who think that the Islam of young Americans is somehow inauthentic (Reuters, 2011). In a CBS interview, he was asked about his efforts “trying to develop an American style Islam,” and he responded by saying that the young, American-born members of his congregation did not feel represented by the clergy who didn’t “speak their language” (CBS, The State of Religion in America). However, he did not counter the moderator’s implication that
“American Islam” is “new.” Therefore, we see two narratives about Islam in America emerge: the first traces the history of Islam in the U.S., and the second examines current, novel representations of an “Americanized” Islam. My concern with the latter is that it still attempts to defend Islam from accusations of foreignness instead of reiterating the indigeneity of Islam in America.
But to return to my original point, I am stating that Islam is not only not a foreign religion to the U.S., but a clearly “American” religion – one with a persistent historical presence that shaped some of the nation’s founding principles. Beginning with this premise is a more effective way to counter anti-Muslim propaganda, particularly when so much of it relies on nationalism.
In the preceding sections, I discussed the difference between anti-Muslim rhetoric and discourse; established key terms like “anti-Muslim sentiment,” “moderate Muslim,” 45 and “model minority;” and established that Islam is (also) an American religion. I argue that anti-Muslim sentiment can emerge outside anti-Muslim discourse, and I analyze this phenomenon with a case study in Chapter 4. Furthermore, it is clear that other minorities suffer as “recognizing” Muslims becomes imperative, which drives a wedge between
Muslims and other minorities. And finally, the “moderate Muslim” must carry the burden of performing American citizenship, often through style – an argument I take up in
Chapter 5. These premises are a necessary foundation to examine why Muslims are seen as a uniquely urgent and concealed threat in the U.S. In the remaining sections, I briefly introduce the methods I use to examine this dire presentation of Muslims, and conclude with my research questions and preview the forthcoming chapters.
A TEMPORAL ANALYSIS
In September 2013, I attended a talk on anti-Muslim sentiment at the University of Texas at Austin. During Q & A, an audience member asked (and I paraphrase) how the
U.S. manages to sustain anti-Muslim sentiment in a way that makes the nation blind to its racism. The speaker took a moment to reply, before answering “fear.” She said that fear is a powerful tool, and that the media had manufactured reasons for the nation to fear what they perceive to be “Islam” and “Muslims.” While I couldn’t disagree with her answer, I found it unsatisfying. It didn’t explain the longevity or momentum of this fear, nor did it acknowledge the American exceptionalism that construes the U.S. simultaneously as a world savior and target. But how is the momentum of this fear is
46 sustained? Fear engages a sense of urgency and pace, and these temporal elements are foundational to understanding why Muslims are continually feared in the United States.
There is a prevailing sense that Muslims terrorists “will get us” if “we don’t get them first,” and scholars have noted the language of urgency and preemption in anti-
Muslim rhetoric. As I discussed earlier, scholars have noticed this language of preemption in counterterrorism policy. Those who study terrorism rhetorics identify the role of “fear” in sustaining anti-Muslim sentiment. Said points out that the media repeatedly presents the “threat of Islam” as an “unrestrained and immediate one” (1981, pg. 38). Heath and O’Hair state that “uncertainty and instability” is “the playground of terrorism” (2008, pg. 25). Such manufacturing of uncertainty, and consequently fear, is a deeply temporal issue.
Now, it is time to go beyond observing the temporal elements of anti-Muslim discourse and develop a temporal approach. There is undoubtedly an ideology to chronology, and temporality scholarship provides the tools to examine anti-Muslim sentiment, particularly when it emerges outside anti-Muslim discourse. In particular, the concept of “timescaping” is a useful one to examine how attacks on Muslims are presented as “9/11 aftermath,” and I present these concepts more thoroughly in Chapter
3. More importantly, time is not just embedded in events and our retelling of events, but more broadly in discourse as well. For these reasons, it is a mistake to overlook temporality when examining anti-Muslim sentiment.
A STYLISTIC APPROACH 47 My second method in this project is a stylistic lens to examine performances of
“moderate” Muslims. These presentations are evident in social style, including sartorial choices, language use, and the gender performance that emerges from these choices. Of course there is a disproportionate focus on style when the status quo gazes upon the
“Muslim” body, including facial hair on men and the modesty garments of women. This is hardly a new observation. However, this troubling gaze on style has trickled into government surveillance, as evidenced by vigilante programs like the TSA’s “If You See
Something, Say Something.” Additionally, anti-Muslim sentiment employs a lot of
“visibility” rhetoric, often taking issue with the “pervasiveness” of “Islamic culture” in the U.S. Therefore, if style helps identify radical Muslim extremists, it can also identify the “moderate” Muslim. There has been no scholarly focus on the style of “moderate”
Muslims even though there is a preponderance of literature on the style of “terrorists.”
Yet, a stylistic analysis of the “moderate” Muslim is necessary to understand how
Muslims deflect the threat of the “hidden Muslim enemy.” It is necessary to understand how nationalism plays out on the Muslim body. It is necessary to understand how the
United States maintains belief in its own exceptionalism. But perhaps most importantly, recognizing the aesthetic foundation of the “moderate Muslim” construct examines the producers of such sentiment in addition to those affected by it. One of my concerns about anti-Muslim sentiment scholarship is that it tends to focus on the victims of this bigotry, and then works backwards to determine motives. This means that “Muslim issues” occur, media discourses frame it a particular way, and scholars examine the anti-Muslim rhetoric in such discourses. When these issues (or events) are examined en masse, they 48 reveal patterns of discrimination that in turn reveal the motivations of those producing anti-Muslim discourse. However, I am proposing that we use anti-Muslim discourse as a case study to understand national aesthetics, and how they construct national motives. If we are able to do this, it becomes possible to understand the foundation of bigotry even before an act of aggression against a Muslim takes place. Because hatred of Muslims exists in the U.S. independent of “Muslim events,” we must delineate these national aesthetics and motives that keep this hatred in place.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
At this point, I can say: anti-Muslim discourse goes unrecognized until an individual is negatively affected by it. In fact, it goes unrecognized until the affected individual (or group) is recognized as being affected. As a result, remediation efforts focus on righting a wrong rather than developing a more inclusive discourse to begin with. For instance, in 2011 CNN aired an interview with an American-Muslim woman wearing a headscarf and face-covering, and she spoke out against the French headscarf ban (CNN, 2011). When the interviewer inquired about her stance on being photographed without the face-covering, she conceded that she would gladly take it off (though not the headscarf) if legally required to. Thus, this interview probed into how an individual would tackle a restrictive law in a specific situation. However, a more useful conversation would have discussed why certain body parts (e.g. the face with the ears showing) have come to represent identity on a policy level. This may seem idealistic since most other methods would be impractical; however, it is important to ask the 49 question, and thus expose the ideology. This is where a stylistic analysis can help.
Meanwhile, I have also identified a sense of frantic urgency that runs through anti-
Muslim sentiment. This can be examined through a temporal analysis to understand how anti-Muslim sentiment retains its power and purpose. Together, these approaches address my initial question: how is anti-Muslim sentiment able to present Muslims as a uniquely urgent and concealed threat in the United States? My answer is to make the two following methodological interventions, framed in the two following research questions:
1) What might a temporal analysis of anti-Muslim rhetoric reveal about sustaining
the momentum of anti-Muslim sentiment?
2) What can a stylistic analysis reveal about the “moderate Muslim” construct, and
what it reflects about U.S. nationalism and exceptionalism?
CHAPTER SUMMARIES & PREVIEWS
In this chapter, I provided a focused literature review of studies that are relevant to this project, and identified moments of silence that my analyses will address. I established the key terms and premises I will use throughout this dissertation. And finally, I introduced my methods and research questions. In this section, I summarize the objectives of the remaining chapters and introduce the case studies I will use.
In Chapter 2, I offer a theoretical frame to ground the concepts I introduce in this chapter. This chapter provides a footing before jumping into the application chapters. I 50 borrow from psychoanalytic theory to explore the process of creating an idealized
Muslim figure. Next, I create a foundation to enable my temporal and stylistic analyses in
Chapters 4 and 5.
In Chapter 3, I establish the two methods and various case studies I use to address my research questions. To understand how news coverage sustains the fear of Muslims, I develop a temporal framework informed by Grounded Theory Analysis for more reliable data analysis. To examine the “moderate Muslim” construct, I engage a stylistic approach. This combination of methods addresses the two research questions and also offers new methods for studying anti-Muslim sentiment.
Chapters 4 and 5 will apply the temporal and stylistic frames mentioned above to case studies in anti-Muslim sentiment. In Chapter 4, I examine the 2012 Sikh Temple
Shooting of Wisconsin to address the temporal question about the “urgency” of “Muslim issues.” I examine the news coverage from Fox News and CNN to understand how anti-
Muslim rhetoric emerges in this incident, and how temporality enables it. The broader objective of this chapter is to determine how temporal language develops anti-Muslim rhetoric, particularly in a discourse unrelated to Muslims. Meanwhile, Chapter 5 examines the “moderate Muslim’s” style to understand its role in sustaining U.S. nationalism and exceptionalism discourses. I examine three case studies: the 2014 Miss
America controversy; the work of Muslim-American comedian Azhar Usman; and the persona of influential “moderate” Muslim leader Imam Suhaib Webb. My goal in choosing such different case studies is to examine the many iterations of the “moderate”
Muslim. The objectives of this chapter are to understand how various groups are 51 scapegoated by anti-Muslim sentiment; the role of style in such scapegoating; and how particular Muslim bodies are selected to reflect American excellence.
Finally, Chapter 6 revisits the analyses of the two preceding chapters to identify patterns across the findings and explain how the two methods, and two research questions, work in tandem. It also discusses the role of style and temporality in constructing motives in U.S. discourse, and how the construction of motives helps stabilize national identity.
52 Chapter 2: An Islamic America? A Foundation for Anti-Muslim Sentiment
In Chapter 1, I introduced the idea that U.S. discourse constructs the “Muslim problem” as a uniquely urgent and concealed one. To explore this, I apply a temporal and stylistic approach. In doing so, my goal is to understand how this construction has developed, but more importantly how the U.S. Muslim is now necessary for preserving
U.S. national identity. It is not enough to simply construct the U.S. Muslim as the Other, because it is becoming increasingly difficult to characterize all Muslims as racialized immigrants (either legal or illegal). As mainstream knowledge of U.S. Muslim communities spreads, it ironically presents Muslims as an even greater threat – a threat that lives invisible “among our own.” Furthermore, the idea that individuals can become
“radicalized” adds a layer of fear, as it calls on the public to brace itself for such future- oriented acts of radicalization and subsequent terrorism. Then, more rigorous tests of citizenship become necessary. Thus, American Muslims find themselves in a confounding position, where they must show that they are a “contained” threat, but also, ironically, “American,” as the latter helps neutralize them as a threat. Throughout my dissertation, I argue that this helps preserve national identity in a way the distant Orient cannot. Given these objectives, in this chapter I establish a theoretical framework that enables the temporal and stylistic approaches I will use in Chapters 4 and 5.
My first goal in this chapter is to orient my audience to how I began interrogating the nature of U.S. anti-Muslim sentiment. To this end, I provide a brief overview of
Islam’s presence in the U.S. to establish the Muslim’s role in U.S. identity formation. My second goal is to create a foundation to enable my temporal and stylistic analyses in 53 Chapters 4 and 5. I draw on Burke’s theory of Dramatism to demonstrate the role of style in constructing the “moderate” Muslim, and on Affect Theory to establish the temporal component of fear. Taken together, these efforts explain my perspective coming into this project, and also establish a base for my analyses.
ISLAM’S INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN IDENTITY THROUGH HISTORY
In Chapter 1, I introduced the idea that Islam influenced the Founding Fathers and existed in North America before the United States was formed. In this section, I introduce some history about the role of Islam in America to put the theory in the later sections into perspective – the perspective being that we must employ temporality and style to study anti-Muslim sentiment and its role in constructing U.S. identity.
That an “American Islam” exists is a radical idea to mainstream America, but not to U.S. Muslims. In fact, articulating such an Islam is one of the primary goals of Imam
Suhaib Webb, a noted American “moderate” Muslim leader whose rhetoric I take up in
Chapter 5. Additionally, American Islam takes on the specific issue of presenting
Muslims in a particular way to the American public, which includes developing a line of defense for negative portrayals of Muslims. Since 9/11, U.S. Muslim organizations
(notably CAIR and ISNA) have become adept at fielding violations of Muslims’ civil rights (see Cainkar, 2009), while also strenuously denouncing terrorism. Meanwhile, U.S.
Muslims have articulated a “mainstream American Muslim” identity employing the language of interfaith commitment and individual humanity.
54 Let me be clear, though, that such a presentation of Islam by Muslims is necessary in the
United States, where there is a well-defined anti-Muslim rhetoric couched in the language of anti-modernity and terrorism. To further complicate things, only certain U.S. Muslims are allowed to represent the values of “American Islam,” and these individuals are the state-sanctioned “moderates.” Therefore, an “American Islam” is still an idea that has not reached the U.S. mainstream, and its articulation is a burden on the U.S. Muslim community. But more importantly, this American Islam is narrowly defined within the range of anti-Muslim rhetoric: the American Islam must demonstrate that it actively undermines the threat of the “Muslim problem.” This puts American Muslims in a double-bind because the conversation on Islam is derailed by these expectations, and their attempt to articulate the indigeneity of Islam becomes an impossible task. Therefore, the idea of an American Islam, particularly as a recent development, sets U.S. Muslims up for failure in their effort to present Islam as inherently compatible with American ideals.
For this reason, it is necessary to begin with a different premise: that Islam is an
American religion, rather than American Islam emerging in the United States as a
“variation” of a “core” Islam. The difference is not just semantic; saying “American
Islam” rather than “Islam is an American religion” diminishes Islam’s role in shaping founding American values. This is crucial at a time when U.S. values are seen as shaping
Islam (thus the development of an “American Islam”), but not vice-versa. However, if the idea of an American Islam is radical, the notion of Islam being an American religion is more so. Yet, not only is this accurate, but beginning with this premise would allow more 55 honest conversation about Islam in the U.S. to take place. It would undermine the hegemony of Christianity as the “true” American religion because, as Stuart Hall points out, hegemony can only succeed when the dominant classes “succeed in framing all competing definitions within their range” (Hall, 1977). After all, the “Americanness” of
U.S. Christians is rarely in doubt, which is why the term “Christian-American” rarely crops us outside discussions of Christianity. However, the “Americanness” of Muslims is suspect, and thus performed through an “American Islam.” This implies that one can be
American despite being Muslim; it suggests an intersection of the identity categories of religion (Islam) and nationality (American). Yet, to speak in terms of such an intersection would hardly make sense when speaking of the dominant religion in the United States; one is not American despite being Christian, as Christianity is unquestionably an
American religion. However, Islam, too, is unquestionably American.
Now I have reached the juncture where I must demonstrate how Islam is not only not a foreign religion with “modern day” American variations, but an American religion from the nation’s inception. This fundamentally changes the parameters of scholarship on anti-Muslim sentiment, as well as the foundation of anti-Muslim sentiment itself.
Furthermore, recognizing Islam as native to the United States is key to undermining the
“urgency” of the “Muslim problem – if the “Muslims are coming,” where are they coming from if they have always been present? It also addresses the idea of Muslims being a “concealed” threat in the United States, because it is bizarre to construct an indigenous religion as a “hidden threat,” with “moderate Islam” as the necessary antidote.
To make this case of Islam as an American religion, I forward two arguments: that Islam 56 has historically been present in the United States; and that Islamic principles actually informed the Founding Fathers (and thus the very founding) of the nation.
Islam has been present since the inception of the U.S., and citizens have continually adapted it over the centuries, deploying its rhetoric to mobilize social movements. This points to Islam’s indigeniety in the United States. To begin with, Islam had some presence in North America even before the United States were established. In A
History of Islam in America, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri points out moments of contact between Islam and the New World documentable from as early as the 1730s, if not earlier
(2010). Additionally, he points out the presence of African Muslim slaves who were brought to the New World by European colonists. Historians believe that up to 10% of
African slaves brought to the New World between the 16th and 19th centuries were
Muslims (Gomez, 2005). Furthermore, opponents of slavery used Islam to argue for abolition and mobilize slaves, making Islam an inextricable part of race revolutions in the
United States. They argued that Islam was a civilizing force that indicated that Africans were not “naturally uncivilized” (GhaneaBassiri, 2010). This emphasis on the
“civilization” is a clear departure from current U.S. anti-Muslim rhetoric. Meanwhile, in
Black Crescent, Michael Gomez documents the lives of enslaved Black Muslims and the development of Islam in the Black community post-Enslavement. He describes how
Muslim slaves were “assigned” a race during this time, often considered “Moors” or
Berbers (Gomez, 2005, pg. 29). This illustrates an early tendency to equate religion and race – a trope clearly evident in US anti-Muslim sentiment today.
57 Historians have also documented ample evidence of the role of Islam in ending the Enslavement, which is a founding moment in U.S. national identity. Michael Gomez traces the lives of influential Muslim slaves and slave descendants in the U.S., and speculates that Frederick Douglass had Muslim ancestry (pg. 158). This implies that
Islam influenced some of the earliest civil rights resistance in America, which shatters the notion that Islam is a “foreign” or “recently arrived” religion to the United States. It also highlights the role of Islam in consolidating US identity. This notion not only undermines anti-Muslim rhetoric, but is relatively new to scholarship on anti-Muslim sentiment, which still does not challenge the idea that Islam is not an American religion. However, historical scholarship demonstrates how both Islam and Muslims are indigenous to the
United States.
Meanwhile, Islam continued to have a massive impact on Black national identity.
Important civil rights and community leaders such as Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad embraced the Nation of Islam (NOI) and began to preach its principles. NOI deployed some of the earliest race-religion rhetoric developed by American Muslims themselves.
Furthermore, NOI followers are predominantly Black, which is a departure from how current anti-Muslim sentiment racially characterizes Muslims (as non-Levantine Arabs and South Asians). This is because the NOI was developed with the Black audience in mind, and its separationist principles dovetailed neatly with Marcus Garvey’s Black
Nationalist movement.2 For these reasons, any study of U.S. anti-Muslim sentiment is
2 NOI has also been criticized for anti-Semiticism and is tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group 58 incomplete without acknowledging the nationalism rhetoric of the NOI. Once again, we see the significance of religious rhetoric – and particularly, Islam-based rhetoric – during moments of U.S. national anxiety. That present-day U.S. Muslims have to enact their citizenship is a clear departure from what historical evidence shows about the role of
Islam in U.S. identity formation.
Historical overviews can be tedious, but during my research I was constantly surprised by Islam’s role in landmark moments in civil rights progress as well as the formation of the United States. It shows its impact on social movements and race relations. But perhaps more importantly, Islam developed uniquely American strands over the course of history that do not exist elsewhere in the world. To argue that Islam is a foreign religion to the U.S. is akin to saying that the descendants of slaves are not
American. Yet, this premise – the “foreignness” of Islam – is rarely questioned.
Furthermore, the idea that an “American Islam” has now emerged furthers the idea that
Islam has only recently entered the United States. However, recognizing the indigeniety of Islam to the U.S. would not only change perceptions of Muslims as a “hidden” enemy; it would also undermine how U.S. Muslims are racialized.
Not only is Islam not a foreign religion to the U.S.; it has also guided its founding principles. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, several Founding Fathers were key advocates of
Muslim rights3 and used the Qur’an to inform the national identity of the Confederation
(Spellberg, 2013). This historical overview exposes the faulty premise that Islam is essentially a “foreign” religion that has developed an “American” version in recent years,
3 Despite, ironically, owning slaves – and perhaps Muslims slaves – at the same time 59 and that American Muslims have to negotiate “two” identity categories. Muslim-
Americans who successfully negotiate the two categories, particularly through style, become identified as “moderate” Muslims.
Current anti-Muslim sentiment has constructed the “moderate” Muslim to consolidate “mainstream” American identity and bolster American exceptionalism. After all, Orientalism demonstrates that the creation of the Orient is central to the development of the Occident – the “civilizer” could not exist without the lusty and lawless Orient. I am arguing that the Muslim in America fulfills a similar role in U.S. nationalism. While it’s no surprise that excluding the American Muslim can bolster national identity, the inclusion of U.S. Muslims in particular ways is as important for U.S. nationalism and exceptionalism. American exceptionalism works in two ways: by presenting the nation as exceptionally moral and virtuous (see Ivie and Giner, 2009), and by presenting aberrations as exceptions to the otherwise moral and virtuous America. As a result, such exceptionalism discourse not only presents the U.S. as a special “target” to other nations, it also justifies U.S. foreign intervention (see Patman, 2006). Ironically, scholars posit that this depiction of the U.S. as morally superior stems from the nation’s desire to leave behind the legacy of slavery (Fong, 2015). This suggests that exceptionalism discourse is a struggle to divest the nation of guilt, and is an exercise in self-affirmation – not unlike the creation of the “moderate Muslim,” who reflects the best of America back to
America.
Therefore, the “moderate Muslim” demonstrates that America has the best, most exceptional Muslims, in the world. Some demands made on the “moderate Muslim” are 60 that s/he adopt U.S. style norms; vocally “denounce” terrorism; and support free speech.
Therefore, the Muslim is made moderate by “being American,” and thus the American
Muslim becomes an example for Muslims worldwide. It is important to remember that
Muslims who are celebrated for being moderate – Imam Suhaib Webb, for instance – are primarily recognized for their ability to espouse American values while being Muslim. As
I mentioned earlier, the Muslim American relinquishes citizenship when perceived as having committed acts of terrorism, making their prior “performance” of citizenship an act of deceit (Jeffords, 2012, pg. 78) And thus in the United States, the Muslim’s citizenship, and even race, is contingent on performance, thus being constituted rather than constituent.
Thus, the moderate Muslim reaffirms U.S. moral elevation in three ways: first, it implies vast tolerance on the part of the status quo, who is discerning enough to separate the good Muslims from the bad. Second, the moderate becomes evidence of the best values of America; Muslim-Americans, despite being Muslim, are able to “become”
American, thereby embodying the best of American values. For instance, in political discourse American-Muslims in the military are held up as examples of diversity, nationalism, and “good” Muslimhood. We also see a similar affirmation of nationalism and exceptionalism in sports narratives about American-Muslim athletes. In this case, sports culture and its attending values of nationalism and morality serve to “moderate” the Islamic beliefs of American-Muslim athletes. And third, the “moderate” Muslim demonstrates that the U.S. not only has an exceptionally moral citizenry, but that even the
Muslims among that citizenry are exceptional. In other words, American Muslims who 61 are moderate are exceptional moderates, and that the U.S. can recognize these moderates in times of fear makes the nation exceptional too. The moderate Muslim him or herself is merely an empty vessel onto which exceptionalism is projected, and in turn becomes evidence of U.S. exceptionalism.
For these reasons, I say that the “moderate Muslim” is not just a vessel for the gazer, but an empty vessel. This is because the need for the “moderate Muslim” is not static, and therefore his performance cannot be either. Sometimes, he must “blend in” by becoming physically and/or culturally invisible. Other times, he must “denounce terrorism.” What the “moderate Muslim” needs to be depends on national need – tragedy, threat, or other moments of national and identity crises. This makes it immensely difficult for the “moderate Muslim” to be defined, and even identified, which only cements U.S. anti-Muslim sentiment. For this reason, I explore a range of case studies to understand the changing role of the “moderate Muslim,” as there is no single purpose, role, or even definition of this ideological myth. Additionally, this makes a Burkean analysis particularly suited to this study, since his Scapegoating Theory posits the production and destruction of a vessel to atone for a society’s sins. While I am certainly not the first to observe that the American Muslim is a scapegoat (see Welch, 2006), it needs to be said that the shape of the negative vessel shifts constantly and that a positive vessel must be created to enable the redemption process.
In this section, I have argued that creating the “moderate Muslim” allows the US a way to combat the “hidden” Muslim threat by making visible certain state-approved performances of Muslim citizenship. These performances of citizenship, mediated by 62 style, are the basis for the “moderate Muslim” discourse. In the next section, I tackle the urgency characterizing “Muslim terrorism” discourse, and the construction of motives in establishing this urgency. I draw on Kenneth Burke’s theory of Dramatism to examine how the motives of “Muslim terrorism” are constructed.
A DRAMATISTIC UNDERSTANDING OF “TERRORIST” MOTIVES
The work of Kenneth Burke provides a useful foundation for understanding U.S. anti-Muslim sentiment, and I engage Burke’s Scapegoating Theory in my stylistic approach (which I describe in Chapter 3). However, Burke’s theory of Dramatism is particularly useful to understand the construction of the act of “terrorism.” Furthermore, engaging Burke’s Pentad reveals how certain components of the Pentad are emphasized and erased in the construction of “Muslim” terror attacks. This is salient to both my temporal and stylistic approaches; it helps explain the construction of urgency in
“Muslim terrorism,” as well as the role of style in emphasizing the Muslim “actor” rather than the “scene” in such terrorism.
When I say that the “Muslim problem” is a uniquely urgent one, I am saying that future attacks by Muslim terrorists are always implied. This enables counterterrorism language to be future-oriented and preemptive. To understand how this urgency is presented as unique to “Muslim terrorism,” consider how Muslim terrorists’ motives are constructed. Muslim terrorists seek to “radicalize” otherwise “ordinary” Americans, and news media frequently describe Islamic extremism as a “cancer” (New York Times,
2015a; The Daily Beast, 2015 among others) spreading across the globe. This urgency, 63 and this future-oriented presentation of motives, separates “Islamic terrorism” from hate crime discourse, as the latter crime is rarely characterized as imminent or organized.
Dramatism provides a useful lens to interrogate this presentation of motives. Attacks on
Muslims have continued unabated since 9/11, with the highest number since 9/11 occurring in 2015. The New York Times reported that attacks on Muslims tripled in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino terror attacks (2015b), and attacks on and around
U.S. mosques reached an all time high in 2015(CAIR, 2015). However, media reports about the “motives” of Muslim perpetrators versus those who commit crimes against
Muslims are deeply problematic. To return to the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing example, the new coverage immediately constructed the Tsarnaev brothers as foreign, and emphasized Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s time spent in the North Caucasus. However,
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a Permanent Resident who had spent his entire adult life in the
United States, and the younger perpetrator Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a U.S. citizen.
Therefore, it is more logical to identify them as American. Immediately after they were identified, the news media spent a frenzied 24 hours trying to determine the brothers’ race. A Fox News article painted them as firmly foreign, focusing on their inability to make “American friends” and emphasizing Tamerlan’s time spent outside the country
(Fox News, 2013), and several major newspapers followed up with articles speculating about their race. This emphasis on race was necessary for public discourse, because race is able to stand in for a motive. This is not a natural system; it is learned.
Public discourse seeks motives on the bodies of perpetrators, and this is enhanced when race is constructed through style. Because race is constructed in the case of 64 “Muslim” terrorists, it is not immutable; therefore, it becomes necessary to seek
“evidence” of a particular race through the style of “Muslim terrorists.” When such terrorists speak with a non-American accent, and wear long beards and prayer caps, it is easy to construct their race as “Other.” But when style blurs these categories, it causes dissonance. For example, Rolling Stone magazine faced massive backlash for presenting
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a “rock star” on their August 2013 issue cover. He appears with tousled hair, wearing a trendy white t-shirt, with a shadow of a goatee on his chin – looking very much like any attractive, White, middle-class college student. Critics said that Rolling Stone was “glamorizing” Tsarnaev, and even Boston Mayor Thomas Menino called it “a total disgrace.” However, as The New Yorker pointed out, the image itself had not been altered in any way – the trouble was that Tsarnaev did look just like any
American college student, thereby closing the gap between the audience and the terrorist.
For anti-Muslim sentiment to flourish, it is essential to alienate Muslims from the social and moral fabric of the nation. As Burke argues in A Rhetoric of Motives, the removal of the mystery shrouding an entity allows the moment of identification to take place, which causes panic if the entity is a terrorist. Because anti-Muslim sentiment relies on the perceived distance between “radical Islam” and “American values,” Tsarnaev’s style caused panic among audiences because his motives were no longer clear on his body. On the other hand, Burke states that mystery rivets us and makes us continue to think about the entity (1969, pg. 115), and this mystique helps sustains fear of the hidden, unknown
Muslim terrorist.
65 This is why constructing themselves as “moderates” allows Muslims to present themselves as more familiar figures and separate themselves from “the terrorists.” I have demonstrated that “terrorist” acts tend to focus on the actor (i.e. what the body, style, religion, etc. of the perpetrator are). Thus when U.S. Muslims use the “moderate Muslim” trope, they are able to shift focus from the actor to the scene to reframe the U.S. Muslim community. By performing “moderate Islam,” U.S. Muslims can make a case that they need not be excised from American society, but rather reoriented to function in it more competently. I discuss this move in Chapter 3, when I introduce Burke’s tragic scapegoating and comic framing theories to explain how U.S. Muslims re-present their motives. According to Burke’s Dramatistic Pentad, we can interpret motives through five elements: act, actor, purpose, agency, and scene. Anti-Muslim rhetoric heavily emphasizes the actor by presenting certain traits as “inherent” to Islam – such as the unreasonable “Muslim mind” and Muslims’ innately violent tendencies (see Kumar,
2012, pg. 40). And if those traits are inherent, Muslims are unfit for comic framing.
However, deploying the “moderate” Muslim rhetoric can help the U.S. majority reimagine Muslims within a larger scene, thus allowing for the possibility of comic framing. A great deal of “moderate” Muslim rhetoric implies the significance of context without directly addressing it. For instance, the “moderate” Muslim does not practice his religion in an “obtrusive” way, and according to the conservative newspaper
TownHall.com, is one who actively opposes terrorism and supports free speech (2013).
Of course, “obtrusiveness” or conspicuousness is a deeply scenic element. Therefore, when Muslims invoke the scenic component of “moderate” Muslim rhetoric, they are 66 able to move towards a comic frame, which allows for the possibility of “rehabilitation.”
It re-presents Muslims as individuals struggling to “blend into” an unfamiliar scene. As a result, the Muslim who denounces caricaturizing Prophet Muhammad morphs from someone with an “unreasonable Muslim mind” into someone unused to “free” speech. At this point, s/he may be corrected and returned to society, where s/he can then operate as enlightened “moderates.”
In my earlier example about the Tsarnaev brothers, I argued that their bodies and style became a locus of struggle when establishing their motives. However, I should mention that motives are not just inscribed onto the bodies of “Muslim terrorists;” they are also inscribed on the bodies of White perpetrators when their victims happen to be minorities. For instance, a White male bystander in the 2012 Sikh Temple Shooting was identified as a person of interest because he seemed “out of place.” His style drew attention: he had a prominent tattoo on his bicep and wore dark sunglasses, and his muscles stood out clearly through his tight t-shirt. His image was splashed across online newspapers. The FBI released his image to assist with their investigation, and when the man turned himself in he was formally cleared. However, while this individual’s style discursively constructed him as a possible hate criminal, Muslims’ bodies and style discursively construct them as terrorists.
I should mention here that I am dealing with the terms “hate crimes” and
“terrorism” as they are constructed discursively, not legally. Legally, hate crimes constitute attacks on individuals based on their protected characteristics of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender and gender identity, sexual orientation, and disability. 67 Meanwhile, the legal definition of terrorism is more controversial. At it’s most basic level, the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations states that terrorism necessarily involves intimidation tactics with the aim to influence a government, policy, or civilian population for political ends (U.S. F.C.R. Chapter 113B Code 2331). However, the legal determination of these crimes is not my focus here – their discursive construction is.
However, there is no doubt that these categorizations, which are legal in nature, shape how we perceive motives and influence public discourse. In Good Muslim, Bad Muslim,
Mahmood Mamdani explains that violence that horrifies modern sensibility is violence that appears senseless, that cannot be justified by progress (2004, pg. 4). He further divides this into cultural discourse on violence (i.e. “premodern” violence) and theological discourse on violence (i.e. “antimodern” violence). I want to demonstrate how hate crimes are necessarily presented as “premodern” violence, which Mamdani (and
U.S. public discourse, no doubt) deems a lesser violence, because while it is senseless it demonstrates and absence of (rather than a hostility towards) modernity. Let us consider two examples, taken side-by-side, of an attack on Muslims and an attack on Jewish worshippers in the U.S. News reports speculated that the former was a hate crime, while the latter was definitively labeled a hate crime. Neither was initially described as an act of terrorism.
On February 10, 2015, three Muslim students were shot in their homes in Chapel
Hill, North Carolina, by their neighbor Craig Hicks. Initial reports stated that the murder was triggered by a parking dispute. However, the families of the victims wanted the act to
68 be labeled a hate crime.4 10 months earlier, Frazier Glenn Miller, a known White supremacist, killed three worshippers at a Kansas synagogue. His acts, combined with his
KKK connections, admittedly made it easier to categorize his act as a hate crime.5 In both these situations, the victims were a minority group due to their ethnicities and/or religions. The families of the Chapel Hill victims (along with many criminologists6) have pointed out the hypocrisy of mass media for failing to call crimes against Muslims “hate crimes” and even acts of terror.
However, I believe that calling such crimes against Muslims “hate crimes” is deeply limiting, and that media narratives fail to recognize such concerted attacks on
Muslims as terrorist acts. After all, calling attacks on Muslims “hate crimes” necessarily empties it of the crafted political intent that the U.S. Federal Code attributes to
“terrorism.” Thus, calling the Chapel Hill Shootings a “hate crime” draws a parallel between the senselessness of executing Muslim students and the senselessness of executing Jewish worshippers. This is disingenuous because U.S. Jews do not face the same climate of hatred that U.S. Muslims currently experience. Furthermore, the White supremacist groups that Miller was connected to are such obviously lost causes that his actions become outliers – so baffling that they cannot be political, and therefore not an act of terror, which necessarily makes political demands. In this way, we understand
4 In interviews with CNN’s Anderson Cooper and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, Suzanne Barakat, the sister of one of the victims, pushed to have the crime labeled a hate crime rather than a parking dispute. BBC and CNN also ran segments discussing whether the shootings constituted a hate crime. 5 Miller faces federal hate crime charges, whereas the U.S. Department of Justice is still scrutinizing the Chapel-Hill murders to determine hate crime charges. At the time of writing, no decision had been made for the latter. 6 In “Terrorism and the Politics of Fear,” Frank Furedi points out that labeling a crime an act of terrorism versus a hate crime is to make a “moral statement” on the behavior of the perpetrator (2005, pg. 269) 69 Miller’s crime as “premodern” rather than “antimodern” because the United States condemns racism and bigotry. In this way, discursively framing an act as a “hate crime” ironically reifies American exceptionalism because it implies that the crime is unequivocally condemned by mainstream American values, which are exceptional. Our attitudes towards White supremacist groups are, to use Barry Brummett’s term, part of the “frozen floor of meanings” (2008, pg. 125) that America agrees is shameful and will not willingly return to. It is unthinkable that the mainstream can defend Miller’s actions, or even explain them as rational in any way – therefore, calling it a hate crime with all its attending tragic senselessness, is reasonable within this rhetorical frame.
However, for U.S. Muslims there is a clear climate that makes anti-Muslim attacks understandable, if not acceptable. If a hate crime is out of the ordinary, a clear departure from the rhetoric of the day, this is not true for attacks on U.S. Muslims, as they live in a climate of fear in 2016. It is this climate that allowed Fox News, CNN, and other news media to speculate that the 2012 Sikh Temple gunman intended to target
Muslims rather than Sikhs. Such a climate is not unique to U.S. Muslims, of course; they can be traced across U.S. history, including the treatment of Japanese-Americans during
World War II and Black lynchings in the Jim Crow era. It would seem bizarre to call
Japanese internment or lynching “hate crimes” today because they were not out of the ordinary at the time. Few would disagree that the internment, or lynchings, or even the
Holocaust were anything other than state-sanctioned terrorism. While not nearly as devastating, U.S. anti-Muslim attacks display a similar pattern of terrorism as they are
70 frequent and even state sanctioned due to the regular surveillance, profiling, and detainment of Muslims.
It is necessary to recognize the pervasiveness of this climate, as it begins to stand in for motives. In other words, a climate that readily allows the scapegoating of U.S.
Muslims helps explain (if not explain away) attacks on Muslims, thereby shifting the focus to the victim rather than the attacker. Additionally, it makes it more difficult to recognize hate crimes when carried out by ethnic minorities. Hate crimes have become the privilege of White perpetrators, and I do not use the term “privilege” here lightly.
First, discursively constructing an act as hate crime strips it of obvious political intent, thereby containing it and therefore making it less of a threat. Second, it also localizes blame: hate crimes are committed by a few lone wolf shooters, whereas an act of terror must necessarily be calculated and therefore more ominous. And finally, it presents the crime as an aberration rather than an organized movement gaining momentum. In the mean time, while calling a hate crime an act of terrorism does not necessarily frame it as more heinous, it does create a climate of fear that justifies preemptive action. I will discuss the role of momentum and “preemptive-action” rhetoric in media discourses about terrorism, as it forms the foundation for my temporal analysis in Chapter 4.
This is not to say that all U.S. hate crimes are carried out by White gunmen; rather, White gunmen become the representative anecdote for hate crimes – just as the bearded “Muslim” becomes the representative anecdote for terrorism. In A Grammar of
Motives, Kenneth Burke describes a representative anecdote as not a literal story that is told, but the form of stories told (1945, pg. 59). In a reflexive move, Burke identifies his 71 own approach to examining narratives – the Pentad – as a product of the representative anecdote. The Pentad offers a hierarchy of key elements that comprise motives, i.e. why people do what they do. These elements include act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose.
Burke admits that these elements are not encompassing – for instance, one might observe that while the Pentad accounts for a subject (actor), it does not account for an object (or one who is acted upon). However, a focus on these five elements gives rise to narrative structures and representative anecdotes, and vice-versa. I would like to point out that the representative anecdotes for both hate crimes and acts of terror are not limited to just the agent (i.e. White male and Muslim male respectively). If we were to use the Pentad to trace the representative anecdote for U.S. hate crimes, we would see: shooting, White male, gun, and bigotry or mental illness as the act, agent, agency and purpose. For
“terrorist” acts, we would see: bombing, crowded space, “Muslim” male, bomb, and terror.
This reveals the importance of including the object in any analysis of the representative anecdote, particularly in any study of anti-Muslim discourse. For hate crimes, the media discourse focuses on examining the victims (i.e. the objects, or those who are being acted upon) to make sense of the act and actor, and specifically the motive.
However, in the case of a terrorist act, the focus is on the actor, within whom the motive lies, and a diminished focus on the characteristics of the victims. Therefore, it is crucial to recognize that categorizing an act of violence as a “terrorist” attack does not merely have the power to marginalize the perceived community of the “terrorist;” it completely shifts the narrative landscape that focuses investigations on the actor. 72 Let me now offer an example of how the “moderate Muslim” discourse mediates how a crime is classified. As I mentioned earlier, three Muslim students in Chapel Hill,
North Carolina were shot in their homes in 2015. The victims were of Arab descent, and the perpetrator, their neighbor, had repeatedly confronted them over a parking spot dispute. The victims’ family publicly called for their murders to be termed a hate crime rather than a parking dispute. As I discussed earlier, the term “hate crime” carries an implication of senselessness, of an act undertaken in the absence of rationality allegedly targeting a victim’s protected characteristics (such as religion, race, disability, and so forth). This sets it apart from a terrorist attack, which is premeditated, political, and not inexplicable. In this case, the obvious “moderateness” of the three victims makes it possible to depict this as a hate crime, because the virtue of the victims is necessary to present a killing as “senseless;” it can only be their religion, a protected characteristic, that offers a motive. Deah Barakat, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, and her sister Razan Abu-
Salha readily fit the “moderate” Muslim mold. For instance, all three were high achieving students, with Deah and Yusor attending dental school at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill – one of the nation’s top universities – to pursue a profession in healthcare.7 Deah and Razan were philanthropists; Deah raised money to provide dental
7 The use of education to bolster the reputations of victims is also visible in narratives of police brutality of Black Americans. News reports focused on Oscar Grant’s work towards his GED before he was fatally shot by the BART police in 2009. Meanwhile, teenager Trayvon Martin was described as a high school student with aspirations to pursue a career in airplane design before being shot by a neighborhood vigilante in 2012. A photograph of Michael Brown, fatally shot by police in 2014, showing him in high school graduation robes was widely circulated. While the goal of such coverage was to combat character assassination of these Black youths, it contains the troubling undertone that police brutality of less-educated victims is less appalling. But perhaps more disturbingly, such a focus implies that these youths are not threats to society because their education implies long-term career goals. It is noteworthy that such emphases (on education, style, etc.) contribute not only to the myth of the “moderate Muslim” (or idealized 73 care for Syrian refugees as well as the homeless in the Durham area, and Razan provided assistance to the deaf Muslim community. Deah was also known as an avid basketball fan, and his social media pictures showed him wearing the jerseys of his favorite team.8
Meanwhile, although Yusor and Razan wore a headscarf, they did not cover their faces and their social media photographs show them wearing stylish, fashionable, and colorful clothes. All three were avid social media users, documenting their travels, sports adventures, and amusing everyday moments with their friends through Facebook, Twitter and Vine. Their families were financially stable, with Deah’s sister and Yusor and
Razan’s father being medical doctors. The victims’ education, philanthropy, and perhaps most significantly their conspicuous consumption of sartorial style and social media clearly marked them as “moderate;” all these factors made their murders “senseless,” and fitting of the label “hate crime.” However, this term also serves to distance the perpetrator from the audience, who believe that such acute “hate” is the product of a twisted upbringing and incomprehensible worldview. Once again, this disidentification helps protect the discourse of U.S. exceptionalism.
The idea is that the making of a hate-criminal is an aberration, whereas a terrorist is made stealthily and concertedly. As the coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing shows, terrorists can be “regular people” who lead a double life. The younger Tsarnaev victim) but also places an artificial pressure on any perceived “Muslims” to evince similar “idealness” if they are victims of anti-Muslim sentiment 8 Interestingly, sports affiliations tend to mediate the presentation of “moderate Muslims.” Deah Barakat’s love of basketball and NBA player Stephen Curry were heavily documented by the media. Meanwhile, Boston Marathon Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s dedication to boxing confounded some journalists. As one Fox News report stated, although Tamerlan Tsarnaev had military training overseas, he “also worked out in a gym and dreamed of making the US Olympic boxing team” (Fox News, 2013), suggesting that pursuing a sport and being a terrorist are mutually exclusive. In fact, Tsarnaev’s subsequent decision to give up boxing when he became interested in Islam helped “explain” his radicalization 74 brother, Dzohkar, was presented as a student who enjoyed sports, parties, and socializing, but was discreetly recruited for a political cause by the elder Tsarnaev. One again, the rhetoric of exceptionalism surfaces in the presentation of hate crimes: exceptional circumstances and exceptional ideology produce an individual who carries out an act of exceptional violence. Furthermore, the hate crime is not the result of (ideological) contagion, whereas the terrorist act is. The former is bred in isolation, while the latter is a result of socialization. Such focus on the scale, momentum, and containment of a crime makes a temporal analysis ideal for a study of U.S. anti-Muslim sentiment. Meanwhile, the focus on the actor in discourses of terrorism makes a Dramatistic approach an ideal one for this study. For these reasons, I develop temporal and stylistic methods of analyses in the following chapter, and draw on Burke’s Scapegoating Theory and political aesthetics to understand the production of the “moderate Muslim” discourse.
I have so far provided a historical overview to challenge the premise of Islam as a relatively new religion to the United States, as well as drawn on psychoanalytic theory, theories of U.S. exceptionalism, and Burke’s Dramatism. Taken together, they create a foundation for my stylistic analysis of the “moderate” Muslim. In the next section, I introduce affect theory to lay the groundwork for my temporal approach.
THE TEMPORAL COMPONENT OF AFFECT AND TERROR MANAGEMENT
My two methods, which I describe in the next chapter, are a temporal and stylistic approach. In the previous section, I presented the Burkean theory that was my impetus for creating a stylistic method. In this section, I discuss affect theory because it established a 75 foundation for my temporal method of analysis. Affect theory employs language that is deeply temporal; it is impossible to consider affect without considering the accumulation of forces inflicted upon bodies across time and space. Affect theory provides a vocabulary that enables a temporal approach in scholarship on anti-Muslim sentiment.
Broadly speaking, affect relates to any force – visceral, emotional, or otherwise – that drives action and bodies towards movement. More importantly, affect is just as defined by what it is not, i.e. forces other than conscious knowing (as Seigworth and
Gregg state in their introduction to The Affect Theory reader, 2010, emphasis theirs).
Therefore, affect theory is a key branch of theory for any study of non-rational argumentation. Non-rational argumentation forms the basis of the rhetoric that manufactures a “fear” of Muslims in the post-9/11 landscape, making affect theory a powerful tool for understanding – and tracing – the accumulation of traces left on bodies that accrue into fear. And affect is, and works due to, accumulation. As Seigworth and
Gregg note, affect accumulates “across both relatedness and interruptions in relatedness, becoming a palimpsest of force-encounters traversing the ebbs and swells of intensities that pass between ‘bodies’” (2010, pg. 2, emphasis theirs). In other words, affect results from the referential components of bodies. For instance, the self-immolations that took place during the 2011 Arab Spring occurred in different countries, but became linked due to their affect – the visceral force with which their momentum shocked the world.
In “An Inventory of Shimmers,” Gregory Seigworth notes that affect, which exists in ephemera and slippage, is difficult to understand in isolation. Drawing on
Lawrence Grossberg’s work from 1984, Seigworth notes: 76
…affect always points to a future that is not quite in view
from the present, a future that scrambles any map in
advance of its arrival, if indeed the moment (as a demand
on the social) ever fully arrives. Or, perhaps it is that even
if “the moment” never fully arrives, it nonetheless
remains, as Grossberg details in our interview, virtually
present in duration. Whatever the futures of affect theory
might portent, it always and already calls for a critical
practice – what Lefebvre called “a theory of moments” –
that must seek to imaginatively/ generatively nudge these
moments along…” (2010, pg. 21, bold emphases mine)
In this excerpt, Seigworth clearly gestures to the significance of anticipation (without ever stating that term explicitly) in the production of affect, which ultimately adheres to the body. Affect is not limited to what has been inflicted on the body, but includes, as
Seigworth says, the “promise” of the “not yet” (pg. 18), which is the very basis of fear.
Such fear sustains urgency, which is reflected in current discourse emphasizing and justifying “preemptive strikes” – counterterrorism rhetoric is simply riddled with this term (see Fisher, 2013). Meanwhile, in his pleasure-principle theory, Freud describes fear as the “avoiding” of “unpleasure,” because human lives are centered on pleasure. This
“unpleasure,” which accrues into trauma, Freud describes as a kind of “afterwardness” 77 (1895). Once again, we see traces of temporal language, or more significantly, the idea that “fear” hinges on time: it becomes necessary to “avoid” unpleasure, or the promise of unpleasure (the so-called “not yet”).
Undoubtedly, affect theory – a key method for examining the rhetorics of terrorism – is founded on deeply temporal ideas: the notions of accumulation, the promise of particular futures, and the continual fear of the “not yet.” Affect theory recognizes that time is necessary for the accumulation of trauma, which is inscribed onto particular bodies and spurs other bodies into action. This could not be more evident in TSA’s “If
You See Something, Say Something” campaign. The “something” that one “sees” is a product of accumulation, of trauma (as well as discourse about trauma) that has been inscribed onto the body of the one that sees. Meanwhile, the “saying something” is the natural consequence of “seeing something;” the latter drives action and bodies towards movement, which is the very definition of affect at work. Such deeply temporal constructions are key to explaining affective power. But what about the temporal language present in actual anti-Muslim discourse? If we recognize that affective power draws on temporal constructs, analysis of anti-Muslim sentiment must examine the coded temporal language in popular and media discourse. By this, I mean employing a micro- level analysis that examines language patterns and discursive practices that code temporally laden terms that reawaken the traces of fear left on the audience. In my methods chapter, I will explain the terms “temporal construals” and “temporal enactments” and their role in producing affective discourse on anti-Muslim sentiment.
78 In this chapter, I have identified Islam’s influence during key moments of U.S. identity formation as well as engaged psychoanalytic theory to understand how the
“moderate Muslim” is constructed. Furthermore, I established a theoretical foundation drawing on the work of Kenneth Burke and Affect Theory to establish why we need temporal and stylistic approaches to study anti-Muslim sentiment. Taken together, these two methods address why the Muslim “threat” is perceived as so urgent and yet so concealed. In the next Chapter, I develop these two approaches and apply them in
Chapters 4 and 5 respectively.
79 Chapter 3: Methods in Time and Style
In Chapters 1 and 2, I have introduced the goals and context for this project. In this chapter, I describe the two approaches I will use in Chapters 4 and 5, explain how I will apply them, and offer a rationale for selecting these methods.
My research questions focus on the urgency and perceived stealth of “Muslim terrorism” in U.S. discourse. Given that urgency and concealment carry a temporal and aesthetic component respectively, it is useful to bring a temporal and stylistic approach to study U.S. anti-Muslims sentiment. As I discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, a framework of
Orientalism has helped establish the founding scholarship on anti-Muslim sentiment today by addressing the representation of Muslims and Arabs in Western discourse.
However, in my project I do not attend to these representations. Instead, I examine the temporal and stylistic patterns in anti-Muslim sentiment, and how they sustain the momentum of U.S. anti-Muslim sentiment. This is because anti-Muslim sentiment can now operate outside anti-Muslim discourse, as I discussed in Chapter 1. Any mention of
9/11 and the frantic emphasis on safety from unknown, yet no doubt impending, terrorism invokes the specter of the Muslim terrorist.9 Thus, in this project I choose to examine case studies that do not involve acts (or alleged acts) of Muslim terrorism, and do not even necessarily involve Muslims.
9 When the Senate Intelligence Committee released a CIA torture report in 2014, Fox News was quick to condemn its release, stating that the CIA needed to do whatever it took to keep American’s safe after 9/11. Fox and Friends anchor Andrea Tantaros dismissed the use of torture, and co-host Lisa Kennedy Mongtomery Kennedy stated that America’s enemies would be unaffected by this report because they were “beheading and raping people” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo7Fa0r-5Cw). Therefore, in a discussion that should have focused on the release of intelligence concerning torture, the specter of the Muslim terrorist – as well as U.S. exceptionalism – clearly emerge. 80 Therefore, in this chapter I describe and rationalize my temporal and stylistic approaches, which I apply in Chapters 4 and 5 respectively. Additionally, I will introduce the case studies I will examine.
TEMPORAL & STYLISTIC APPROACHES: A RATIONALE
The temporal lens and stylistic methods I apply in this dissertation are separate; however, it is necessary to use such disparate methods together. This is necessary to capture and critique the texture of anti-Muslim sentiment. The temporal lens examines discursive tendencies in reporting, and the stylistic lens examines the production of a particular discourse, i.e. the “moderate Muslim” discourse. Therefore, I will use each lens to examine a different case study in Chapters 4 and 5, and by applying both I hope to demonstrate the value of such complementary methods in explorations of anti-Muslim sentiment. Anti-Muslim sentiment is evolving, as no discourse of bigotry is static. By locating anti-Muslim sentiment in unexpected texts, I hope to demonstrate the importance of using unexpected methods to locate anti-Muslim sentiment.
First, let me discuss the rationale for my temporal approach. A major goal in using this lens is to intervene in discursive practices when it comes to temporal framing.
Temporal framing controls how discourse is charted, and therefore controls how information is framed and even accessed. Whether an event is described as an aftermath occurrence or an epochal occurrence changes how we view the event itself. For instance, consider how different 9/11 would seem if it was framed as the “aftermath” of the 1991
Gulf War, or if new coverage did not contextualize the attacks on mosques in 2015 and 81 2016 with the Paris and San Bernardino attacks. These are issues of homology as they attend to the form of anti-Muslim rhetoric rather than its content. This is especially important because, as I discussed earlier, anti-Muslim sentiment is pervasive even in discourse that has nothing to do with Islam or Muslims. This makes it doubly important for scholarship to examine the form of anti-Muslim sentiment in addition to its content. A temporal approach can help explore this form, as it interrogates the sequencing employed by news coverage to frame particular attacks. Such a temporal approach – with its focus on form – makes it possible to expose discursive tendencies that contribute to subtle anti-
Muslim rhetoric. When such tendencies are exposed, it becomes possible to intervene in discursive practices and revise temporal framing in media narratives.
Meanwhile, my second goal in using a temporal approach is to advocate for new methods in scholarship on anti-Muslim sentiment. Because such sentiment constantly develops new permutations, it is necessary to use new tools to expose them, particularly since temporality is present in all discourses. Furthermore, using temporal and stylistic analyses can be useful when studying other marginalizing discourses as well. For instance, there is a clear timeline to the police brutalization of Blacks: the murders of
Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Walter Scott (to name a few) were grouped together because they were all Black men executed in police encounters. Their killings became, as I mentioned earlier, what Junaid Rana terms “racial events,” which served to unify moments across history (2011, pg. 52). There is no doubt that such police brutality is one of the vestiges of the legacy of slavery in the U.S. Yet, it would seem bizarre for a news report to connect these killings to the Enslavement, or even the Jim 82 Crow Era, which is temporally closer. However, referencing the Holocaust in discussions of current anti-Semitism is logical and even expected, even though it ended decades before the Jim Crow Era. This suggests that, for particular groups, context is removed when we reach a certain temporal juncture. It is important to expose these temporal junctures, just as it is necessary to recognize the construction of “eras” in timelines created by news coverage. Just as “post 9/11” is a definitive era that helps “explain” anti-
Muslim sentiment, the movement against police brutality is framed as a distinct era for
Black civil rights. Therefore, the temporal component in anti-Muslim discourse and the presentation of “Muslim issues” is significant, and its study is also salient to other marginalizing discourses. I will detail the components of my temporal approach later in this chapter.
Now, let us consider what there is to gain from employing a stylistic approach, the second distinct method I use in this dissertation. Since Muslim terrorists are framed as a
“hidden” threat, it is no surprise that anti-Muslim sentiment has permeated various other discourses: on terrorism, nationhood, immigration, and consequently national identity. In fact, the Muslim Other has become necessary for the preservation of national identity by acting as a foil to “American values”.10 Meanwhile, it is undeniable that style and consumption are also foundational to the creation of political aesthetics and nationalism.
Crispin Sartwell writes that the affective power of aesthetics is central to nationalisms
(2010, pg. 48) and that the “consumer” is an “appellation of citizenship” (pg. 68).
10 Several scholars have made this observation about the necessity of the Muslim Other in discussions of US national identity. In addition to Said’s work on Orientalism, see Julian Hammer’s American Muslim Women, Religious Authority, and Activism (2012), Gavin Brockett’s How Happy to Call Oneself a Turk (2011), and Deepa Kumar’s Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire (2012) 83 Bradford Vivian asserts that the enemy is neutralized through appropriation and consumption, a process he calls “eating the Other,” which assigns superiority to culture instead of nature (2004, pg. 25). Meanwhile, Stuart Ewen writes that style is central to achieving the “dream of wholeness” (1988, pg. 79) and for creating the illusion of a contiguous national identity. Given the centrality of style to nationhood, and the centrality of nationhood discourse and scholarship on anti-Muslim sentiment, it is worthwhile to take a stylistic approach when examining anti-Muslim chauvinism. Since I examine the “moderate Muslim” discourse in this dissertation, such an approach becomes especially important. This is because “moderate Islam” is ascertained not by U.S.
Muslims, but by U.S. dominant ideology that has identified Muslims as fearsome. Such a determination of “moderate Muslims,” then, is based on what it visible – the performance of citizenship channeled through style.
In the following sections, I will establish the methodological frame for my temporal and stylistic methods; explain my application process; and introduce the case studies I examine in Chapter 4 and 5. The next section describes my temporal lens and the concepts I engage from temporality scholarship to examine anti-Muslim sentiment.
MUSLIMS AS TICKING TIME BOMBS: A TEMPORAL LENS
Here, I establish the temporal concepts I apply in my case study in Chapter 4. In
1992, temporality scholars McGrath and Kelly cited methodological reasons for the neglect of temporal matters in the social sciences (pg. 400). They argue that this was partly due to the amount of time it takes to study time in social phenomena. However, 84 time is not just embedded in events and our retelling of events, but more broadly in discourse as well. For these reasons, it is a mistake to overlook temporality in anti-
Muslim discourse, particularly when fear is contingent on urgency and pace, both of which are temporal construals (to use Ballard and Seibold’s term, 2003). Therefore, in this section I develop a temporal framework to examine anti-Muslim discourse in the
United States. Through my analyses, I hope to identify temporal patterns in such discourse, and how we might intervene in these patterns to address anti-Muslim sentiment.
Before constructing this temporal framework, I want to offer one caveat. This is not primarily a study of news media, even though most of my examples come from U.S. news coverage. Rather, it is a study of how temporality is manipulated in a given discourse to craft particular narratives. Admittedly, the best source to draw from is the
U.S. news media, but my aim is not to indict media content; rather, it is to shine a light on the particular media practices to understand how a coherent anti-Muslim discourse is emerging. In the following section, I describe the two temporal theories at the foundation of my temporal approach, which I engage in an analysis of news content in Chapter 4.
Timescaping: How Far does the “Wake” of 9/11 Stretch?
The first component of my temporal approach draws on the concept of timescaping. There is a clear temporal component to the construction of particular acts as
“terrorism,” and the construction of such acts is contingent on timescaping, i.e. the placement of an event in a particular temporal landscape. Reva Burman Brown develops the concept of timescaping through time horizons, i.e. the boundary within which one is 85 able to construct a subjective picture of an event (2005), and distinguishes this from time frames, i.e. the bounded period of time within which a series of events occur (2005, emphasis mine) as well as time spans, which are the actual lengths of events (2005).
Additionally, Tompkins & Cheney (1987) supply an important concept: “temporal depth,” which is how far into the past or future individuals collectively reach when contemplating events that have happened or may happen (as cited in Brown, 2005). I introduce these terms because they explain how anti-Muslim discourse is bounded, particularly since a specific event, 9/11, has become the epoch for “Islamic terrorism” in the United States. Although the attacks consisted of four plane crashes in three locations, the term 9/11 has specifically come to evoke the attacks on the Twin Towers in lower
Manhattan. This is, in part, due to the memorialization of the location of the towers (i.e.
Ground Zero), and the powerful images of the towers crumbling as a result of the attacks.
In fact, in 9/11 Culture, Jeffrey Melnick explains how the cultural impact of 9/11 became drawn out: the rumors about “celebrating Arabs” in the wake of the attacks; news channels’ packaging of the tragedy; and discussions about popular cultural violence lengthened the trauma of the event (2009). The effects of 9/11 went from being far- reaching to everywhere-present, which helps sustain the narrative of the “urgent Muslim threat.”
However, in stark contrast, the time span of the 9/11 attacks was just 77 minutes.
The first plane crashed into the North Tower at 8:46am, while the fourth and final plane
(whose specific target was unknown) crashed in a field in Pennsylvania at 10:03am.
However, the time frame of the event is longer and includes the aftermath of the attacks. 86 Since conceptions of the 9/11 “aftermath” vary, this picture is far more subjective. From an emergency response standpoint, the time frame extends to after the towers crumbled
(102 and 56 minutes after the crashes for the North and South towers respectively).
However, from the perspective of those who were not present during the attacks, the time frame extends to receiving news about loved ones and grieving periods. It is important to recognize that time frames do not include the ongoing impact of an event; therefore, while the families of victims will long feel the effects of 9/11, their time frame of the event is still no longer than a few hours to a few days long. However, the time horizon of
9/11 is quite a different issue. Shortly after the plane crashes, the U.S. media forwarded several motives for the attacks, ranging from U.S. involvement in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to its military presence in Saudi Arabia. In this way, a decades-long conflict was included in the time horizon to make sense of the 9/11 attacks. For some, the time horizon was probably closed with the death of Osama bin Laden or the building of the
9/11 Memorial Center on Ground Zero.11
However, we must distinguish the time horizon of 9/11 from the time horizons
9/11 is a part of. Since 9/11, hate crimes against (perceived) Muslims have increased exponentially. To make sense of many of these events, individuals have to exercise considerable temporal depth; they have to reach back to the 9/11 attacks to interpret these events. Given that the Muslim “body” is constructed in a multitude of ways in the U.S.,
11 It is a testament to American exceptionalism that the unmarked term “ground zero,” which is the general term for any detonation site, has specifically come to represent the devastated Twin Towers site. The term “9/11,” too, has come to solely mean the attacks on the Twin Towers. I am astounded that this is also true for my students in 2016, who were toddlers on 9/11; yet the term still represents a terrorist attack in their minds. The ability to fully occupy such unmarked terms of time and space reveals the astonishing control the United States has over its production of self-narratives. 87 these hate crimes can range from attacks on Hispanics to Arab Christians and Sikhs. They include microaggressions and verbal assaults on a daily basis, but also physical violence and even murder. After the 2012 Sikh Temple Shooting in Wisconsin, Fox News misidentified a suspect before the actual perpetrator was identified. The misidentified suspect was described as a “White skinhead male” sporting “prominent 9/11 tattoos”
(2012a). That these scant details were enough to identify a suspect testifies to the power of the 9/11 timescape, which in turn constructed a motive for the shooting.
The coverage of the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings provided another instance of how 9/11 was invoked to frame an act as terrorism. CNN reported that public demand for racial profiling was on the rise due to “incidents like the Boston bombings and 9/11”
(2013a). In another article, CNN lauded the achievement of law enforcement in addressing both “[l]one-wolf type attacks of the kind we saw in Boston” as well as
“national catastrophe[s] of the scale of 9/11, which was carried out by a large, well- organized terrorist group” (2014). While CNN does judiciously characterize the Boston attacks as “lone-wolf,” their comment is still perplexing: why is the attack being compared to, or mentioned in relation to, 9/11? The two attacks did not employ similar techniques, nor were they carried out by the same organization. In fact, the Tsaernaev brothers had no links to any Muslim brotherhood groups, and Tamerlan Tsaernaev appeared to be more radicalized by White supremacist groups than Islamic groups
(2014). 9/11 and the Boston Bombings are in fact less similar than the 1999 Columbine
High School Massacre and 2007 Virginia Tech Massacre: the two latter were both carried out in schools by students who were clinically depressed and had procured firearms to 88 carry out the attacks. However, while Columbine did receive extensive coverage, it is rarely invoked in the coverage of mass shootings or even school shootings. In fact, it would seem bizarre for news coverage to insist that the only way one might interpret a school mass shooting is through the lens of the Columbine attack. While the Virginia
Tech shooter did publicize his intentions to “repeat Columbine,” other mass shooters –
Adam Lanza, James Holmes, Dylann Roof – are hardly portrayed as Columbine copycats, even though the attacks bear striking similarities.
I am not saying that news consumers do no make these connections for themselves. Rather, I am pointing out that news media do not actively include prior mass/school shootings in its coverage of current mass-shootings. However, it does include 9/11 in the time horizon of almost every attack on Muslims, or attacks allegedly performed by Muslims. This has a twofold temporal effect. First, it presents attacks on
Muslims as 9/11 aftermath events. Therefore, hate-crimes against perceived Muslims are rationalized as “retaliatory,” and this diminishes their victimization and even holds them vaguely responsible for being attacked. And second, including 9/11 in the time horizon of all “Muslim attacks” creates a false sense of momentum that presents Muslim terrorism as a critical problem. This is accomplished through the temporal construals of urgency and scarcity. Ballard and Seibold (2003) describe temporal construals as the way group members interpret or orient to time. In particular, they identify the temporal construal of
“urgency” and “scarcity,” where the former focuses on task completion and the latter focuses on the (temporal) resources available to complete it (2003, pg. 390). The construal of urgency is particularly evident in discourses about “radicalized Muslim 89 terrorists.” When Dzhokar Tsarnaev was apprehended for the Boston Bombings, there was a public debate about whether he deserved to be read his Miranda Rights and given the “right to remain silent.” In fact, Tsarnaev was not Mirandized until 16 hours after his arrest, and House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul came forward to say he should have been interrogated for 48 hours before being Mirandized (2013b). What was the reason for this unprecedented violation of civil rights? The investigators believed that the Tsarnaev brothers had planted bombs in other locations, which turned out to be untrue. In fact, such Miranda “public safety exceptions” have been invoked in the past, but rarely for more than a few minutes at a time.12 It has never been applied for a day, or for two days as McCaul was aiming for. However, restricting a suspect’s Miranda Rights is contingent on their actions being construed as “terrorist activity,” and therefore uniquely urgent.
After the Boston Marathon Bombings, it was clear that public discourse needed to stop asking what the “consequences” of 9/11 were and asking how far the wake of 9/11 stretched.
When 9/11 is invoked, and when terrorist attacks are constructed as uniquely urgent, they yield two more temporal products: the construal of scarcity, which in turn modifies the temporal enactment of pace. Ballard and Seibold (2003) describe temporal enactments as the ways individuals perform time, which is distinct (though influenced by) the way they
12 For a relatively complete list of the Miranda “public safety exception” cases, see the following record published by the Alameda County District’s Attorney Office in 2005. http://le.alcoda.org/publications/point_of_view/files/miranda_exceptions.pdf Until 2005, it was primarily invoked for a few minutes at a time for firearm related attacks, but was more notably invoked against the “Airport Underwear Bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in 2010 and “Car Bomber” Faisal Shahzad – both Muslim males. 90 construe it. Therefore, the “construal” of time “scarcity,” which construes a shortage of temporal resources to fulfill a task, can result in enacting a quicker “pace.” While pace refers to the tempo of an activity or series of activities, it is the separation of activities that throw the tempo into sharp relief. By refusing to separate terrorist attacks from 9/11 narratives, or by deliberately grouping them together, media coverage is able to do precisely this: create a false sense of high tempo of Muslim terrorist attacks. This reinforces the idea that time is “running out,” and that the United States must act before terrorists can act upon it. I will discuss the role of a specific temporal enactment – pace – later in this chapter. However, temporal construals, i.e. how individuals and groups interpret time, precede temporal enactments. Therefore, I will establish a key temporal construal in the production of anti-Muslim discourse.
Urgency: The Always Imminent “Muslim Threat”
The second component of my temporal lens is the temporal construal of urgency, and together with timescaping, these concepts form the foundation of the approach I apply to the case study in Chapter 4. There is no doubt that anti-Muslim sentiment is sustained by fear, which is necessary to justify the billions spent annually on counterterrorism measures. However, it is important to understand how the momentum of this fear is sustained. This momentum, which rides on the shoulders of fear, engages a sense of urgency and pace – which are key temporal elements for understanding why
Muslims are continually feared in the United States. There is a prevailing sense that
Muslims terrorists “will get us” if “we don’t get them first.” There is a strain of American exceptionalism within this fear, which frames the U.S. simultaneously as a world savior 91 and target. Anti-Muslim discourse lies at the intersection of two urgencies: that the
Muslim body is dangerous, and that Islamic “culture” (specifically “sharia law”) can
“take over” the United States. It is this sense of urgency that provides an impetus that justifies not just retaliation, but sometimes preemptive action against Muslims (as seen in sting operations on Muslims). In fact, such preemptive language is rife in anti-Muslim discourse. For instance, in the wake of the Boston Bombings, Fox News’s Eric Bolling verbalized this need for preemptive measure to counter this “scarcity” of time:
“Should the FBI now be allowed to go into mosques and wire tap and
surveil? I think this is a great case for opening up that that that [sic]…”
(2013c)
With this statement, Bolling clearly indicates that unless the U.S. preemptively strikes out against Muslims, its “time will run out” before another terrorist attack occurs.
To offer some perspective, we would be hard pressed to find similar calls for surveillance on White supremacist groups, despite attacks like the 2012 Sikh Temple Shooting and the appalling 2014 shooting at the Jewish Community Center in Kansas. Bolling bolstered his assertions with the following statement:
“How many Muslims in the world? Anybody? There are 1.57 billion.
Let’s say 10% dislike us, right? That means 157 million Muslims hate us.
If 10%, 5%, 1% are radicalized, would – would kill us, that’s, that’s, one 92 and a half million people radicalized to the point where they would want
to kill you – kill us Americans.” (2013c)
Although Bolling’s “statistics” are completely made up, he is able to artificially manufacture urgency. Bolling imagines a marauding army of “radicalized Muslims” who
“hate America,” and uses it to forward arguments for surveillance and invasions into
Muslim nations. Unfortunately, Bolling is not the only one to make such dire predictions about “radicalized Muslims.” During the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy in 2010,
Newt Gingrich has also trumpeted his fear of Muslims “taking over” the U.S. if
Americans didn’t act quickly.
What Bolling and Gingrich construct here is the false perception of loss of agency: the American public passively receives negative events like the “approach” of swathes of murderous Muslims. Embodiment theory suggests that temporal agency assignments reflect conceptual correspondences between time, motion, and emotion, whereby people symbolically move toward affectively positive events but passively observe the arrival of negative events (McGlone & Pfiester, 2009). Therefore, by couching “Muslim issues” in the language of a loss of agency, Bolling and Gingrich construct a need for ongoing surveillance, vigilantism, and profiling. It is this artificial sense of a “loss of agency” that helps justify active versus passive defense. Active defense includes and justifies mosque surveillance, entrapment, and public “safety” campaigns like “If You See Something, Say Something.” These safety measures are very different from more passive lines of defense, which involve blanket scans of individuals 93 in high traffic areas or background checks in, say, the event of a firearm purchase. In other words, while passive defense is triggered by the act of an individual (e.g. purchasing a firearm or boarding a plane), active defense is triggered by the characteristics of an individual or group and justified through the language of agency and temporality. This is no overstatement. McGlone and Pfiester point out that the manner in which people encode their temporal experience “constitutes…their affective orientation toward life events” (pg. 8). The depiction of “Muslim issues” as “urgent,” causing a “loss of agency” for Americans, and the overall artificial threat of time “scarcity” all help justify preemptive measures to profile Muslims, which forms the very fabric of anti-
Muslim sentiment.
Therefore, the concept of timescaping and the temporal construals of urgency and scarcity form the basis of my temporal lens, which I will apply in the following chapter to examine anti-Muslim discourse. However, these are not the only temporal concepts salient to the analysis of anti-Muslim sentiment; in fact, these concepts primarily shed light on the temporal construction of anti-Muslim sentiment. Therefore, how do audiences orient to time in order to respond to the threat of Muslim terrorism? In Chapter
6, I address the temporal results of such anti-Muslim rhetoric. However, in the next section I turn to the application of the temporal frame I have established so far and how I apply it to the case study in Chapter 4.
APPLICATION OF TEMPORAL LENS: CASE STUDY & GROUNDED
THEORY ANALYSIS 94 I have so far established the concepts I apply in my temporal analysis: timescaping and urgency. In this section, I describe how I identify these temporal components in my case study, the 2012 Sikh Temple Shooting of Wisconsin. I use
Grounded Theory Analysis (GTA) to identify the most persistent themes in the news coverage of the shooting, and then apply the temporal framework describe above to examine the significance of temporal language that emerges in the coverage.
Case Study: The 2012 Sikh Temple Shooting
Before I describe my data and application of GTA, let me briefly describe my case study: the 2012 shooting at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin. On the morning of
August 5, 2012, a gunman named Wade Michael Page opened fire on the worshippers in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Several worshippers were gathered for Sunday services, and the gunman managed to kill six people. Several others were also wounded, including a responding police officer. After the gunman was struck by a non-fatal shot by the police, he took his own life with a shot through his head. While authorities are still trying to ascertain a clear motive for the gunman, they are fairly confident that the shooting itself was a hate crime and mistook the Sikh worshippers for Muslims. This assertion was based on evidence that the gunman participated in the White Power music scene, and may therefore have been acting on racist impulses.
Mass shootings have tragically become familiar events in U.S. news, and are increasingly becoming events associated with the United States due to their frequency. In fact, this frequency allows certain narratives to emerge in the wake of mass shootings.
The event is quickly absorbed into national debates about gun control, like the 2012 95 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and the Umpqua Community College shooting in October 2015. Descriptions of the perpetrators, who are usually White males, engage discourses about mental illness.13 The locations become significant based on what the coverage identifies as reasons that triggered the attack. For instance, several mass shooting take place on school or university campuses, which the media depicts as relevant to issues of privilege and masculinity that propel students into acts of violence.14
Meanwhile, mass shootings on sites of worship come to represent “intolerance” of racial diversity, which was true of the coverage of the Sikh Temple shooting and the 2015
Charleston Church Shooting.
Given the regularity of U.S. mass shootings, and given the cyclicality of such narratives in their news coverage, Grounded Theory Analysis is not an obvious methodological choice – if these narratives are so obvious, there is no need to further establish them through such a qualitative study. However, a Grounded Theory approach is a necessary precursor to a temporal analysis. This is because temporality is a component of any text and every text, and temporal construals impact not just the production of texts, but also their consumption. Consequently, it is crucial to establish parameters when analyzing a wide range of texts produced by the coverage of a particular event in multiple news outlets. By first conducting a Grounded Theory Analysis, I ensure
13 The Columbine High School shooters; James Holmes, the Aurora Theater shooter; and Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook perpetrator were all presented as mentally unstable, with intense media attention focused on their eccentric appearances, personal writings, and (in the case of James Holmes) behavior during court appearances 14 The most notable example of this is the Isla Vista Shootings, carried out by Elliott Rodgers, who recorded extensive videos of himself describing his hatred of women (particularly sorority members and undergraduates) who rejected his sexual advances 96 that I examine the most persistent themes through the temporal lens established above.
In the next chapter, I describe the timeline events of the 2012 Sikh Temple
Shooting in more detail, but first I want to establish why this particular event is suited to a temporal analysis (as well as a stylistic analysis, since Sikhs are frequently mistaken for
Muslims in the U.S. due to their appearance. While not the focus of my analysis, I will address this stylistic component in Chapter 4). First, the shooting occurred just days after the Aurora movie theater shooting in Colorado, which claimed many lives. Therefore, it would be interesting to see whether and how the coverage of the Sikh Temple shooting references the Aurora shooting to contextualize the tragedy. Second, the Sikh Temple shooting contains a thread of both racial and religious conflict, particularly since Sikh men have been mistaken for Muslims in the past due to the beards and turbans they wear.
Because there have been over 700 misdirected attacks on Sikhs since 9/11, it is worth examining how the coverage of the shooting alludes to these surrounding discourses.
Third, it may be worthwhile to see how the shooting’s temporal juxtaposition with 9/11 is significant. In this case, even though Muslims were not the perpetrators, they are still implicated in the act by the news coverage. Given the discourses of anti-Muslim sentiment circulating in U.S. news media today, it is important to consider how events are constructed as “9/11 aftermath”. This is particularly important if 9/11 is presented as the outer limit of the timescape that the Sikh Temple Shooting falls within. Furthermore, the event itself is completely unrelated to Muslims and Islam, yet the coverage makes frequent references to both – making it an ideal case study in anti-Muslim rhetoric
(which, as I explained earlier, can operate outside anti-Muslim discourse). Finally, given 97 the controversial nature of 9/11 aftermath discussions, it can be particularly revealing to examine the creation of a timescape and the placement of the Sikh Temple Shooting within that timescape by news outlets such as Fox News and CNN.
Grounded Theory Analysis & Coding
I use Grounded Theory Analysis (GTA) to identify the most prevalent themes in this coverage, and then apply my temporal method to examine these themes. In this section, I describe my data set, my coding technique, and my reliability measures.
The data comprised 104 news stories gleaned from FoxNews.com and CNN.com.
I selected these two U.S. outlets due to their large audience base; because they represent different political standings; and because their archive yielded the largest number of news stories pertaining to this shooting, thus enabling a reliable sample size for analysis.
Because I selected Fox News, it was also important to select a second news outlet with a more liberal standing to ensure that the data was not skewed in either direction.
Next, I coded the data using GTA (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), The coding process itself consists of four steps. First, I examine the content to generate codes. Next, I grouped similar codes into concepts, which were in turn grouped into more abstract categories. Finally, I applied the temporal framework described earlier to examine these categories and extrapolate theory. Due to this process, I ensured that I attended to the most frequently occurring patterns in the data, as frequency and repetition increases the persuasiveness of a message.15 GTA is best suited to an exploratory study like this because it employs a “tabula rasa” or blank-slate approach. When I selected this case
15 As established by McGuire’s Persuasion Matrix, 1985 98 study, I did not know that it contained a hidden temporal argument – I just noticed an element of anti-Muslim sentiment when I first saw the news coverage in 2012. It was not until I coded the data for another study that I noticed a temporal argument emerge, which
I made the focus of this study. Furthermore, because GTA compels me to code only what is explicit in the data, it makes it possible to extrapolate what is conspicuously absent in the data as well. Because information consumers “read between the lines,” it is also crucial to “code between the lines.”
I examined 104 news stories published between August 5 and December 31,
2012, i.e. the time period constituting the “peak” of the coverage of the event and its aftermath. Fox News’s archive yielded 68 stories, and CNN’s archive yielded 36 stories.
These texts include 88 written texts and 16 videos, which I transcribed before coding. In all, I coded approximately 3,250 lines of data. All news stories, even those peripherally related to the event, were included in the data set to allow the most comprehensive picture of the coverage to emerge (although I excluded images, image captions, and formatting). Therefore, I included news stories describing the perpetrator’s community; interviews of the victims’ families; and tributes to the victims in the data set. However, I excluded stories that only contained a single reference to either the shooting or the perpetrator; for a peripheral story to be selected, it had to mention the shooter and/or the shooting more than once in its content. I made this distinction because several op-ed pieces on Fox News and CNN mentioned the shooter or the shooting in articles pertaining to gun control, but had otherwise little relevance to the event or its aftermath. However, I
99 included op-ed pieces and blog posts on CNN and Fox News’s blogs if they fell within the time parameters I established above.
Each news story was broken down into five-to-seven codes that described the events or topics being discussed. These codes were generated after examining the texts for a range of issues, including details of the events of the shooting and its aftermath.
Additionally, the news stories also discussed details that were not directly related to the shooting, such as the childhood of the shooter and details of the Sikh religion, and these issues were included in the codes. Ultimately, a total of 37 codes were generated.
Through Constant Comparative Analysis (CCU), these codes were then collapsed into 25 larger concepts. These concepts took the codes to a greater level of abstraction, and focused on grouping similar players and events in the story together. For instance, codes such as “policemen,” “forensics” and “medical personnel” were collapsed into
“authorities.” Once I gleaned these concepts, I was able to generate 11 categories. These categories helped reveal similar themes across the news stories, thereby indicating a trope or narrative thread of significance. When a concept fit into more than one category, I placed it under the more “dominant” category that described it. For instance, the concept
“physical trauma” was placed under the category “suffering and injuries” rather than
“violence and attacks” as it has a stronger relationship to the former.
Of the 11 categories generated, only four described the direct events of the crime.
These four codes are “suffering and injuries,” “violence and attacks,” “response of authorities,” and “community support and outpouring.” These categories describe the explicit events concerning the shooting: the injuries, the nature of the attacks, the 100 authorities involved, and the mourning in the aftermath. However, this study does not analyze these four categories as they did not appear as frequently as the remaining seven categories. Instead, this study focuses on the seven remaining categories that describe either speculative or peripheral information not directly related to the crime events. These seven categories are “Sikhism,” “Muslims/Islam,” “heroism,” “race and racism,”
“terrorism,” “American values,” and “freedom (to access firearms).” In other words, these categories depict information in the news coverage that speculates the motive of the shooter, describes his background, or provides expository information about two religions. However, this study focuses on the temporal depictions embedded in each of these seven categories. Therefore, once I established these seven dominant categories, I examined them a second time with a focus on embedded temporal language. I present this analysis in Chapter 4.
To ensure accuracy, I employed three reliability measures. First, a second researcher coded the data and generated codes independently of the primary coder to help avoid coder-bias. Each researcher generated codes independently, and then cross- compared these codes. Any codes that were not evident to both coders were either dropped or incorporated into a larger category where appropriate. This ensured that the recorded codes were truly prominent and visible to multiple readers. Second, I used
Constant Comparative Analysis (CCU) to compare codes within and across texts to achieve a more reliable level of abstraction (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). And third, I examined the seven most dominant codes a second time to understand how their content was being presented temporally. This two-tiered coding process ensured that any 101 arguments made about temporality were based on only the most frequently occurring codes.
Now that I have established the theory, method, and case study for my temporal analysis, I want to introduce my stylistic lens that I will apply to the case studies in
Chapter 5. While my case study in Chapter 4 does contain a stylistic component that I address, this stylistic analysis is not the goal of Chapter 4. Instead, I develop a stylistic lens to examine the “moderate” Muslim trope. This trope, together with my analysis, addresses how Muslims are presented as a “hidden” threat in the U.S., and how the burden of visibly performing citizenship falls on Muslims who must present themselves as “moderates.” Therefore, my two methods function together to demonstrate why the
“Muslim problem” is perceived as distinctively urgent and concealed. In the following sections, I establish the stylistic approach I engage in Chapter 5 and introduce a Burkean component within this approach. In doing so, I hope to advocate for the use of mixed methods to examine the “moderate Muslim” discourse that has developed to sustain anti-
Muslim sentiment. Finally, I will introduce the case studies I will examine in Chapter 5.
A STYLISTIC FRAMEWORK TO EXAMINE THE “MODERATE” MUSLIM
In this section, I outline a stylistic approach to analyze the “moderate” Muslim trope, and nest Kenneth Burke’s comic framing theory within this approach. In Chapter 5,
I examine the “moderate Muslim” trope and its role in buttressing U.S. national identity and addressing concerns about the hidden “Muslim threat.” I examine three case studies of “moderate Muslims” in various U.S. contexts to develop a full picture of the trope 102 itself, its deployment through style, and its role in U.S. nationalism. My analysis of these three case studies will demonstrate how U.S. aesthetics are channeled through the
“moderate Muslim” narrative, and how this helps reinforce U.S. exceptionalism.
Furthermore, I examine the comedic style and preaching style of a Muslim-American comedian and Imam respectively, and demonstrate how their performances demonstrate
Burke’s comic framing and state sanctioned performances of masculinity and moderation. In the rest of this section, I describe the stylistic lens I apply to these case studies.
In Chapter 1, I introduced the concept of the “moderate Muslim.” This term is used to condone “good” behavior by U.S. Muslims, but the “moderate” himself is a myth because he is an amorphous product of ideology. Yet, the burden of performing
“moderation” falls on the Muslim body without giving the body control over whether s/he will be identified as moderate. Because the “moderate” Muslim is a token that operates on the status quo’s turf under its approval, they must also visibly support dominant U.S. ideology. This includes the prevailing religion (Christianity), ideographs presented as “core values” (e.g. “freedom”), and consumption. Such language of
“support” and “acceptance” of dominant ideology is woven into narratives of nationalism, where an individual’s cultural identity becomes more important than legal identity in order to secure citizenship. Mahmood Mamdani addresses such a construction of citizenship in Good Muslim, Bad Muslim when he points out that even if political identities are “singular,” cultural identities tend to be “cumulative” (2005, pg. 35).
103 Recognizing the role of consumption is necessary to interrogating nationalism because it bolsters cultural identity, the component that takes precedence when assessing the citizenship rights of US Muslims. However, if we must look at consumption to explore nationhood, we must also explore the political aesthetics that undergird national consumption. In Political Aesthetics (2010), Crispin Sartwell argues that the affective power of aesthetics is central to nationalisms (2010, pg. 49), and so the disruptiveness of
Muslim visibility threatens nationhood. This creates an imperative for Muslim bodies to either be disciplined into conformity, or for Muslim style to be appropriated and consumed. The “moderate” Muslim is not a threat because he visibly performs citizenship through style; however, the Muslim “terrorist” is a threat because he does not wear his moderation on his sleeve, literally and figuratively. If the Muslim terrorist is rooted in aesthetics as the specter of the Orientalized Muslim is, “moderate” Muslim rhetoric is similarly anchored in aesthetics and style. The “moderate” Muslim’s practice of Islam is “restrained,” and his Islam is not visible on his or her body (in the form of face-coverings or beards). In addition, the moderate conspicuously consumes American popular culture. Therefore, style is a key component in creating the “moderate Muslim,” which is an idea steeped in dominant ideology and contingent on the in/visibility of
Muslims. Undoubtedly, achieving a “moderate” status can yield mainstream invisibility for Muslims in the United States, which is a benefit in the hostile post-9/11 landscape.
The process of marking particular Muslims as “moderate,” and therefore model representations of the community, commits violence in two ways. First, it implies that any “non-moderate” or unmarked Muslims are radicals. Second, it disciplines the 104 “moderate” Muslim body, which is forced to appear non-threatening. Beards must be shaved, attire must be changed, and carriage must be modified. However, it is worth examining how US Muslims have adopted the “moderate” Muslim rhetoric for self- preservation. Even though the “moderate” Muslim rhetoric is a means for disciplining the
Muslim body, many Muslims are deliberately conforming to this rhetoric to retain a degree of agency. It is not a co-option, but an adoption of the “moderate” Muslim rhetoric. To examine the complexities underlying this adoption by U.S. Muslims, I turn to the analytical tools provided by Kenneth Burke to inform my style-based lens. In doing so, I hope to build an approach to analyze the construction and deployment of the
“moderate” Muslim rhetoric by Muslims in the United States. This Burkean component is part of my larger stylistic framework, and I will apply it to one of the three “moderate
Muslim” case studies I examine in Chapter 5.
Scapegoating vs. Comic Framing: The Choice “Moderate” Muslims Face
Kenneth Burke’s theories of scapegoating and comic framing are central to understanding the machinations of the “moderate” Muslim trope. In Permanence and
Change, Burke begins to develop his tragic scapegoating and comic framing theories, which concern the processes of guilt and justification (1935, pg. 195). He argues that tragic scapegoating arises from the impulse to punish sinners, while the comic impulse is to correct them. Later, in Philosophy of Literary Form, he states that both forms of scapegoating facilitate social cohesion (1941), and this is particularly salient to the production of national identity. It is clear that the Orientalized Muslim Other is an ideal scapegoat, a negative vessel containing the sins of sexism, anti-modernity, and violence. 105 Of course, we recognize that these sins reflect the scapegoaters’ own guilt: it reflects the burden of sexism American women live with; U.S. violence in the Middle East and
Central Asia; and continual cuts in education funding. This makes the creation of the
Muslim scapegoat a truly unburdening process, where the scapegoaters can “attribute
[their] own vices to the delegated vessel” (1941, pg. 39).
However, the tragic scapegoating process is not complete until the vessel is destroyed. Therefore, the victimization of Muslims in the U.S. (and the U.S. media) completes the tragic scapegoating process: Muslims are implicated in crimes they did not commit, have their civil rights restricted, and are physically attacked or denied employment at every possible turn. Muslims today are continually scapegoated to compensate for relentless U.S. attacks on Arab and Muslim countries and the brutalizing of Afghani and Iraqi women. Rawa.org documented continual incidents of assault against
Afghani and Iraqi women by U.S. troops, while Afghani feminist group Organization of
Promoting Afghan Women's Capabilities (OPAWC) has stated that US involvement in
Afghanistan has significantly damaged women’s daily quality of life (Kumar, 2012, pg.
45). This shows that the victimization of Muslims in the U.S. is purposeful because it allows onlookers to pour their sins into the Muslim scapegoat and thus achieve redemption.
However, Muslims in the U.S. are now actively trying to mediate how they are framed, and deploy the “moderate” Muslim to do so. They attempt to reframe themselves comically rather than tragically, and thus forward the idea that they can be “corrected” and reintegrated into society. Comic framing differs from tragic scapegoating because it 106 involves mocking people’s faults, but also resolves those faults by correcting and reorienting those individuals back into the community (1937). As Burke explains in
Attitudes toward History, enlightenment is contingent on:
picturing people not as vicious, but as mistaken. When you add that people
are necessarily mistaken, that all people are exposed to situations in which
they must act as fools, that every insight contains its own special kind of
blindness, you complete the comic circle, returning again to the lesson of
humility that underlies great tragedy (1937, pg 41).
In stating this, Burke explains that comic framing takes a corrective (and patronizing) view of perceived difference. He also implies that he vastly prefers it (as might the targeted community) to the use of tragic scapegoating.
The first step to shifting away from tragic to comic scapegoating is to reconstruct the Muslim as a more familiar figure in U.S. discourse. This is where the assimilated
“moderate,” becomes useful. And so, in Chapter 5 I examine an American-Muslim comedian’s attempt to reframe himself (and all “moderate” Muslims) through the comic frame to make a case against tragically scapegoating US Muslims. He relies on his physical appearance and the nature of his comedy to execute this rhetorical move. Taken together with the two other cases studies, my analysis presents a comprehensive picture of how “moderate Muslims” are constructed through style. And while the comic re-
107 framing of Muslim “moderates” does not eliminate anti-Muslim sentiment, it does allow
U.S. Muslims to reclaim some agency by deploying style.
Style: Enabling Comic Framing for the Muslim “Moderate”
So far, I have discussed that U.S. Muslims deploy comic framing to escape tragic scapegoating by using the “moderate” Muslim trope. But while the Burkean principles explain the components of the comic framing, they do not explain its execution. This is where rhetorical style comes into play. At its broadest, style is the way we do something; it is expressive behavior. However, style channels culture, and in turn has become an important way in which cultures are formed. Furthermore, it contains a distinct aesthetic component, which emerges through language, writing, and bodily performance – attire, grooming, gesture, and so on. However, these aesthetic components only function as a social medium if information about it is widely shared (Brummett, 2008, pg. 5). Given that the “moderate” Muslim rhetoric is anchored by a disciplining of the (Muslim) body, this makes style a key factor to understanding how Muslims escape tragic scapegoating.
Style becomes conspicuous by its absence, as the “moderate” must divest himself of the style associated with the Orientalized Other: the beard, the robes, the accented voice and dark-skinned body. He must channel his “moderation” through style, thus visibling his
American citizenship. Muslims must learn style norms to perform citizenship and thus moderation, and comic framing functions, in part, to show how Muslims have been excluded from style norms, and that they should be mocked for their ignorance rather than destroyed.
108 Let us consider an example of how style includes and excludes certain bodies.
Beards are interpreted very differently based on their styling and the body of the individual they are attached to. Today, beards mark certain bodies for surveillance. In
April 2016 itself, in at least three separate incidents, Southwest Airlines ejected several
Muslim passengers who were wearing headscarves, sporting beards, speaking Arabic, or otherwise “performing” Islam through their general appearance. The context, i.e. air travel, had primed the surrounding passengers and crew to “say something” if they “saw something,” and the visible “Muslim style” of the ejected passengers was enough to trigger a response. On the other hand, some years ago I remember telling a bearded
Pakistani-American friend that reading a book called The God Complex on the Amtrak might get him some suspicious looks. However, he pointed out that when he travelled with his guitar, the instrument “put a different spin on [his] beard.” His guitar, combined with his beard, “stylized” him differently; where once his brown skin and beard may have been read as his substance, his musical instrument and facial hair now presented him as a possible hipster. Additionally, U.S. Muslims have learned to groom their beards to avoid looking recognizably “Muslim;” keeping their beards short and cheeks shaved are a few ways to do so. What might be read as a “racial” beard is re-presented as a trend belonging to a certain social class. Even if they are still recognized as Muslim, these stylish tweaks comically re-frame them. By referencing social class, style neutralizes the threat and allows the “moderate” to be reintegrated into society.
But let me return to the other reasons why style is an important lens for inspecting the comic framing process. A great deal of anti-Muslim sentiment is rooted in imagery 109 and style, i.e. hatred of images of Muslims and Arabs. Public discourse actively encourages U.S. residents to discriminate against Arabs and Muslims based on their surface and skin. For instance, airport vigilantism is encouraged by the slogan “if you see something, say something,” which highlights this preoccupation with skins and surfaces over substance. One might say that style is deliberately presented as substance in the case of the “moderate” Muslim: style becomes a subtle argument against Islamic
“fundamentalism,” so the clean-shaven Muslim or the Muslima with uncovered hair presents a visual of “moderation” through style (or s/he simply goes undetected as
“Muslim”). Consequently, by demonstrating “moderation,” style can help escape tragic scapegoating.
Finally, style is a key component to conspicuous consumption, which is a method of enacting citizenship. This is a particularly important enactment for the Muslim who is presented as “foreign.” In All Consuming Images, Stuart Ewen explains how the term
“consumer” has become “an appellation of citizenship” (1988, pg. 68) and, even more tellingly, of middle-class. Therefore, the Muslim body and its enactment of style become a key argument for or against their membership to middle-class America. During a 2013 communication conference, I recall a scholar describing Imam Suhaib Webb as a renowned “moderate” Muslim, a convert who preached through an award-winning blog.
The scholar emphasized that Webb had a Twitter account and regularly shared workout tips, using the hashtag #SixPackDietPlan, as well as information on hip-hop (as he used to be a DJ). Although Webb’s Twitter feed and blog provide a wealth of Islamic op-ed discussions, it was these factors that the scholar emphasized as evidence that a 110 “moderate” American-Islam could exist. Indeed, this may have been Webb’s aim – why else would he include such unrelated information on a religious Twitter feed? However, that is most definitely not an expectation from Christian preachers, which is interesting for two reasons. First, it reveals a core link between consumption of pop culture and citizenship: Webb’s consumption of gym and hip-hop culture was evidence of his
American values (which, de facto, signals “moderation”). Second, it reveals an expectation of performativity from “moderate” Muslims that is not expected from other religions that are recognized as “American.” For instance, the very idea of searching for a “moderate” Christianity, especially one that is rooted in style, seems strange. Therefore, consumption is one method for Muslims to enact not just moderation, but also citizenship in the United States. This is troubling not just because it disciplines the Muslim body, but also because Islam preaches minimalism and discourages conspicuous consumption.
Therein, perhaps, lies Islam’s greatest threat to the United States.
As I mentioned earlier, style undergirds social cohesion by creating an ideal of
“wholeness” – a wholeness that is fractured by Muslim visibility, which in turn demands a performance of “moderation” from Muslims. Stuart Ewen describes what he calls “the dream of wholeness,” which is a “defensive use of images” for “constructing personhood” and avoiding being overly conspicuous (1988, pg. 79). However, Muslim visibility interrupts this cohesive style, thus fracturing the cohesive “personhood” of the nation. That the “moderate” Muslim rhetoric is anchored in aesthetics and style, and that this style frames Muslims in opposition to American society, is fraught. As Stuart Hall reminds us, hegemony relies on the dominant classes successfully framing all competing 111 definitions within their range (1977). Furthermore, because hegemony is invisible, opposing hegemony must be necessarily visible, and visible power is vulnerable power.
Therefore, the visible Muslim is vulnerable, but the “moderate” Muslim is not. Given this advantage, as well as the pressures to conform, U.S. Muslims have devised ways to use this restrictive “moderate” Muslim rhetoric to facilitate comic framing.
I have so far described the stylistic components of constructing oneself as a
“moderate Muslim,” and how it engages comic framing to escape tragic scapegoating. In
Chapter 5, I illustrate these arguments through three case studies, which I describe briefly here. I have selected these case studies because they clearly adopt the “moderate” Muslim narrative; rely on style for resonance; and engage nationalist and exceptionalist discourse.
These case studies are also fairly current examples, and the individuals involved retain a degree of celebrity in U.S. society.
The first case study I examine focuses on the racist backlash to the 2014 Miss
America pageant. The first Indian-American pageant winner, Nina Davuluri, was subjected to vicious attacks on Twitter, with users calling her a terrorist and comparing her disparagingly to the runner-up Miss Kansas, a blonde, tattooed army veteran.
However, this case study strikingly reveals how U.S. minorities rely on style to distance themselves from a disenfranchised group, which was evident when Miss Dauluri’s supporters highlighted that she was “Indian” and not a Muslim “or” terrorist. This case study makes a worthwhile study in style as it underscores the role of aesthetics, and the centrality of bodies, in terrorism discourse. Minorities must disidentify from Muslims through style, which in turn informs their nationalism. These strains of terrorism 112 aesthetic, nationalism, and ultimately imperialism emerge in surprising ways in the 2014
Miss America controversy, and I will address these threads by examining the Twitter backlash and the reaction to this backlash in Chapter 5.
The second case study I examine is the work of a Muslim-American stand-up comedian, Azhar Usman. Usman is widely recognized in American-Muslim circles and, rather nauseatingly, has been dubbed “The Ayatollah of Comedy.” I examine two of his routines. The first is a Town Hall for America Abroad, moderated by CNN’s Mithat
Bereket. In this routine, Usman performs an extended stand-up act and then answers questions from the audience. His second routine is from his 2004 comedy world tour titled “Allah made me Funny,” co-performed with comedians Preacher Moss and Azeem
Muhammad. I selected Usman not just for his popularity and influence, but for his personal style and the content of his jokes. Additionally, Burke has argued that humor and irony are two of the most significant strategies in achieving perspective by incongruity. In this case, Usman’s very existence is incongruous because Islam isn’t
“supposed” to be funny. Of course, there are scores of Muslim American comedians, but few of them make Islam the focus of their subject matter and appearance to the degree that Azhar Usman does. Additionally, Usman actively applies the “moderate” Muslim rhetoric to emphasize scene, create perspective by incongruity, and consequently reorient the non-Muslim viewer. As a result, this facilitates comic framing and escapes tragic scapegoating.
In my third and final case study, I examine the preaching style of Muslim-
American preacher Imam Suhaib Webb. In my analysis in Chapter 5, I examine Webb’s 113 sermons, interviews, Twitter feed, and news articles describing his image. Webb is the leader of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC), one of the largest
Muslim community spaces in the nation. Webb is widely influential in national and international Islamic circles, and has been widely heralded (particularly by the UK government) as a noteworthy “moderate” voice in the West. Webb is recognized for using social media to preach both Islamic values and lifestyle choices. Webb is also vocal about preaching an “American Islam” that recognizes the culture of young Muslim
Americans and employs a distinctive preaching style to separate himself from more traditional preachers. Webb conspicuously consumes recognizably American components of style to form his image as an American Muslim preacher. His work and his image are an ideal case study for an exploration of how style mediates Muslim “moderation” and bolsters U.S. national identity.
The following chapter, Chapter 4, will present my temporal analysis of the 2012
Sikh Temple Shooting of Wisconsin, and Chapter 5 will present my stylistic (and
Burkean) analysis of the three case studies described above. Finally, Chapter 6 will discuss how these two methods inform each other, and present my conclusions.
114 Chapter 4: Mass Shooting or 9/11 Aftermath? Temporal Framing at Work
In this chapter, I further describe the 2012 Sikh Temple Shooting, present my
GTA findings, and apply the temporal approach I established in Chapter 3 to these findings. Furthermore, although this chapter focuses primarily on temporality, I also engage elements of my stylistic approach because the coverage constructs the style of the victims and perpetrator briefly, but compellingly. In the next section, I describe the shooting, the victims and perpetrator, and responses to the tragedy. Furthermore, I highlight patterns in these descriptions that are significant, and point out how they converge or depart from the coverage of other U.S. mass shootings of a similar magnitude.
THE 2012 SIKH TEMPLE SHOOTING COVERAGE: WHAT WE LEARNED
AND WHAT WE DIDN’T
The Timeline of the Shooting
Unlike the coverage of other mass shootings, I could not determine a clear timeline of the events of the Sikh Temple Shooting. Here is what I could find: on August
5, 2012, 40 year-old gunman Wade Michael Page opened fire at a Sikh gurdwara in Oak
Creek Wisconsin, killing six Sikh worshippers and injuring four individuals including a responding officer. He committed suicide after a shootout with the police. When Page opened fire on the temple just after 10am, several worshippers barricaded themselves in the bathrooms and the kitchen, where a few Sikh women had gathered earlier to prepare meals. The temple founder, Satwant Singh Kaleka, was possibly the first victim gunned 115 down by Page. Kaleka’s wife hid in a closet during the shooting. The first emergency calls to the police were made at 10:25am CDT. I could not determine the order of the killings, but Page killed four worshippers inside the temple and two outside. Once outside, Page engaged police in gunfire and was shot in the thigh and stomach, possibly by Lieutenant Brian Murphy, who was the first officer to arrive the scene. Lt. Murphy was shot by Wade 15 times in the head, neck and body, but survived the attacks after being hospitalized. After being shot, Page committed suicide with a gunshot to the head.
I struggled to determine an exact timeline of the events in any news reports or online sources. None of the reports put the murders in order, and the descriptions of the shooting begin with the emergency calls made to the Wisconsin police department at
10:25am. There are no details about what occurred in the minutes before, or what Page was doing until the moment he opened fire. Details about the actions of the victims came out during later interviews with family members and eye-witnesses, and I had to piece them together. I bring this up because the coverage of many other U.S. mass shootings, from the 2015 church shooting in Charleston to the 2014 Isla Vista shooting, report the exact events of the shooting, even providing minute-by-minute time markers. Yet, even though the Sikh Temple did receive adequate coverage, the temporal reporting differed from the coverage of these other shootings. Instead, as my GTA results will show, the coverage focuses on contextual information about Sikhism as well as the aftermath of the shooting. This is significant because it changes the focus of the coverage: the Sikh
Temple shooting, which was presumed to be a hate crime, did not immediately become a part of the discourse on gun control or terrorism. Certainly gun control does come up in 116 the coverage, as I discuss later, but it is nowhere near being the dominant theme. In fact, responding officer Lt. Murphy even stated candidly that he was “relieved” that he hadn’t been used to support either side of the gun control debate.
Because the coverage does not present a clear timeline of the events, it limits attention away to the brutality of the murders themselves. Instead, the minimal coverage of the shooting itself made room to focus on the victims instead – the worshippers in the temple, the Wisconsin Sikh Community, and non-Muslim minorities in general, who live in fear post-9/11. In other words, the coverage focused on the “hate” component of the hate crime, and rooted the crime in the fear Americans live with in a post-9/11 world.
This shifts the overarching narrative of the coverage, as well as the timescape. It reminds the audience that they need to consider a larger temporal context to “understand” this crime. This larger perspective is the post-9/11 landscape. In the next section, I describe the perpetrator Wade Michael Page to understand how the coverage constructs him as the classic hate criminal operating in a post-9/11 timescape.
The Classic, “All-American” Hate-Criminal
The coverage provides a great deal of information about Wade Michael Page and constructs him, perhaps facilely, as the classic hate criminal by drawing heavily on his style. Four narratives about Page emerge: his “normal” childhood; his military background; his White-supremacist ties, and his physical appearance. Page, who was 40 at the time of the shooting, was raised in Colorado. He lived with his mother, and later his stepmother after his mother’s death, and enjoyed camping and fishing. Evidently, Page cultivated his White supremacist tendencies during adulthood, and did not suffer from 117 mental illness or have a history of legal issues. In other words, investigating Page’s background solidifies the idea that his attack was a hate crime because it “rules out” other motives that often characterize mass-shooting discourse. He served in the U.S. army for four years but was eventually discharged due to poor conduct. CNN reported that Page’s
Fort Bragg army base had a White supremacy community, where Page reportedly cemented his resentment towards African-Americans (2012b) After Page was discharged, he became a truck driver but was fired for driving drunk.
Meanwhile, there was extensive coverage of Page’s involvement in the White
Power scene as well as his personal style, which helped construct his motives. He was a skinhead member of the prominent hate group Hammerskins. Later, he founded his own
White supremacist band that released an album called “Self Destruct.” Page also supported the National Alliance, a now defunct White nationalist organization. The news coverage repeatedly noted Page’s physical appearance; he was described as a heavyset
White skinhead, with extensive tattoos on his torso and arms. On the day of the shooting,
Page was wearing classic Americana: a white t-shirt and blue jeans, and was sporting a goatee. However, his tattoos helped construct his motive as a “hate” crime. Photographs of Page show him clean-shaven with intricate tattoos on his neck and shoulders, with the number 14 tattooed on his left shoulder (a White supremacist symbol referring to the 14- word slogan coined by David Lane: “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”). Page’s appearance not only fits the stereotype of the racist skinhead, his style stands in for a motive. The coverage occasionally used the term
118 “possible domestic terrorism” to describe the shooting, but generally agreed that it was a hate crime.
Therefore, while the coverage offers a great deal of information about Page, it constructs him very narrowly. There is no mention of his religion, although White
Supremacy – which is a clear part of Page’s background – forwards a racial interpretation of Christianity. Furthermore, Page’s alleged hatred is not tied to any particular event, but rather constructed through a period of “lawlessness” he experienced, after he was discharged from the army and fired from his job. In these ways, the coverage erases all possible motives but “hate.”
Victims & Reactions
In contrast to the descriptions of Page, the coverage offers very little information about the victims – which is typical of mass shootings, where the perpetrator generally receives more attention. However, in this incident the victims are constructed almost exclusively through their religion and citizenship status. The most detailed account of the six victims I could find, in an LA Times obituary (2012), focused on the victims’ immigrant status and/or their devout practice of Sikhism. Five of the six obituaries state when the victim had moved to the U.S. and which part of India they were from, and end with a mention of their religious devotion. The only other information I found about the victims is whether or not they had children and siblings, and the occupation of two of the victims. Of the six victims, the temple founder, Satwant Singh Kaleka received the most attention in the coverage and was described as having shielded the other worshippers with his own body while confronting Page with a butterknife. His son Amardeep Singh 119 Kaleka went on to campaign for stronger gun control legislation. Of the six victims, four were Indian citizens and two were U.S. citizens, and the five male victims all wore turbans and beards. In other words, their appearance clearly marked them as observant
Sikhs and possibly recent immigrants, which helps constructs them as “minority victims” in the hate crime narrative.
The shooting drew responses from President Obama and then Indian Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh, who is Sikh himself. Michelle Obama visited the temple a few weeks later, and soon after the shooting President Obama offered condolences and ordered flags at federal building flown at half-staff for five days. A few months later,
Obama publicly honored Lt. Brian Murphy, the responding officer injured by Page. Two and a half years later, Obama mentioned the shooting in a speech in Delhi during a trip to
India. He presented it as an example of “shared grief,” (2015) and reminded the audience of America’s alliance with India. Three years after the shooting, the temple held memorial services to honor the victims. As of June 2016, a report of the memorial on
Fox6Now.com (2015) is the most recent news item I could locate about the shooting.
However, there are far more regular updates about other mass shootings in the media, like the Aurora Theater shooting which took place just two weeks before the Sikh Temple shooting. This is perhaps understandable since the perpetrator in the theater shooting was apprehended alive and is awaiting sentencing, but it is also possible that his motives seemed less clear, or more titillating, than Page’s motives. Naming an attack a “hate crime” seems to dismiss the need for further investigation of motives, and the style of the victims and perpetrator stand in for the motives themselves. 120 I have so far described the shooting and its coverage, and identified some significant patterns about how the timeline of the event and the involved parties were constructed. But thus far, I’ve talked generally about the shooting and included information from beyond my data set of Fox News and CNN stories. Now, I turn to the patterns I discovered through my Grounded Theory Analysis, and examine their significance using the temporal lens from Chapter 3.
THE TIMESCAPE: ANOTHER SHOOTING, OR 9/11 AFTERMATH?
Perhaps the most important finding of this study is how Fox News and CNN place the Sikh Temple Shooting within a larger timescape, and the significance of this placement. The coverage places the shooter and the shooting in two different timescapes, possibly in an attempt to shape audience interpretation.
In an attempt to piece together the shooter’s motivations, the Fox News coverage immediately places Wade Michael Page within the larger timescape of his childhood. The coverage traces his life as a young boy, and then briefly dwells on Page’s time as a member of the White supremacist music scene. The coverage provides details of Page’s childhood, including quotes from his parents and family members:
“The 40-year-old Army veteran who killed six people and
wounded three others at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin reportedly
grew up as a ‘precious child’ in a typical American family,
according to his stepmother.” (2012c) 121
“Page was mostly happy and enjoyed ‘normal little boy stuff’ like
fishing, camp and playing with his dog. He also loved music and
played a guitar frequently, she said.” (2012c)
“Page was a caring grandson who sent [his grandmother] a dozen
roses two weeks ago ‘just to tell me he loved me.’” (2012c)
Given that Page had committed what was classified as a hate crime, it may have been more relevant to remain focused on his adult life and membership in White supremacist groups. However, Fox News instead situated Page in a much larger timescape by investigating his childhood. Situating Page in a broader timescape suggests that criminal motives can be traced to an individual’s childhood. This seems unnecessary given that there was robust evidence that Page developed racist attitudes during his adult years. However, by reporting on Page’s childhood, the coverage appears to search for a motive for “homegrown” terrorism by exercising temporal depth that may not be afforded to a “Muslim terrorist.”
It is worth asking when a news outlet chooses to situate a criminal act in the larger timescape of the criminal’s life. Even though Page’s racist affiliations as an adult were documented by the coverage, Fox News still delved into his past. Meanwhile, CNN ran an interview with a former army friend of Page, a Mr. Chris Robillard, who hadn’t seen
Page in over a decade. Robillard noted that he only grew concerned about Page’s beliefs 122 after a visit from him in 2000. Now it bears mentioning that Page was discharged from the army 14 years before the 2012 shooting, but CNN was still willing to delve far into his past to present a “fuller” picture of the perpetrator. When Piers Morgan asked Mr.
Robillard whether Page was a violent person, Robillard responded:
No…not really. He always seemed really calm and reserved.
Like really passive. He – he didn’t seem like the type who
would try to start a fight (2012d)
Meanwhile, CNN also tracked an application to join the KKK found by Page’s employer at a Harley Davidson showroom in Fayetteville, NC. The application was from
2004 – nearly a decade before the shooting. An interview with the showroom manager ends with a picture of Page as a young boy with his mother and father, standing in front of a saddled horse on a farm. The voice over describes where Page grew up and where his family still lives. The video concludes with a quote from an interview with Page’s stepmother: “what has changed him, I have no idea. And obviously – we’re never going to know” (2012e). This implies a desire on the part of the coverage to find an
“explanation” for Page’s eventual actions. The assumption is that the motivations of such a criminal, i.e. a White male raised on American soil, is not “obvious.” However, situating a criminal act in a larger timescape is not necessarily afforded to all criminals.
On many occasions, religion and even race are presented as motives for committing a crime, which makes it “unnecessary” to examine the backgrounds of the religious or 123 racial minorities who committed the crimes.16 Therefore, situating a criminal in a larger timescape is an affordance that is not necessarily given to all criminals in news coverage.
In other words, it is not the depiction of timescapes but the inconsistent depiction of timescapes that propagates discourses of power.
While the timescape Page is situated in is significant, it is also important – and quite revealing – to examine the timescape of the entire event. The Sikh Temple Shooting occurred just days after the Aurora Shooting in Colorado, so it seems natural for the news stories to reference the Aurora Shooting in the reports on the Sikh Temple Shooting.
However, only two news stories from my data set reference the Aurora Shooting. This is surprising considering the two shootings occurred in such close temporal proximity to each other. Furthermore, the two stories merely noted that the Sikh Temple Shooting
“came in the wake” of another tragedy. In other words, even though the Sikh Temple shooting is acknowledged as one of the many mass shooting of 2012, it is not immediately placed in the larger timescape of mass shootings in the U.S. However, it is eventually included in discourse about U.S. mass shootings in later months, when the
Sikh Temple’s founder’s son began pushing for gun control legislation as part of his political career. President Obama also mentioned it as an example of a mass shooting in later public addresses. However, these mentions fall outside the timeframe for the data included in this study. But more importantly, the Sikh Temple shooting – unlike the
16 Coverage of the 2009 Fort Hood Shooting and the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings, among others, reflect this. In the former, the media focused entirely on the shooter’s adult life and grounded his motivations in his religious connections with American imams, with some discussion of his mental health assessment during is army service but little to no mention of his childhood or family. Meanwhile, the coverage of the young marathon bombers was compelled to address their childhoods as they were both very young men (the younger bomber was a teenager) who had allegedly become “radicalized” as youths. 124 Newtown, Aurora, and the Isla Vista shootings – was eclipsed by the racial and religious component in the coverage. In fact, CNN ran a story three years later drawing a parallel between the Sikh Temple Shooting and the 2015 Charleston church shooting, which targeted Black worshippers – clearly marking both as racially motivated hate-crimes.
However, the coverage does place the Sikh Temple Shooting in another timescape, linking it to an event familiar to all Americans: the 9/11 attacks. References to
9/11 and Muslims cropped up no less than 164 times across the 104 news stories:
“The Washington-based Sikh Coalition has reported more than 700
incidents in the U.S. since 9/11, which advocates blame on anti-Islamic
sentiment” (2012f)
“Sikhs are not Muslims, but their long beards and turbans often cause
them to be mistaken for Muslims, advocates say.” (2012f)
“In the frenzied hours after the attack, there were reports that there may
have been more than one shooter. Further compounding the matter,
witnesses said they thought the suspect had a 9/11 tattoo. [The shooter]
did not – but [the wrongly accused man] does” (2012a)
“U.S. followers of a faith whose congregants have worried about their
safety since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when some began targeting 125 adherents of a peaceful religion that stresses the equality of people.”
(2012g)
“…several leaders of Sikh organizations nationwide say the killings have
brought to the surface fears that have lingered since 9/11 when some
ignorant about their beliefs began mistaking them for potential terrorists.”
(2012g)
“Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Sikhs in America have
been targeted by revenge-seekers who apparently have mistaken them for
Muslims, perhaps due to the traditional turbans they wear and their dark
skin.” (2012h)
“Kaleka said those inside the gurdwara…described the attacker as a bald
white man, dressed in a white T-shirt and black pants and with the 9/11
tattoo17 on one arm, which ‘implies to me that there's some level of hate
crime there.’” (2012i)
What is interesting about these excerpts is that the Sikh Temple Shooting itself is not compared to 9/11; rather, it is compared to other attacks on Sikhs in the wake of 9/11.
17 Later reports showed that this detail was not true; Page did not have a 9/11 tattoo on his arm, although a bystander unrelated to the shooting did. 126 Not only does this help provide an “explanation” for the shooting, it also offers a chilling subtext – that the wrong people were killed in the Sikh Temple Shooting. By placing the shooting in the 9/11 timescape, the audience realizes that Muslims were the intended target. This perhaps even intensifies the tragedy – not only did innocent people die, but they died instead of Muslims, because of Muslims. There is no logic to this, and certainly not something that a news outlet would ever say explicitly, but it clearly draws Muslims into the discourse. I am not the first to observe that Muslims are recognized as the intended targets of many “hate crimes;” however, there is little commentary on how temporality frames Muslims as intended targets. Given that Muslims are not even peripherally connected to this incident, it is clear that timescaping is effectively manufacturing this connection.
Situating the Sikh Temple Shooting in the 9/11 aftermath timescape also draws on the intersubjective time of audience to create its affect. According to Hernadi, intersubjective time is time shared by a culture or group created through interaction and communication (1992). In the same vein, McGrath and Kelly argue that conceptions of time are relative to the location of observers and events (1992). There are few events that one might say is imprinted in collective U.S. memory, but the 9/11 attacks would be one.
Therefore, when news coverage references such an event, it draws on the intersubjective time experience of its audience because the 9/11 attacks were collectively constructed, experienced, and transmitted by U.S. audiences. In other words, any reference to an event that is embedded in intersubjective time becomes a loaded discursive move, and increases the newsworthiness of an event. 127
URGENCY: WHEN THE AFTERMATH IMPLIES FUTURE HORROR
Perhaps the most prevalent temporal pattern in the coverage was its depiction of urgency in the wake of the attacks. The coverage sustains the sense of urgency even in its reports of the aftermath. Fox News reported an international “rush to give condolences” as well how the authorities “immediately” tracked down the gunman’s relatives and significant other. Finally and perhaps most importantly, the shooting is not portrayed as an isolated event; instead, the temporal language creates a sense of urgency suggesting that the attack is one in a series of attacks, with forthcoming attacks on Sikhs being imminent. The following excerpts from Fox News reports illustrate this:
“…the shooting is reverberating through every Sikh American home,
where the worst is feared.” (2012g)
“…[the shooting] seemed so random…[a member of the Chicago Sikh
Society] said he worried more Sikhs could be targeted (2012g)
“…several leaders of Sikh organizations nationwide say the killings have
brought to the surface fears that have lingered since 9/11…"[t]his is
something we have been fearing since 9/11, that this kind of incident will
take place," said Rajwant Singh, chairman of the Washington-based Sikh
Council on Religion and Education” (2012g) 128
“It’s like a lot of other churches you know, the doors are open. Because
people are coming in for services, and so – um, you’re not expecting
someone people (sic) to come in and start opening up gunfire.”
State Rep. Josh Zepnick, Milwaukee (2012j)
[all emphases mine]
All of these excerpts do not merely contextualize the 2012 Sikh Temple Shooting; they connect them to events in the past and make predictions about the future. In particular, the last excerpt even suggests, ominously, that all worshippers and religions
(including Christianity) are potential targets.18 This implies that 9/11 is responsible for ushering an entirely new era of violence and fear, where innocents die “instead” of
Muslims because of the acts of Muslim extremists. In other words, the shooting is treated as one in a series of ongoing events, suggesting that other attacks on Sikhs are imminent.
This is significant because the Sikh Temple Shooting was presented as the result of an act of terrorism, and the construal of urgency and the depiction of pace helps sustain the sense of terror required to justify that presentation. Therefore, not only is Islamic terrorism a uniquely urgent problem; its aftermath events are also uniquely urgent and ongoing. The Oak Creek temple now has security guards stationed at its doors, just as
18And chillingly, the Charleston church shooting three years later validated Mr. Zepnick’s statement. However, several mass shooters have targeted religious sites in the U.S. 129 crowded spaces across the U.S. have increased security measures. Such measures sustain a sense of urgency while carrying out preemptive “safety” protocol.
In stark contrast to this creation of urgency, however, is how the coverage depicts religion through a slowing down of pace. Although pace is a temporal enactment and not a component of my temporal approach, the depiction of pace was striking throughout the coverage. Furthermore, it bears addressing because pace is the counterpart to urgency; it is an enactment that often results from the construal of urgency. While the shooting and its contextualization in the larger frame of terrorism is portrayed through a quickening of pace, the descriptions of Sikhism are depicted through a slowing down of pace. The news stories repeatedly emphasize the ancientness of Sikhism; the time Sikhs spend in prayer in the gurdwara; and how Sikhs gather to cook and eat meals together. The following excerpts (including quotes from Sikh community members) illustrate this:
“…they would have performed daily services, which may have included
recitations from the religion's holy book, leading prayers, how to practice
Sikhism…” (2012k)
“The attack occurred about 10:30am, when temple members were reading
scriptures and preparing food.” (2012l)
“ ‘We have suffered for generations, in India and even here [in the United
130 States]’” (2012m)
“…the cloth turbans worn for centuries by members of the Sikh faith…” (2012g)
[all emphases mine]
In each of these excerpts, the slow tempo becomes associated with reflection (or
“timeless” time) and it presents the slow pace as something that has been sustained over a long period of time. Furthermore, the coverage also focuses on the leisurely cooking of meals before the temple services and emphasizes that Sikh men value patience and growth (which is evident in their commitment to growing their hair). This continued embedded pattern of “slowness” in the coverage indicates three things. First, it reifies the trope that slowness is a form of idealization, even romanticization. In “Out of Time: Fast
Subject and Slow Living”, Wendy Parkins explains that slow living derives from a conscious negotiation of different temporalities comprising our everyday lives, and stems from “a commitment to occupy time more attentively” (2004, pg. 363). In other words, religion (and worship in particular) is depicted as a commitment to experiencing time more mindfully. Second, these descriptions of Sikhism by way of (slow) pace also calls forth the notion of “timeless time”, which is time that is not subjected to any kind of external pressures and demands (Ylijoki & Mantyla, 2003, pgs. 62-63). And third, this slowness in pace provides a contrast to the urgent, hurried actions of the gunman.
131 These observations are not remarkable – clearly the shooting itself was a quick- paced event, and religious service is (stereo)typically slower-paced. However, it is interesting that the news outlet presents the Sikhs as performing “timeless time,” which emphasizes their defenselessness and innocence. Through the depiction of pace, the coverage creates a sharp binary: the hurried and sinister actions of the gunman versus the slow and innocent state of being of the Sikhs. The shooting becomes more heinous because the bullets are tearing not into moving bodies, but still bodies that are experiencing timeless time.
But more importantly, through this subtle depiction of temporality, the victims’ religion becomes their primary defining factor, and their religion is depicted through style because an ignorant individual possibly read their beards and turbans as “Muslim.” Not all victims of mass shootings are presented this way – not even those killed at religious sites. After the 2014 Jewish Community Center shooting, we learned about the victims’ professions, residences, and family members. After the 2015 church shooting in
Charleston, we learned about the victims’ professions and families, their community involvement, and – in the case of the pastor – their political service and loyalties. Of course the coverage of the Charleston shooting focused on the race of the victims, all of whom were African-American, but that was due to the abundance of evidence that the perpetrator (who was apprehended alive) harbored racial hatred. However, the Sikh
Temple victims were described almost exclusively through the lens of Sikhism; their families described them as “devout” or as upholding Sikh values, and it was difficult to locate any information about them beyond their religious observance. In fact, even the 132 victims’ names became a talking point about Sikhism, once again channeling their identities through their religion. CNN ran an interview with Rajwant Singh, the chairman of the Sikh Council on Religion and Education. In the interview, Mr. Singh said that the name “Singh” and “Kaur” – titles that all Sikh men and women carry respectively – mean
“lion” and “princess.” In this way, the most basic identifying traits of the victims, their names, become channeled through religion. It is also worth noting that several U.S. journalists19 have observed that Muslim terrorists are similarly presented through a religious lens. I will take up this thread in Chapter 5, where I use a style lens to examine the presentation of Muslims and “moderates.”
IMPLICATIONS: EPOCHALITY AND INDICTMENT
By examining the timescaping and construal of urgency in the coverage of the
2012 Sikh Temple Shooting, I am making a case for the importance of temporal analysis in the study of anti-Muslim sentiment. My temporal approach here consists of two key concepts: urgency and timescaping. However, this limited focus does not mean that no other temporal components come into play in anti-Muslim rhetoric and discourse. In
Chapter 6, I discuss other temporal concepts that relevant to studying anti-Muslim sentiment, even if they are not relevant to my case study in this chapter. In this section, however, I turn to the implications – temporal or otherwise – of my findings described above.
19 Including columnist Dean Obeidallah, Salon.com editor Joan Walsh, and The Young Turks’ Cenk Uygur to name a few 133 First, the coverage clearly constructs the shooting as an epochal event, i.e. an event of such significance that during that time, the event itself (rather than the clock) serves to organize the time. Bluedorn (2002) describes event-based time as epochal, and clock-based time as fungible. As Ballard et al. note, within an epochal (rather than a fungible) conception, time is defined by “a larger system of behavioral patterning: [i]t exists in the context of identities, relationship, and interactions that can only be reckoned within broader expanses of time” (2008, pg. 329). And because the shooting targeted racial minorities at a religious gathering, questions about the timing of the crime cropped up immediately. Why did the attack happen on that day, in that moment? And more importantly, what “triggered” the attack? First, the coverage reports that the attack occurred on a Sunday, the day of the week the largest crowd of worshippers gathers for services. This implies premeditation on the shooter’s part, suggesting that he selected a day that would enable more murders.
However, what is interesting is that before Wade Michael Page was identified, the media indicted another man as the murderer because he was “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” An unnamed Caucasian man, described as tall and muscular and sporting a
9/11 tattoo, was photographed by Fox News and reported as a “person of interest”:
“…someone had noticed a stranger at the scene. The tall, muscular man,
with a tattoo on his biceps and wearing a pair of dark shades seemed out of
place – even suspicious -- to some, as he briefly watched and even
videotaped the aftermath of the shooting, which left six dead” 134
“Oak Creek Police Chief John Edwards told FoxNews.com moments after
the press conference that a bystander had taken a photo of the "person of
interest" at the scene of the crime and found him suspicious”
“Although authorities quickly located Eric and determined he had nothing
to do with the crime – and advised the media of this – he’s been forced to
hide out in fear for his life ever since…”
(2012a, emphases mine)
I should mention here that all these excerpts come from Fox News (although the
CNN coverage did mention in passing that Page did not have a 9/11 tattoo as some initial reports had said). All these excerpts say that the unidentified man drew suspicion merely due to his (White male) presence during this racially charged hate crime. He was immediately situated in the larger timescape of hate crimes against Sikhs due to his presence, at that moment, in a community area where he did not “belong.” Furthermore, his presence was construed as suspicious because of the epochality of the entire incident.
Because the Sikh Temple Shooting, and indeed any mass shooting, is constructed as an epochal moment, any incident or occurrence that is peripherally connected to it also become epochally construed. In other words, the idea of routines and individuals “going
135 about their daily business” vanishes, and all surrounding activity is presented in relation to the epochal event.
This sort of “epochal projection,” particularly in relation to acts that are constructed as terrorism, is significant for two reasons. First, it allows (and even encourages) news media to indict individuals before any concrete evidence has come to light. For instance, in the wake of the April 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings, at least four male bystanders of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent were mistakenly indicted by the media as “persons of interest” primarily because of their presence during an epochal event – they were in the “wrong place at the wrong time.” The word
“indicted” is fitting because the very act of broadcasting a name or photograph acts as an accusation, and once accused the individual has to be actively and publicly exonerated to restore their reputation. Ultimately, one of the two falsely accused men in the Boston
Marathon Bombing committed suicide.20 Due to the epochality of events like the Boston
Marathon Bombing and the Sikh Temple Shooting, all peripheral details became constructed through the epochality of the attack. All surrounding action became viewed as related to, or unrelated to, the attack. While this may seem like an obvious statement to the point of foolishness, I want to point out that it places a burden on the coverage to prove that any surrounding actions and individuals are unrelated to an event. In other words, any “Muslim appearing” bystanders during an act of terrorism must be proven
20 Sunil Tripathi, an undergraduate at Brown University, was found dead 8 days after he had been misidentified as once of the Boston Marathon Bombing perpetrators. His suicide took place under unclear circumstances, as he was diagnosed as clinically depressed and had gone missing nearly a month before the bombings. However, Tripathi’s family stated that his suicide was likely precipitated by the false accusations 136 innocent. Any “skinhead” or tattooed bystanders during a hate crime must be shown to be unconnected to the incident. This means that the bodies in close temporal and proximal space to an event come under scrutiny when those bodies are already marked as suspicious in public discourse. Why did Fox News need to report on the White male bystander with the 9/11 tattoo before any evidence had come to light? Why was Sunil
Tripathi mentioned before the Tsarnaev brothers were identified as the Boston Marathon
Bombers? Temporally speaking, it is because the epochal portrayal of such incidents encourages news coverage to present any surrounding incidents as related to the crime – sometimes to detrimental effect.
Another factor worth noting is that such an epochal portrayal of incidents encourages the surveillance of individuals, and actively encourages suspicion based on physical appearance. By emphasizing the significance of peripheral actions and individuals surrounding a terrorist attack, the news coverage communicates the idea that those in the vicinity of a terrorist attack are all worth investigating. Oftentimes, these individuals are selected based on physical traits – sex, age, race, and class markers. In the case of the Sikh Temple Shooting, a man was mistakenly accused because he fit a
Caucasian “skinhead” description – a description that, in part, could help explain the motive of a hate crime. In Terrorist Assemblages, Jasbir Puar describes how “surveillant assemblages” have been diffused through the general U.S. population, encouraging citizens to act as vigilantes and to “say something” if they “see something” (Puar, 2007, pg. 167). However, this very surveillance is grounded in the notion that a particular individual in the “wrong place” at the “wrong time” is, in itself, a cause for alarm. 137 Beyond the ramifications of such epochal projections, my analysis revealed other patterns about time depiction in the Sikh Temple Shooting coverage that raise some larger issues. Perhaps the most important finding is the situation of an event within a particular a timescape. The events of the shooting are placed within the larger “9/11 aftermath” timescape, which relies on and reinforces the intersubjective time of the audience for its affect. As a result, 9/11’s epochality is able to force interpretation of an event through a particular timescape. This is especially troubling if 9/11 is evoked needlessly by news coverage in order to engender pathos or increase newsworthiness.
Therefore, this study and this finding would benefit from a parallel study applying a temporal perspective to news coverage, perhaps of another shooting, that is not placed in the “9/11 aftermath” timescape.
This analysis also reveals that temporal depictions in news coverage can indicate the values of the news outlet. In the coverage of the Sikh Temple Shooting, Fox News and CNN examine the motives of the shooter by placing him within the larger timescape of his life – beginning with his childhood. On the surface, the shooter’s childhood does not seem relevant to the coverage, given that he became involved with racist communities only as an adult. Additionally, U.S. news outlets often focus on a criminal’s childhood as a way to determine a motive – the coverage of the Sikh Temple Shooting is not unique in this regard.21 Therefore, this insistence on scrutinizing the full timescape of an individual’s life indicates that the news outlet, and perhaps its audience, considers
21 Sandy Hook perpetrator Adam Lanza and Aurora Theater shooter James Holmes had their childhoods scrutinized by the U.S. media, as did several serial murderers, kidnappers and rapists arrested in the U.S. 138 nurturing and childhood upbringing to be a significant factor that impacts adult behavior.
It is essential to recognize this as a cultural value, as different groups have different perceptions of how “nurture” can impact agency.
Furthermore, this study reveals that embedded in the coverage is the portrayal of religion and spirituality as a “slowing down” of pace. Because the Sikhs were engaged in religious service at the time, the shooting becomes even more macabre because the Sikhs were experiencing time as “slowed down” and were therefore more helpless when attacked. However, the depiction of religion as “slowed down” is in itself a cultural perception. In “Out of Time: Fast Subjects and Slow Living”, Wendy Parkins traces precisely this perception through an analysis of the Slow Food Movement (2004). She argues that pace, or the slowing of pace, has become central to “investing [time] with significance through attention and deliberation” (pg. 364). Based on the temporal depiction of religion in the coverage, it appears that religion has been marked as an
“activity” that is part of such slow living. Once again, it is crucial to recognize this as a cultural construction of religion by applying a temporal lens to the coverage.
Finally, the depiction of urgency in the coverage also contributes to how the shooting is framed as the result of a terrorist attack. Not only does it present the events of the shooting as fast paced; it sustains the sense of urgency even after the attack. It does this in part by including the shooting in the 9/11 aftermath, which indicates that the Sikh
Temple Shooting is one in a “series” of crimes rather than a disconnected, random event.
In other words, the sense of urgency depicted in the wake of the shooting helps sustains a
139 sense of fear, and the temporal depictions in the coverage helps construct the event as the result of a terrorist attack.
SIKHISM, STYLE, AND THE SCAPEGOATING OF MUSLIMS
I have so far focused on the temporal aspects of the 2012 Sikh Temple Shooting coverage, and examined the typically overlooked role of temporality in shaping events and actors as terrorism and terrorists. But perhaps more importantly, my analysis reveals how the coverage scapegoats Muslims even though the latter are not even peripherally related to the shooting. Now, I want to return to the 2012 Sikh Temple Shooting case study to explore the role of style in shaping the coverage and furthering anti-Muslim sentiment.
In Fear’s Empire (2003), Benjamin Barber states that spectatorship is an invitation to fear, and citizenship is how we fight the politics of fear. Therefore, a turban
– which is constructed as “foreign” – can mark a body as a non-citizen, and a potential threat. This emphasis on style and being able to “recognize” citizenship was clear when two days after the Sikh Temple Shooting, the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication printed a “turban primer.” This “primer” featured illustrations and instructions on how to differentiate between different groups that wore turbans – from Sikhs and Indians to
Iranian, Muslim, and Taliban leaders. Many read this sketch a satire, as a parody of Time
Magazine’s 1941 article “How to Tell your Friends from the Japs.” However, there is no denying the role of visible style in post-9/11 attacks on Sikhs and Muslims. As I discovered through my Grounded Theory Analysis, the Sikh community in Wisconsin 140 also identified their turbans as a liability, with several individuals saying that they are
“mistaken” for Muslims and that people are “ignorant” because they just see beards and turbans. For these reasons, it is impossible to separate the sartorial from the political; clearly, the visual signs of turbans and beards not only stand in for motives in the case of this shooting (by explaining why the shooter ‘mistakenly’ targeted Sikhs) but also effectively scapegoat Muslims as the invisible threat that “should” have died in their place. After the shooting, members of the Sikh community across the U.S. began to make an effort to “educate” the mainstream about Sikhism, with some holding signs that read
“I am Sikh. Please Don’t Hate Me” (2012n). Once again, it implies that it is Muslims who should be hated and targeted, but beyond that it also implies that awareness is what was needed to prevent such a hate crime. The belief is that if people knew more about
Sikhism, fewer attacks like this would happen. Not only is this futile because hate crimes are not spurred by “lack of awareness,” it also places the burden on minority groups to
“educate” in order not to be targeted. In Terrorist Assemblages (2007), Jasbir Puar points out that recognition, rather than stabilization, has become the goal for minority movements (pg. 127). This is clearly evident in the aftermath of the Sikh Temple shooting; the Sikh community members seek recognition for their community so that they may easily be distinguished from “terrorists.” At no point does the coverage address how the actual problem of terrorism can be addressed.
I think there is value in examining the confluence of style and terrorism, just as
Puar examines the confluence of sexuality and terrorism in Terrorist Assemblages. In a section called “the turban is not a hat,” she asserts that the turban has “accrued” the 141 marks of a “terrorist masculinity” (pg. 177).22 Puar argues that the turban’s removal functions as a reorientation into the masculine patriotic identity (pg. 179, emphasis mine). However, this is exactly how political aesthetics function; the turban, when removed, allows unity by conforming aesthetically to mainstream American aesthetics.
Crispin Sartwell points out that beauty is in unity (2010, pg. 65), which means that the de-turbaned Muslim (or Sikh), while providing “variety,” also allows unity. The tyranny of political aesthetics compels the “moderate” to de-turban, while also suggesting that the minority group, i.e. turban-wearers, is homogenous and single-bodied. Such strategic essentialism was characteristic of Black Nationalist aesthetics, which allowed the minority group to unify in their struggle (Sartwell, 2010, pg. 151).
Perhaps another reason de-turbaning is both essential and effective is because it enables social class to surface on the wearer’s body. There is little public discussion of the social class of terrorists, and certainly not of their style; perhaps because it is treasonous to even attempt to understand the terrorist psyche. U.S. terrorism discourse has spun the belief that to even examine the social and psychological make-up of a terrorist is unpatriotic. This is evident in news coverage of “Muslim terrorists,” where there is a disinclination to cover the childhood and personal background of criminals who can safely be perceived as “foreign” threats. On the other hand, the “lone wolf” killer, or
22 Furthermore, the turban’s accrual of terrorist masculinity enables the accrual of subservient femininity in the Muslim headscarf. Without the disabled masculinity of the former, the latter cannot be constructed. However, this accrual for the Muslim headscarf and nikab only accompanies bodies that are constructed as Muslim. For instance, Catholic nuns’ headcoverings are clearly distinguishable due to the styling of their white habits, but Greek Orthodox nuns at a glance could be mistaken for Muslims in their dark robes and headcoverings
142 the mentally ill shooter, or the hate-criminal, often emerges as an isolated middle-class male. Therefore, the turban becomes a wholly religious marker, one that eclipses the body’s class and psyche. Thus, for a Muslim to become integrated into U.S. society – indeed, to become “moderate,” the “turbans” must be divested. I use “turbans” metonymically of course, as they can be beards, headscarves, ankle-length pants, and so forth – any visible grooming or sartorial choices that are markedly “Muslim.” The turban can obstruct style, which in turn occludes citizenship. Once the eclipsing religious symbol is removed, the body can be judged through style – or whatever remains of it. In this way, style can emerge once the turban is removed, and class becomes the mediating factor for the now “moderate” Muslim body.
As I mentioned earlier, the U.S. Sikh community seeks to educate the nation about the differences between Sikhism and Islam, and the symbolic value of their turbans. By recognizing, correctly, that those visual signs inspire fear, Sikhs aim to demystify their religion (and consequently their appearance) to address this fear by separating Islam and Sikhism. However, not all turbans are Sikh turbans, and not all
Muslims and Sikhs wear turbans. This means that attempts to educate the mainstream about Sikhism will not necessarily increase recognition and diminish fear. Furthermore, when public discourse construes the turban as a terrorist symbol, it is not an attempt to equip vigilantes or aid in the fight against terrorists. Indeed, if that was the goal, the turban would not have been selected as the symbol to identify the terrorist body – again, because turbans and Islam are not related. However, choosing such a deliberately vague symbol diffuses terrorist appendages throughout minority populations in the United 143 States; they contaminate bodies wearing them, and become the ghostly appendage on bodies that are otherwise marked (by ethnicity, attire, or grooming) as “Muslim.”
Since turbans and Islam as well as turbans and terrorism are not related, we must infer that the turbans become that connection, and become a simulacrum – a sign that simply represents terror. A simulacrum is a representation of a thing, and was of great interest to the Sophists and a key component in the study of meaning-making. However, the turban is not a straightforward simulacrum, as it is not representing something that is grounded in reality. It is not able to represent Islam, nor terrorism – yet that is what it represents, ultimately making it a sign that mainly refers to itself. This makes the turban an effective representation of terrorism; it is because it cannot represent Islam or terrorists, it is because that link itself is absent, that that link cannot be questioned or undermined. The turban simply equates with difference and therefore fear, and Islam is taken out of the equation entirely. In Being Made Strange (2004), Bradford Vivian explains this notion in his reading of Deleuze:
[Deleuze] insists that, after that Platonic hierarchies of
being have been dismantled, only simulacra remain – only
the unending differences that continual engender and
transform the sense and value of beings without origin or
telos…[b]y undermining the priority of identitiy in this
way, one begins to establish a concept of difference in itself
144 (2004, pg. 87, first emphasis mine)
Here, Deleuze states (and Vivian reinforces) the idea that simulacra allow differences to become an end in themselves, where identity – or that which is constitutive – is subordinated to difference, where ultimately the difference becomes constitutive. This is precisely how the turban functions as a “Muslim symbol;” it embodies the endless difference that is written onto the body of the wearer, and the wearer becomes constituted of difference. The turban ceases to point to any other meaning, and ceases to represent anything else – not religion, not race – but only difference, and therefore fear. Sustaining fear is predicated on such simulacra, as fear itself is a set of signs that mainly refers to itself. According to Plato’s philosophy, it is dialectic that allows one to distinguish between identity and difference. However, the
“awareness” campaigns that emerged in the wake of the temple shooting (and in the wake of 9/11) by the Sikh community as well as news coverage ironically focus on difference once again – on how one can distinguish between Muslim and Sikh turbans; on the differences between the “peaceful” philosophy of Sikhism as opposed to “other religions.” The difference becomes constitutive, and the audience is still left without an understanding of Sikh or Muslim identity.
At this juncture, I want to raise the thread of tragic scapegoating in the coverage of the Sikh Temple Shooting, and the role of the turban in facilitating this scapegoating.
As the results of my GTA show, it is clear that the coverage (and indeed the law enforcement officials) believe that the intended targets were Muslims. The reason for this 145 belief? The style similarities, i.e. beards and turbans, associated with both Sikh and
Muslim men. The fact that the shooter could not distinguish between Sikhs and Muslims is presented as “tragic ignorance,” implying that if Muslims had died instead the violence would have been tragic but understandable rather than senseless. However, even though the coverage introduces the beard-and-turban issue to “explain” the shooter’s motives, it does not address the misconception about Muslims wearing turbans. The coverage introduces that connection, but does nothing to dispel the misinformation. The reports imply that it is tragic that innocent Sikhs died (in place of innocent Muslims), and imply that it is a tragedy that Page knew nothing about Sikhism. However, it is also tragic that there is so little awareness of Muslims, and so little understanding of terrorism, that turbans are associated with either.
But let me return to my initial claim about tragic scapegoating. Clearly, the coverage highlights that Sikhs have become scapegoats due to misguided mainstream hatred of Sikhs since 9/11. However, in doing so, the coverage itself scapegoats another group of people: Muslims. In other words, the coverage points out that Sikhs have become scapegoats because of “Muslim terrorists,” and therefore implicitly scapegoats these so-called Muslim terrorists, who become responsible for the deaths of innocent
Sikhs. Muslims become the vessel into which the U.S. collective conscience pours its guilt: a guilt that is engendered by heinous acts like mass shootings. The negative vessel or tragic scapegoat is inscribed with the ills of the society, and destroyed to cleanse this guilt. This is evident in all the news reports that speculate that the shooter may have been
146 targeting Muslims, but is especially evident in this quote from a CNN interview with a member of the Wisconsin Sikh Temple:
I just want people to know that they shouldn’t be mistaken by us
(sic), and – cause we have turbans and long beards too, that’s just
our religion and it’s very peaceful. (2012j)
It is astonishing that the coverage does not present the attacks on Sikhs as terrorism even though that is exactly what such consistent attacks on Sikhs and Muslims are. The Sikh
Temple of Wisconsin now employs security guards and surveillance cameras, like many
U.S. mosques across the country. Such increased surveillance is the quintessential (and
American) response to terrorism. However, unlike U.S. airports, U.S. mosques are perhaps more justified in tightening security given that there have been around 100 attacks on U.S. mosques and worshippers in the 18 months since I began writing this dissertation (CAIR, 2015).
In the next chapter, I attend more closely to the idea of Muslim scapegoating by using the stylistic and Burkean lens described in Chapter 3. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out this instance of tragic scapegoating that is so evident in this case study. By “identifying” the “intended” target as Muslim, the news coverage doesn’t just indict Muslims and sustain the sense of terror – it also allows the audience to absolve themselves of the guilt that we would otherwise feel in the wake of this shooting.
147 From a stylistic perspective, there are a few more noteworthy elements about the
Sikh Temple Shooting and its coverage. First, it is important to recognize that while style was a key element in blurring lines across religions (i.e. Sikhism and Islam), it was also a key element in separating the perpetrator from the audience. Just as the victims are described exclusively through a religious lens, Page is primarily described through the lens of skinhead culture and White supremacy. Needless to say, style was a key component of both these descriptions. Wade Michael Page was repeatedly described as a tattooed skinhead, wearing a white t-shirt and jeans. Several reports described his neo-
Nazi tattoos, and a lot of space was devoted to his connections to the White Power music scene. These style descriptors paint a cohesive picture of a “hate criminal.” They made sense in the context of a hate crime, where the victims were people of color. Page’s appearance and attire became a clear foil to the appearance and attire of the Sikh victims.
However, his appearance also served to distance him from the audience, who would recognize his style as “extreme,” skewed, radical ideology that is simply not mainstream.
Page’s radicalism was literally writ onto his body, and consequently his appearance stood in for his motives.
This preoccupation with style, or particular elements of style, is evident in descriptions of several U.S. mass shooters. The Columbine High School shooters were described as trench-coat wearing outcasts, possibly members of the “Trench Coat Mafia” who were a high school, neo-Nazi clique. News reports described James Holmes, the
2012 Aurora theater shooter, as having vivid orange-dyed hair, a supposed indicator of his mental illness. Coverage of the 2015 Charleston Church shooting described the 148 perpetrator Dylann Roof’s obsessive-compulsive disorder, which was tied to his distinctive bowl haircut, which he insisted on having cut a particular way. In this way, the shooters’ appearances, indeed their personal styles, served to separate them from the general population and also stand in for their motives.
However, I am not trying to say that the coverage aimed to flatten how Page was represented; in fact, as I mentioned earlier, we learn a good deal about Page’s childhood from interviews with his step-mother, grandmother, and friends. He was placed in the larger timescape of his childhood because he did not fit the stereotype of a “terrorist;” he was afforded that larger timescape because he was being presented as a lone-wolf aberration, who espoused radical ideology. But that ideology was identified, and his motives were made clear, through style. Furthermore, the narrative about Page that emerged suggests that style is a reliable indicator for spotting criminal bodies, even when the style is not connected to religion. The narrative quarantines tattooed bodies as bodies of interest when it comes to hate crimes, just as it quarantines bearded, veiled, and turbaned bodies when it comes to “terrorism.” However, the difference is that while style is used to disseminate terrorist assemblages in the case of Muslims, it is used to contain bodies in the case of “lone-wolf” killers. Beards and turbans, veils and robes, are related to various cultures, religions, and races, but are presented as a single contaminant that bind these various bodies together, making distinction unnecessary. On the other hand, tattoos, shaved heads and other elements of skinhead “subculture” are seen as distinguishing lone-wolf killers from the general population, which supports the narrative of U.S. exceptionalism. 149
AN AESTHETIC OF “PEACEFULNESS”
I want to note a final thread about style as it relates to the 2012 Sikh Temple
Shooting: it contains an implied aesthetic of “peacefulness.” What I mean by this is that is presents an idea of peace, particularly as it connects to religious tolerance, which can be detected by the senses. First of all, as the results of my GTA show, the word “peace” comes up several times in the news coverage to describe the Sikh religion and its followers. This is an interesting finding because it does not appear to have any relevance to the shooting; why would the victims of a crime need to present themselves as peaceful?
Consider how bizarre it would be for the students of the Columbine or Virginia Tech or
Isla Vista shooting to be characterized as “peace-loving.” Of course, as I mentioned earlier, this emphasis on “peacefulness” helps scapegoat the specter of the Muslims.
However, the coverage, and those it interviews, presents peacefulness as being very similar to passivity, vulnerability, and invisibility. Here are some quotes from the coverage that illustrate this:
The violence is antithetical to the Sikh religion and its custom of,
literally, opening its doors to people of all faiths (2012j)
Don Lemon: “thank you. You know I just – I find it fascinating
and refreshing that you have such a good spirit about this…and
150 you’re not accusatory, you’re not angry…and I think that’s
amazing and I applaud you for that” (2012o)
And if anyone wants to wear a turban, to show solidarity, we will
le-lend out our turbans to – for you to feel how does it – what kind
of feeling you might have to wear a color on your head (2012o)
(All emphases mine)
While the first quote is from a news report, the latter two are from a CNN interview with
Don Lemon and Rajwant Singh, the chairman of the Washington-based Sikh Council on
Religion and Education. The first quote emphasizes the vulnerability, and perhaps even naiveté of the Sikh community, as it presents the Sikh faith in the U.S. as being uniquely open while being uniquely at risk. The second statement, made by CNN anchor Don
Lemon, suggests that there is a value in being completely passive in the face of such uncontrolled violence – that the Sikh community’s unwillingness to show anger or be
“accusatory” was worth applauding. The third quote, meanwhile, reveals the value of invisibility in order to be the ideal, “peaceful” religious minority; when Rajwant Singh invites the audience to borrow-a-turban-for-a-day, and wear it as one might a costume, we are reminded that Sikhs only become visible briefly during the candlelight vigils and awareness campaigns following acts of violence.
151 Meanwhile, three years after the shooting, the Sikh community in Wisconsin continued to echo this aesthetic of peace. At a memorial service, the temple vice- president Balhair Dulai said that even “the shooter was welcome” and wasn’t looked upon as an outsider (2012p); in the same report, a Sikh youth member noted that the community was using the tragedy to “make a bigger impact, so [they] can spread the message of love and compassion outside.” A Fox6 report noted that the “entire community [had] grown, embracing diversity, and healing together” (2012q) Although these reports are not part of my data set because they were published three years after the shooting, over and over again they point to this aesthetic of “peace,” an expectation of cowed acceptance from a terrorized community. There is a similar expectation from
Muslim worshippers at U.S. mosques, who are expected to “greet” armed protestors with tolerance and openness. It is this aesthetic of peace, these expectations of passivity, vulnerability, and invisibility, which polices the behavior of minority groups in the U.S.
It is these expectations, of course, that are at the foundation of respectability politics, which in turn police bodies by restricting headscarves, turbans, facial hair, and tattoos at work and other “respectable” spaces. But more importantly, they are strategically producing an intimidated minority population, i.e. all communities who are constructed as “Muslim,” which is precisely the goal of terrorism.
In All Consuming Images, Stuart Ewen writes that style is a way that human values and structures are aesthetically expressed (1988, pg. 2). This explains the focus on style in anti-Muslim sentiment, and the relevance of style in creating the “moderate
Muslim.” While my study of the Sikh Temple Shooting shows how temporal 152 manipulation crafts anti-Muslim discourse, there is no doubt that style – the appearance of the victims and shooter, and the aesthetic framing of “peace” – are also key elements reproducing anti-Muslim rhetoric in the coverage of this tragedy. In the next chapter, I examine the production of the “moderate Muslim” myth and apply my stylistic and
Burkean lens in greater depth.
153 Chapter 5: The “Moderate” Muslim’s Function in Nationalism
The overarching goal of this thesis is to understand how U.S. discourse sustains and reproduces anti-Muslim sentiment, specifically through temporality and style. For this reason, none of my case studies involve explicit anti-Muslim bigotry; rather, they reveal how such sentiment functions outside such instances of bigotry, and outside anti-
Muslim discourse. In the previous chapter, I make a case for how temporality is manipulated to perpetuate the fear of Muslims and create the specter of the Muslim terrorist when they are otherwise absent from a narrative. Given that time is present in, and presented by, all narratives, it is worthwhile to examine its role in sustaining the momentum of anti-Muslim rhetoric.
In this chapter, however, I examine the “moderate Muslim” trope, which is jettisoned in anti-Muslim discourse. This trope is mobilized across discourses of citizenship, national identity, and racism to validate political action. It can be written onto a discourse, or transplanted from another discourse, to suggest how Muslims “ought to be” in the United States and shift attention away from the anti-Muslim sentiment itself.
The expectation that U.S. Muslims ought to behave in a particular way is evident in how political campaigns deploy “Muslim issues.” In particular, a number of studies demonstrate how “Islam” is used as a wedge issue by the media and politicians to influence voters. Alia Malek discusses how the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy was used to “distinguish” between “Muslims” and “Americans” (2010). Meanwhile, Marwa
Abed argues that during election years, ‘“Muslim issues” are used as a wedge topic to increase polarization and garner votes among rightwing conservatives” (2012). These 154 studies raise the same issues: that politicians are presenting Islamic and American identities as fundamentally incompatible, and that it is the responsibility of U.S. Muslims to make them compatible. The Muslims who manage to perform this compatibility are approved as “moderates.”
During the 2002 American-Turkish Council, George W. Bush clearly engaged this moderate Muslim rhetoric when he praised Turkey as an inspiring, democratic contrast to radical Islamic nations. The Deputy Defense Secretary at the time, Paul
Wolfowitz, continued this thread, saying that reaching out to “moderate” Muslims who
“abhor[red]” extremism was the key to winning the war on terrorism (Bal, 2004, pg.
429). Meanwhile, Hilary Clinton praised Turkey as a democratic country with a secular constitution. With one stroke, these prominent politicians equated secularism with democracy, suggesting that Muslim countries by definition reject democracy due to their non-secularism. Since 2002, i.e. soon after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. politicians began to cite
Turkey as an example of a “moderate Muslim country” (see Idris Bal’s chapter titled
“Post-September 11 Impact: The Strategic Importance of Turkey Revisited,” 2004).
Even though Turkish PM Erdogan vociferously denounced the characterization of a country as “moderately Islamic,” it was the beginning of the rise of the “moderate”
Muslim discourse in the U.S.
As explicit anti-Muslim bigotry gained momentum in the following years, it became necessary to preserve American exceptionalism with a counternarrative about
Muslims. This counternarrative took the form of the “moderate Muslim” discourse .As anti-Muslim hate speech intensified during the 2016 horserace, it became necessary to 155 undercut the bigotry of such US anti-Muslim sentiment by creating an ideal Muslim who has the nation’s approval. This idealized Muslim is the “moderate Muslim,” and it serves to further U.S. exceptionalism discourse by not only demonstrating U.S. “tolerance,” but also pointing out that the U.S. has the “best” Muslims in the world.
As I discussed in Chapter 3, in this chapter I employ a style lens informed by
Kenneth Burke’s Scapegoating and Comic Framing theories to examine the “moderate
Muslim” myth. I examine three case studies that engage the moderate Muslim trope, but the case studies themselves are diverse. The first, which examines the 2014 Miss
America backlash, does not involve Muslims at all. I have chosen this case study because, as I’ve said earlier, it is important to see how anti-Muslim rhetoric operates outside anti-Muslim discourse. The second, which examines the stand-up comedy of
Azhar Usman, focuses on the role of comedy in the “moderate Muslim” myth. This case study illustrates how U.S. Muslims intervene in their own tragic scapegoating to reorient the audience. And the third case study examines the preaching style of popular
“moderate” imam, Suhaib Webb. Through these case studies, I demonstrate how the
“moderate” Muslims mirrors the values of the dominant group to reify nationalism. The three case studies, when taken together, examine the various permutations of the
“moderate Muslim” and assess how anti-Muslim sentiment is sustained and reproduced.
Let me mention here why style and Burke’s theories come together naturally in an analysis of the “moderate Muslim” discourse. In Permanence and Change (1935),
Kenneth Burke writes that style is:
156 In its simplest manifestation…ingratiation. It is an attempt
to gain favor by the hypnotic or suggestive process of
‘saying the right thing.’ Obviously, it is most effective
when there is agreement as to what the right thing
is…[even] in America today, despite our mobility, one may
come upon local sequences of statement and rejoinder, a
rigidly observed pattern of remarks, gestures, and tonalities,
which are repeated almost detail for detail whenever
neighbors meet. Surely, this is not mere psittacism, but a
stylistic formula, a way of establishing a mutual
ingratiation by the saying of the right things.
(pgs. 70-71, emphasis mine)
Burke clearly states that style enables “ingratiation,” and as I will argue, the “moderate
Muslim” is clearly expected to “gain favor” by doing and saying the right things through style.
I bring up this quote to demonstrate Burke’s preoccupation with style, which means that a Burkean-stylistic lens is a natural methodological direction to take.
Furthermore, Burke’s assessment of style as “ingratiation” dovetails neatly with the production of the moderate Muslim myth – for ingratiating himself is precisely what the
“moderate Muslim” must, and wants to, do. The moderate Muslim avoids (or rather 157 escapes) being seen as a threat to dominant U.S. values, and while such moderation is presented as necessary for the preservation of U.S. values, it is actually necessary for the survival of the U.S. Muslim. And finally, Burke emphasizes that style is necessary for establishing a sense of not just belonging, but also identity, both of which are particularly precarious for Muslims in a post-9/11 America.
I do want to take a moment to note the difference between the term
“scapegoating” in general usage, and Burke’s Scapegoating Theory as I will apply in this chapter. Several scholars use the term in a general sense when they argue that Muslims are scapegoated in the U.S. public sphere, by which they mean that Muslims are unfairly singled out to receive blame for various issues – particularly in the post-9/11 landscape.
However, Kenneth Burke describes scapegoating as a form of ritualistic cleansing. In A
Grammar of Motives, Burke explains that guilt is the necessary motive and precursor to scapegoating, and this guilt must be destroyed by means of a scapegoat (1969, emphasis mine). The guilt itself results from the violation of a social hierarchy that was designed to dispel mystery and invoke consubstantiality (in this chapter I will argue that this guilt stems from any disruption of the U.S. exceptionalism narrative, as I will discuss in my analysis of the 2014 Miss America Pageant backlash). Then, this guilt is extinguished by the creation and destruction of a “chosen vessel” – a scapegoat that would “ritualistically cleanse” the sins of those that violated the hierarchy. The sins of the violators are symbolically poured into the scapegoated “vessel,” and the goat then becomes paradoxically consubstantial yet separate from the violators. In other words, scapegoats allow “a society [to] purify itself by ‘moral indignation’ in condemning them, though the 158 ritualistic elements operating here are not usually recognized by the indignant” (pg. 407).
In this way, the scapegoating process facilitates the “rebirth” of the scapegoaters through a process of “guilt, purgation, and redemption” (1969). Through this process, scapegoating does not just address issues of guilt but also issues of social cohesion.
However, Burke also describes a second process of dealing with guilt and transgression, and in this chapter I argue that Muslims use this second process to escape tragic scapegoating. I am referring to Burke’s theory of comic framing, where the transgressive individual is reintegrated into society and disciplined rather than destroyed.
The comic impulse, according to Burke, is to correct and model for sinners. This involves making a mockery of the representation of ones sins and laughing the individual back into community. I apply comic framing, which is part of my larger stylistic approach, to understand how Muslims re-frame themselves to avoid tragic scapegoating. I argue that
Muslims discursively re-frame themselves as “moderate” to avoid the tragic scapegoating that U.S. Muslim currently face.
The “moderate” Muslim, then, serves a dual purpose. First, she neutralizes the
“hidden Muslim threat,” and enables identification with the mainstream through consubstantiality. In A Rhetoric of Motives, Burke argues that identification with someone necessitates how much one is substantially like them, or consubstantial (1969, pg. 20). Indeed, in Attitudes Towards History, Burke argues that the very reason he chose the term “comic” to describe his “comic frame” is because of its similarity to words that allow identification: correspondence, conformity, conscientiousness (1937, pg. 83). Of course, evoking such identification makes a compelling case that the “moderate” is 159 capable of rehabilitation and can be comically reintegrated into society. As I demonstrate in the upcoming case studies, this evocation of consubstantiality is contingent on style.
And second, the “moderate” Muslim becomes a positive vessel that contains the values the scapegoater believes of himself. After all, the “moderate” Muslim’s performance must reflect the idealized performance of U.S. citizenship demanded of all “patriots.”
Furthermore, the very existence of the “moderate” becomes evidence of the scapegoater’s tolerance – the U.S. mainstream’s exceptional empathy and willingness to separate
“moderates” from “radicals.” Therefore, the “moderate” not only defuses the “Muslim threat,” she also reifies discourses of U.S. exceptionalism. But make no mistake: the
“moderate” Muslim trope is essential to anti-Muslim sentiment because it disciplines
Muslim bodies by holding them to amorphous standards of citizenship, while employing counterterrorism measures that encourage civil-rights infractions. Celebrating “moderate”
Muslims, like the three bright, educated, and stylish Muslim students shot in Chapel Hill, creates a different, more rigorous standard to assess the Muslim community. When coupled with the high expectation of performing an aesthetic of peace, these factors set an impossible bar for U.S. Muslims.
Clearly, comic framing and style converge in the production and role of the
Muslim “moderate” to sustain U.S. exceptionalism discourse as well as anti-Muslim sentiment. Now, I turn to my first case study, the 2014 Miss America controversy, to demonstrate this argument in an event unrelated to Muslims and Islam.
160 THE 2014 MISS AMERICA CONTROVERSY: RESCUING THE MODEL
MINORITY THROUGH EXCEPTIONALISM DISCOURSE
The 2014 Miss America controversy illustrates both comic framing and tragic scapegoating. It also shows how Islamic contagion is erasing the model minority, an idea
I introduced in Chapter 1. As a result, “model” minorities must struggle to be re- identified as such by subjugating their citizenship and foregrounding their immigration narratives, thus effectively participating in their own Orientalization. But ironically, the xenophobic backlash after the Miss America 2014 crowning enabled U.S. exceptionalism discourse to flourish. During this controversy, the Indian-American Miss America, Nina
Davuluri, becomes presented as the “moderate Muslim” (despite being Hindu) and is comically framed and reintegrated into U.S. society. Aesthetics play an important role in the presentation of her as a “model” minority. Meanwhile, the specter of the Muslim terrorist – and let us remember, Muslims are in no way related to this event – become tragically scapegoated.
In September 2013, the first Indian-American was crowned Miss America. Nina
Davuluri, who was born and raised in Syracuse, New York, won the Miss New York title before going on to be crowned Miss America, 2014. However, Davuluri faced a backlash on Twitter immediately after her win. Her critics were equally incensed that a “possibly
Muslim” ethnic minority won the pageant, and that the blonde, tattooed, army veteran
Miss Kansas was overlooked for the honor. Some of the xenophobic Tweets included:
This is Miss America, not Miss Muslim. 161
Are you serious??!!! The Arab wins??!!! This is miss AMERICA!!! Not
miss Arabia!!! Miss Kansas is in the army and is a country girl!!! C’mon
Nice slap in the face to the people of 9-11 how pathetic
(2013d)
This small sampling of Tweets efficiently intertwines xenophobia, racism, nationalism, ethnicity, religion, patriotism, citizenship, and 9/11 inextricably and incorrectly. Furthermore, it demonstrates the beginning of Burke’s tragic scapegoating process: we see Davuluri become the representation of the onlookers’ sins (i.e. xenophobia, nationalism, racism, etc.) because she represents “Muslim terrorism,” therefore (allegedly) embodying these sins herself.
This is quite a cognitive stretch, of course, but made easier to understand because the tragic scapegoating of Muslims is so recognizable in U.S. discourse. However, a clear heroic counter part – the White veteran runner-up, Miss Kansas Theresa Vail – offered an easy foil representing the nationalistic values of the scapegoaters. Her nationalism was constructed through her style: her visible tattoos; her many online pictures wearing army fatigues and/or carrying artillery; and her platinum blonde hair. As one commenter on
The Blaze wrote: “Hey, she can cook, clean a dear [sic], and change the oil in my car. She is really easy on the eyes. Loves God and country” (2013e). Another Tweeter posted 162 photographs of Miss Kansas, and superimposed on each photograph were phrases like
“loves her country, “loves hunting”23 and “loves tattoos.” Under that, they wrote “[w]e all know she’s the real #MissAmerica” (2013f). In this way, the Tweeter identified hunting and body art as reinforcing “American values,” even though scores of past Miss America winners did not hunt, and tattoos had never been displayed on a Miss America stage before. Miss Kansas’s style stood in for her substance, which constructed her as conventionally beautiful, patriotic, and “freedom loving,” and “tough.” These values, held dear by the audiences who criticized Davuluri’s win, enabled Miss Kansas to become a heroic figure. However, it is unlikely that this heroic figure would have emerged if the insane racist and terrorist accusations had not dogged Nina Davuluri. This initial tragic scapegoating of Davuluri, and heroicization of Miss Kansas Theresa Vail, were possible because, as Burke argues, such scapegoating occurs when “people as at war or living under the threat of war” because “militarism makes naturally for the extremes of heroic euphemism” (1937, pg. 256). Thus, audience awareness of a discursive war on U.S. Muslims allowed the tragic scapegoating of Nina Davuluri, who was initially constructed as a “Muslim.” Davuluri’s minority body, coupled with Miss
Kansas’s style, worked together to enable her initial tragic scapegoating.
However, Davuluri’s scapegoating halted abruptly when critics responded to these initial tweets and reframed her, comically, as a “model minority” who was firmly “not
Muslim.”
23 Interestingly, Theresa Vail was arrested for illegally killing an Alaskan Grizzly three years after participating in the pageant 163 Let me note, first, that Twitter’s response in attempting to “correct” the initial racist tweets was perhaps more disturbing than the initial tweets themselves. First, the radical anti-Muslim sentiment in the initial Tweets is so extreme that it seems hardly worth correcting them. Why, then, did these unsophisticated and unrepresentative attacks gain so much attention? A partial answer lies in radical flanking, and its role in enabling
“moderate” racism. Herbert Haines explains that a radical flank effect results when the extreme rhetoric of one faction enables the “moderate” rhetoric of a more centrist faction by acting as a foil (1988). In other words, a “moderate” brand of anti-Muslim sentiment flourishes when sheltered by extreme anti-Muslim sentiment. A direct product of such
“moderate” Muslim-hate is the “moderate” Muslim discourse, which forces a narrow performance of “Muslim-ness” in the United States. It is precisely this “moderate” brand of Muslim-hate we see in the “corrective” Tweets sent out by Davuluri’s supporters:
Wow America, you’ve really embarrassed yourselves now! Racist pieces
of crap! #MissAmerica is American, not Muslim or a terrorist. #idiots
An American Hindu wins #MissAmerica. People call her a #terrorist.
Idiocy has moved from Muslim = #terrorist to brown skin = terrorist.
(2013f)
164 Both these Tweets pick their battles: they defend Miss America, even if that means indicting Muslims. Exonerating Muslims in this debate is not their mantle to take up. In fact, as I discussed earlier, South-Asians who have been targets of Muslim-hate are also likely to resent Muslims, who are the evident cause of their victimization.
Additionally, Davuluri is comically reframed through the “model” minority discourse that emerges subtly in the wake of this controversy. Nina Davuluri and her defenders both attempt to restore the “model” minority status to Davuluri. In several interviews, Davuluri mentions her plans to use her winnings to pay for medical school.
We learn that her parents are highly educated specialists, and her sister is a medical student. Therefore, in order to re-identify Davuluri as the model minority (ambitious, educated, beautiful) it is necessary to erase the specter of the “moderate” Muslim because the two cannot co-exist. Interestingly enough, had Davuluri continued to be mistaken for
“Muslim,” she would have represented a “moderate” Muslim: one who does not wear a headscarf; dances and listens to music; and is clearly outspoken and “liberated” – unlike
“subjugated” Muslim women in other nations. This nominates Davuluri, the “model” minority, as an ideal candidate for comic re-framing, as she demonstrates clear signs of being able to be rehabilitated.
However, in order to undo her initial scapegoating and reframe Davuluri comically, the discourse had to shift to Davuluri’s immigrant background. This was because Davuluri’s citizenship still remained uncertain due to her fleeting alignment with
Muslims, especially since her opponent more visibly demonstrated “American values” through her style. Thus, highlighting Davuluri’s immigrant background was one way to 165 dis-identify her as Arab and Muslim, while also presenting her as a “model minority” in the same stroke. Time and time again, she stated in interviews that she was “first and foremost and American” and represented the “girl next door” – it was just that the face of the “girl next door was evolving as America’s diversity evolved.” Despite this, Fox
News’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck pointedly asked about Davuluri’s “ethnicity” and her co- interviewer repeatedly brought up her “heritage” (2013g), and ultimately Davuluri was presented as a “successful immigrant.” In other words, Davuluri had to be constructed as an immigrant and diminish her claim to citizenship to avoid the greater evil of being a
“Muslim.” It was better to be constructed as an immigrant, who could be quizzed about
“growing up Indian” or her exotic dance performance on the Miss America stage, and thus comically reintegrated into society.
This raises the question: how do notions of citizenship inform the “moderate”
Muslim and “model” minority narratives? It does so by subsuming the legal elements of citizenship in favor of identity elements. In her article “The Citizen and the Terrorist,”
Leti Volpp presents four iterations of citizenship: as legal status, as rights, as political activity, and as identity/solidarity (2001, pg. 1592). In post-9/11 anti-Muslim discourse, the first three iterations of citizenship are disregarded, while the fourth becomes the sole determining factor of citizenship. Sadly, the three iterations of citizenship that are stripped away exist to protect citizenship claims by minorities in the United States. After all, as Volpp explains, citizenship and “identity” is determined by the subject and not the object whose citizenship is withheld (pg. 1599, emphases mine). She points out that certain bodies (typically Caucasian, able-bodied, and male) become centered, or anchored 166 to, citizenship, while others (are) disappear(ed). This is precisely why “moderate”
Muslims must demonstrate citizenship through identity, because it is the component of citizenship that takes precedence. Therefore, in a bizarre rhetorical stroke, Nina
Davuluri’s case shows how the “model” minority and “moderate” Muslim discourses run parallel; both groups must perform a state-sanctioned version of citizenship because their cultural identity subsumes the legal, civil, and political aspects of their citizenship.
Furthermore, in the post-9/11 landscape, identifying as a “model” minority or “moderate”
Muslim help assuage mainstream fears about the “hidden Muslim threat” on U.S. shores.
Meanwhile, the Davuluri controversy also reveals how suffering (or the perception of mass suffering) has become an important component of the “solidarity” required to claim U.S. citizenship. This is evident in the number of times 9/11 is invoked by the Twitter users during the backlash:
#MissAmerica ummm wtf?! Have we forgotten 9/11?
@ABC2020 nice slap in the face to the people of 9-11 how pathetic
#missamerica
9/11 was four days ago and she gets miss America?
(2013f)
167 In her discussion of the U.S. public sphere, Lauren Berlant writes that “something strange” has happened to American citizenship; there is now a need for public intimacy, for a “public rhetoric of personal trauma” so strong that it has created “mass national pain” that obscures differences among modes of identity (1997, pg. 1). In other words, the collective experience of national crises (like 9/11) helps bind together a national identity. This “coupling of suffering and citizenship,” as Berlant calls it, is especially visible in the Tweets listed above; not only is 9/11 invoked to rally the “real” Americans against Davuluri, it is also used to exclude those with Davuluri’s skin tone from the suffering that is a claim to U.S. citizenship. As I mentioned earlier, even acts of terrorism are classified as “domestic” or otherwise based on the claim of citizenship attributed to the terrorist body. As an American, Davuluri must have grieved like any other citizen when the Twin Towers were destroyed. As an individual of South-Asian descent,
Davuluri may have arguably suffered more than the average American since South
Asians became a target for hate-crimes after 9/11. However, excluding Davuluri – and any American South Asian, Arab, and/or Muslim – from the grief of a shared devastation denies them the solidarity needed to claim citizenship. Separating herself from
“Muslims” and reaffirming her “model” minority status not only helps protect Davuluri from discursive attacks, it also rescues her from tragic scapegoating. Her now highlighted immigrant status presents her as someone who could potentially be reoriented to
American society and participate in national mourning, thus making her a “candidate” for comic framing.
168 While citizenship is a visible thread in this episode, we also see traces of the
“American exceptionalism” narrative, which in turn completes Davuluri’s comic framing.
As Hariman and Lucaites point out in “Performing Civic Identity” (2002), images in the public media display the public to itself. I believe this is not limited to photographs, but written images as well. Because the vicious Twitterstorm about Davuluri displayed an embarrassing picture of America to itself, it became necessary to restore American exceptionalism, and the Miss America discourse executes this in two ways. First, Twitter users and news media outlets countered the racist Tweets and presented them as “non- representative” (or a “radical flank,” as I described earlier), thereby urging the public to see the racist Tweeters as a small and ignorant group. But much more interestingly, the discourse turned to speculating whether Davuluri would have been able to win had she not been in the United States. Several Tweeters commented that unlike India and other
Asian countries, the United States is unique in recognizing that dark skin beautiful:
What’s interesting is Miss America Nina Davuluri would never win
pageants in South Asia because she’d be too dark to be considered
beautiful
The question is whether a girl as dark as Nina Davuluri could possibly
have won Miss India? Knowing out fascination for fairness, maybe not!
169 Newly crowned Miss America Nina Davuluri is too dark to win Miss India
in India.
(2013h)
These Tweets draw the audience’s attention back to the real triumph: that a minority won
Miss America, and that the U.S. celebrates diversity and is therefore exceptional. The initial racist invective is swept away when one recognizes that, unlike other countries, the
United States is not gripped by an “irrational” obsession with light skin. The U.S. becomes exceptional in two ways: the racist Tweets become “exceptions” to mainstream
American values, and America’s respect for diversity becomes “exceptional” compared to the intolerance of the rest of the world. In fact, even Davuluri reinforces this sentiment in her interviews by echoing the American Dream:
People were saying that if I were in India it would have been more
difficult for me to win Miss India…I grew up in an Indian household, and
my parents, or my mom at least, bless her heart, would always say, "Don't
go out in the sun because you are going to get too dark"…there would be
times where [my Indian friends and I] would take a picture and they would
say, "Oh my god, delete that - I look so dark." That's just something that
we grew up with… [but] regardless of your gender, your race, your
170 ethnicity, socioeconomic status, anyone can truly follow their dreams,
become anything they want (2013i).
We see here that Davuluri presents her family, and immigrants more broadly, as acting “mistakenly” – misguided into thinking that dark skin is unattractive. Davuluri’s parents are acting out of folly and not viciousness, “bless their hearts.” Davuluri herself frames her parents as mistaken, which is precisely how Burke describes comic framing in
Attitudes Towards History. However, by implying that the U.S. allows the rehabilitation of such folly, Davuluri becomes a participant in her own comic framing.
Additionally, there is a fantasy theme displayed in this quote that is worth discussing in relation to the “model” minority and “moderate” Muslim narratives. Hart and Daughton (2005) describe myths as large narratives of exceptionalism that become the substance of cultural identity. In particular, they describe fantasy themes, which are abbreviated myths providing concrete manifestations of current values (pg. 236, emphasis mine). I bring this up because the Miss America 2014 discourse clearly presents a fantasy myth that contrasts an abbreviated vision of U.S. tolerance against Indian intolerance. To drive the point home, Davuluri presents the eschatological myth of the
American Dream as proof that in the United States, one can attain their goals despite their ethnicity or race. In this way, what began as unprecedented racism against Davuluri evolves into a narrative of American exceptionalism. In this way, by using Davuluri to reinforce its own positive values of tolerance, the thread of U.S. exceptionalism in this
171 controversy concludes the comic framing process by achieving retribution for the scapegoaters.
The reason I use the term “fantasy theme” here is because a fantasy theme
“abbreviates” the reasons for why hatred of dark skin exists in India: the nearly century- long British colonization of India. During this British Raj, light skin among Indians became coveted because it became the basis for better living conditions and even survival. If this sounds familiar, it is because enslaved Africans internalized a similar hatred of dark skin because lighter skin ensured a greater probability of survival.
However, the Tweets above describe this hatred of dark skin as an “Indian” problem, an irrational prejudice native to India. Therefore, through such fantasy themes, the United
States is able to distance itself from the prejudices its imperialists have helped create in other nations.
But what does any of this have to do with anti-Muslim sentiment? Fantasy themes produce exceptionalism discourses that are necessary for quarantining brown bodies and keeping anti-Muslim sentiment alive. In Modern Rhetorical Criticism, Hart and
Daughton point out that national history, or “that portion they choose to remember,” sustains the American public in moments of trouble (2005, pg. 235). In Terrorist
Assemblages (2007), Jasbir Puar details how the sexual humiliation and ritual torture of
Iraqi prisoners enabled the Bush administration to forge a crucial distinction between the supposed depravity of Abu Ghraib and the “freedom” being built in Iraq (pg. 80).
Therefore, the “exceptional freedom” the U.S. was bringing to Iraq overshadowed the
“exceptionally bad” behavior of Abu Ghraib wardens. Additionally, Puar introduces the 172 term, homonationalism, which invokes the nationalism of the queer community in to rally the American public against the perceived threat of the Other (2007). I am arguing that in times of trouble, we also see U.S. discourses invoke a form of “ethnonationalism” which invokes the nationalism of “model” minorities in the rally against “Muslim” bodies. In other words, it is the patriotic duty of all ethnic minorities – even those who experience daily discrimination – to rally against the more dangerous threat of “Muslim” terrorism.
Such ethnonationalism is visible in Nina Davuluri’s interviews and the Tweets from her supporters, which point out that she is “first and foremost an American.” She calls the racist Tweets a product of “ignorance.” However, she deliberately leaves the accusation of “ignorance” vague: were the racist Tweeters ignorant because they thought Muslims and Arabs were terrorists? No – the ignorance lay in confusing the South-Asian, Hindu
Davuluri with an Arab Muslim. Like homonationalism, the great trick of ethnonationalism is that it pretends an alliance between the status quo and minority groups, allowing them to rally against another minority group. This helps conceal the status quo, who no longer need to directly intervene in the disciplining of Muslim bodies.
Interestingly enough, a Muslim of Arab descent has won Miss USA (though not
Miss America) in the past, but she was not attacked in the same way Davuluri was. Rima
Fakih, a Muslim of Lebanese descent, took the crown four years before Davuluri. Though she did not escape unscathed, Fakih was not publicly attacked to the same degree as
Davuluri even though she actually is both Muslim and Arab. Part of this is because Fakih, as a Lebanese-Arab, is Caucasian, and anti-Muslim discourse does not indict the
Caucasian body. Additionally, her high-profile work as a reality TV star and WWE 173 model, and leaked photographs of her pole-dancing, helped mark her as recognizably
“non” Muslim. However, Davuluri performed a classical Indian dance as part of her
“talent,” which, together with her brown body, marked her as “Other.”
Through this case study, I have parsed out the threads of citizenship and exceptionalism that run through the 2014 Miss America controversy. I examine how style framed Miss Kansas as the heroic figure in Nina Davuluri’s initial tragic scapegoating.
Furthermore, I demonstrate how Nina Davuluri’s tragic scapegoating is abruptly halted by dissociating her from Muslims, and how her comic framing is initiated through the preexisting “model minority” discourse. In the next section, I take up a second case study to demonstrate how style mediates comic framing in the “moderate” Muslim discourse.
CHOOSING THE CHAINS: WHEN MUSLIMS DEPLOY COMIC FRAMING
In this section, I examine the work of Muslim-American comedian Azhar Usman, focusing on two of his routines. The first is a Town Hall for America Abroad, moderated by CNN’s Mithat Bereket. In this routine, Usman performs an extended stand-up act and then answers questions from the audience. His second routine is from his 2004 comedy world tour titled “Allah made me Funny,” co-performed with comedians Preacher Moss and Azeem Muhammad. I selected Usman not just for his popularity and influence, but for his personal style and the content of his jokes. Additionally, he is one of few
American-Muslim comedians whose Muslim identity becomes the butt of many of his jokes, rather than his immigrant status or his Arab identity (which would be impossible, since Usman is of South Asian descent). 174 With the waves of anti-Muslim sentiment and counterterrorism measures since
9/11, many Muslims have turned to humor to make sense of the discursive attacks they face. Certainly Azhar Usman and a slew of Muslim and Arab comedians have emerged in the U.S. in recent years, along with YouTube videos made by Muslims parodying Islamic ritual and Muslim “generation” gaps. I make private jokes about terrorism discourse as well, and when I was pregnant my friends threw me an “anchor baby” themed shower. It is not unusual for a targeted community to respond to discursive attacks with humor, partly to make sense of the attacks but also to respond to their frustrations safely. After all, it would be difficult to construct a Muslim as “angry” if s/he responds to a discursive attack with humor. And of course, the exaggeration that humor enables is ideal for exposing the anti-Muslim sentiment in everyday discourse. For instance, when
Newsweek ran a cover titled “Muslim Rage” in September 2012, featuring throngs of screaming, bearded Muslims, Muslims on Twitter were quick to co-opt the headline and turn it into a satirical hashtag:
“I’m having such a good hair day. No one even knows.
#MuslimRage”
“When you realize that if you have a 5 o’clock shadow it can be
deemed a security threat. #MuslimRage”
175 “When you have no hijab to go with your cute outfit you just
bought #MuslimRage #waitwut”
(2012r)
These Tweets are a clear example of reorienting the audience from a tragically scapegoated Muslim terrorist to a comically framed Muslim population that frets about their style. Sartorial style and grooming features prominently in these Tweets, as headscarves and beards are recognized by the mainstream as
“Islamic markers.” My personal favorite ironic term for hijab style is the term
“bangjabi,” a condescending term for Muslim women who cover their hair but leave their bangs visible. There is no doubt that humor and comedy are important outlets for U.S. Muslims responding to anti-Muslim sentiment, and it engages style to reorient its audience towards Muslims.
In this section, I argue that Azhar Usman’s comedy re-frames Muslims as comic rather than tragic, and he accomplishes this reorientation through style.
First of all, much of Usman’s humor derives from the incongruity of his appearance and his speech. He is a burly, swarthy, heavily bearded man – in short, he is the very image of the feared Muslim “terrorist” as constructed by U.S. media. However, Usman wastes no time making a joke about his appearance, saying that he is aware the audience has “never seen someone who looks like
[him] smile before,” before smiling broadly and posing. With this remark, Usman 176 makes a direct comment on his personal style to reorient the audience: here is a man who, admittedly, looks quite terrifying, but he appears amenable and can possibly be reintegrated into society.
Next, Usman makes a more obvious foray into the “moderate” Muslim discourse.
He introduces two characters: Radical Imam Sheikh Abdul, and Uncle Letmesplainyou.
These characters embody all the stereotypical traits of the hated Muslim fundamentalists.
The Radical Imam is both petty and provincial, spewing hate speech against non-
Muslims while complaining about the parking situation around the mosque. Meanwhile, the Uncle character brags about the growth of the Muslim community every opportunity he gets, focusing on their increasing wealth and power. What is fascinating about these characters is how neatly they round out the “moderate” Muslim rhetoric: they are the obvious foil to the “good” American-Muslims, and are the true (tragic) scapegoats. As I was transcribing the segment, it occurred to me that Usman was actually performing a tragic scapegoating of his very own within his routine: the Imam and the Uncle represent everything that Usman, and Muslims in general, detest about Islamic practice. Therefore, they become the negative vessel, as they embody all the negative traits Muslims are accused of. Once Usman pours these undesirable “Muslim” traits into these two characters, it becomes easier to see Usman and those like him as “moderate” Muslims.
Usman’s comedy also offers perspective by incongruity and emphasizes scene over actors to facilitate comic framing. In a particularly deft set-up, Usman compares the
Muslim festival of Eid to Christmas and Halloween, highlighting how the relative austerity of Eid cannot compete with the consumerism of the other two holidays: 177
[W]hen you’re a little kid and you don’t get to celebrate Christmas, c’mon
that sucks. And truthfully people, we have to educate America. Okay we
have holidays, Eid, and no offense to my Muslim brothers and sisters, but
if you’re a Muslim in America, Eid sucks. That’s right, we can’t compete
man! Christmas, everybody’s going crazy. Halloween, they’re giving
away free candy! We tell our kids “You’re gonna fast for a month. Then
I’m gonna take you to an empty parking garage to pray. Come on let’s go,
Eid Mubarak. Get in the car, let’s go. Eid Mubarak, that’s a holiday. And
if anybody asks, yes, Eid is the word die spelled backwards. Come on, get
in the car”
(Usman, 2008).
After that, Usman jokes about Muslims in the workforce requesting time off for
Eid:
[W]e Muslims in the West, we have to spend a lot of time explaining
ourselves to other…when we need an Eid holiday, you go to your
employer “I need my most important holiday, you see – Eid holiday, I
have to have it, this is the most important time for a Muslim” And the
employer’s like “ok, no problem. When is it?” “I have no idea…Monday, 178 Tuesday, or could be Wednesday. I don’t know, so I tell you what – you
give me the whole week off”
(Usman, 2008).
In both these monologues, Usman switches between playing himself (a
“moderate” Muslim, a child on Eid, and an employer) and Uncle Letmesplainyou (the statements within quotes), who takes pleasure in using Islam for minor anarchies. He creates perspective by incongruity when he frames Eid as a sort of subdued Christmas, situating the two festivals on the same axis even as he comically frames the former. He implies that the asceticism of Eid can be remedied with a little candy and consumerism, and that such a remedy will no longer make Eid “suck” for “Muslim kid[s] in America.”
He presents Islam as a stubborn sibling to other American religions rather than a dangerous threat, and highlights the centrality of consumption and style to a cohesive national identity. The incongruity that gives perspective here is that Eid, despite its minimalism, is a celebration not unlike Christianity and Halloween. That Usman compares a Muslim holiday to Halloween, a hedonistic celebration, is truly an incongruous perspective. However, it has the effect of demystifying Eid and therefore making it less suspect. In this way, we can mock the transgressions and burdens of Islam along with Usman, but also reorient it back into the community through style. By attributing the dullness of Eid to Uncle Letmesplainyou, Usman helps his audience separate the conservative from the “moderate” Muslim. Because the latter is not opposed 179 to more consumption and festivity, he is worth bringing back into the fold of the community.
Additionally, Usman makes a joke of how Muslims approach labor and the means of production in the United States. Through the exchange between Uncle Letmesplainyou and his reasonable employer, we learn that Muslims do not have a clear grasp of labor expectations and think nothing of making unreasonable requests for time off. On the other hand, a “moderate” Muslim would understand the norms of requesting time off in the United States. Once again, Usman presents the radical Muslim as gauche rather than dangerous, and offers himself as a contrast – a “moderate,” amenable Muslim.
Furthermore, in both these monologues, Usman subtly gestures to the significance of scene. Eid is subdued because it is taking place in the United States, where the Muslim population is small. Taking a week off for Eid seems unreasonable because construal of time in the United States is particularly rigid. Even as Usman mocks these Islamic traits, he points out that they only become ludicrous in a larger American context. Once again, this shift from actor to scene reorients the audience and facilitates the comic framing process.
Next, Usman addresses perceptions of Muslim violence by comparing it to the normalization of violence in the United States. This provides a surprising perspective by incongruity, as Usman points out that violence can go undetected if performed by
“mainstream” bodies. During a monologue on greetings, he compares the Muslim greeting of salaam to the way “white guys” greet each other. Usman explains that the
Muslim greeting as-salam-u-alaikum translates into “may peace be with you.” On the 180 other hand, Usman notes that “white guys” greet each other playfully with shooting gestures and punches:
What’s up with the white guys, they always greet each other with violence
(makes shooting gesture and assumes Southern accent) “Hey, how the
heck are ya?” (normal voice) “You just shot me man! (makes a punching
gesture and resumes Southern accent) “C’mon, cut it out” (normal voice)
“Stop punching me man!” (Usman, 2004)
In this enactment, Usman shifts between performing himself and a caricaturized
Southern male. In a curious way, the seeming obliviousness of the Southern man mirrors the “radical” Muslim characters Usman also plays: both parties are unaware of their transgressions. Usman points out that if “shooting” gestures can become a normalized component of American greetings, we need to reconsider the alleged “violence” of
Muslims as well. Once again, Usman points to the larger context to shift attention away from the actors to the norms of the context. And interestingly enough, Usman accomplishes this through two stylistic elements: accent and gesture. Because so much anti-Muslim sentiment focuses on the Muslim body, Usman shrewdly brings the Western
(Southern) body into the comedic arena to offer a foil. In this way, Usman demonstrates that the “radical” Muslim flank curiously mirrors the “radical” Western flank. Therefore, if a radical Western flank can be integrated into U.S. national identity, a “moderate”
Muslim can be too. Additionally, we see echoes of Burke’s explanation of comic 181 framing in Usman’s joke: Usman demonstrates how people are “necessarily mistaken” and that every insight “contains its own special kind of blindness” (Burke, 1937, pg. 41).
The mainstream-American eye becomes blind to the normalized “shooting” gesture while remaining sensitive to the visible “violence” of Muslims.
Finally, Usman raises the idea of “moderate” Muslims entering the public sphere through politics. In doing so, he once again contrasts a “moderate” Muslim with a radical one to make a case for why the former can be re-integrated into society. Additionally,
Usman draws an unlikely parallel between the U.S. system of democracy and Arab monarchies. He begins with a call for Muslims to become more politically involved:
We’re not a very politically active community, we’re not a politically
organized community – that makes me sad cuz this is in spite of the fact
that we have conference, after conference, after conference about what?
Muslimparticipationinthepoliticalprocess (said as one word). Always that
one guy at the conference, real passionate right, (assumes South Asian
accent) “We need more Muslim politicians! We need more Muslims in the
media! Arey bhai we need more Muslim policy-makers!” (regular voice)
“What about you uncle, you have three sons, what do they do?” (resumes
South Asian accent) “Masha’Allah, they’re all doctors. I’m so proud of
them, even though one of them had to go to the Caribbean”
(Usman, 2004) 182
Here, Usman again enacts a “moderate” Muslim as well as the narrow minded Uncle who serves as a foil. Because the Uncle is a hypocrite and zealot, we can easily distinguish him from the “moderate” Muslim. He engages components of style to make the distinction clear. Certainly, there is the shift from accent to accent, with the “regular voice” or unmarked American accent being the voice of reason – the “moderate.”
Meanwhile, the South Asian accent represents the radical who is “real passionate” at
Muslim conferences. When Usman switches from accent to accent, he also changes character through posture and gesture. As the “South Asian radical,” Usman speaks in a loud, strangled voice, pointing directly at the audience, eyes wide. When he switches back to his own voice, he lowers his voice and stands up straight, conveying uprightness and reasonability through his very posture. Usman performs these radical Muslim figures throughout his routine, and they form useful (tragic) scapegoats that the most egregious
“Muslim behavior” can be blamed on. As a result, this separates out the “moderates” who can then safely be reintegrated into society.
Finally, Usman closes his routine with a potshot at George W. Bush, making a surprising comparison between Arab autocracies and the U.S. democracy:
I feel that we as Muslims living in the West should be excited to exercise
our rights to vote in a democracy! Because I don’t know if you guys know
this, there’s still a lot of Muslim countries that have kings. Pftt. What is
this, the 15th century? … Actually, it is according to the Islamic calendar. 183 That’s a good point. But nevertheless, can you imagine living in a country
where they choose a leader based on who his daddy was?! Ridiculous!
Some backwards people right there!
(Usman, 2004)
Here, Usman implies that the U.S. political system is not unlike an Arab-Muslim autocracy, like Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. He deftly provides perspective by incongruity, forcing his audience to re-imagine the U.S. democratic system as a nepotistic regime. In doing so, he compels his audience to admit to a sin that they accuse
Muslims of: an inability to embrace democracy. Once again, Usman draws attention to the system – or the context – rather than to the individual actors. In doing so, he suggests that society is responsible for creating “radicals” and “moderates,” and that a “moderate”
Islam is a product of U.S. society.
In this way, the “moderate” Muslim discourse disciplines the Muslim body to maintain social cohesion and re-produce national identity. Due to the influence of style on social cohesion and nationalism, Muslim “moderation” is determined by the consumption, consumerism, and the consequent (in)visibility of Muslim individuals.
Because Muslims have a long history of being scapegoated in the United States, U.S.
Muslims are applying the “moderate” Muslim rhetoric to achieve comic framing for themselves and escape the more destructive tragic scapegoating.
184 To understand this process, or the shift in the scapegoating process, I turned to
Burkean theory. This is not just because Burke developed theories of scapegoating, but also because he provides us with a grammar for reading motives. There is a motive to creating the “moderate” Muslim rhetoric, and that is to scapegoat those who cannot attain that fantasy. There is a motive behind Muslims claiming the “moderate” Muslim label, and that is to achieve comic framing and escape the tragic frame. In the quest for
“moderation,” however, the “moderate” Muslim must sometimes tragically frame the
“radical Muslim,” who becomes the sin-bearing vessel that is destroyed. Because the
“moderate” Muslim designation rallies U.S. national identity by excluding “radicals,” attaining “moderate” status allows American-Muslims to achieve a degree of inclusion.
However, it is difficult to examine the precise execution of this comic framing process without considering theories of rhetorical style. As I described earlier, Burke is no stranger to style as a theory-building instrument; indeed, style undergirds his work on symbolic action. However, the “moderate” Muslim discourse itself demands conspicuous consumption by Muslims. Given that Muslim scapegoating is a product of preserving national identity, this equation of “moderation” with “consumption” says something significant about U.S. national identity. It suggests that national identity is not just overtly capitalistic, but also that it is impossible to even imagine a national identity without the specter of capitalism.
At this point, I find myself returning to a tired old quote by Rousseau: freedom is the power to choose the chains that bind us. To me, this curiously mirrors the thought of
U.S. Muslims attempting to choose how they are “corrected.” They are using the 185 “moderate” Muslim rhetoric as their instrument to do so, which is unmistakably a set of chains that binds Muslims in a particular way. However, it is difficult to see this as a form of freedom, if not progress. This comic framing comes with consequences. It forces
Muslims to assimilate. It necessitates tragically scapegoating some of their own community in the process. It forces Muslims to perform a version of national identity that may be inauthentic to them. It compels them to relinquish certain Islamic practices. And such comic framing is by no means restricted to Muslims in the U.S.; for instance,
African-Americans who are deemed “articulate” are experiencing, and performing for, a similar expectation of “moderation.”24 Eventually, they – like Muslims – must discipline their bodies in order to be comically framed or else face tragic scapegoating. Therefore, the “moderate” Muslim discourse is part of a larger marginalizing rhetoric that forces its victims to internalize hierarchies of power for their own survival.
IMAM SUHAIB WEBB: PREACHING (AMERICAN STYLE)
In the two previous case studies, I examine how style enables comic framing through the “moderate” Muslim trope. Now, I turn to the significance of style in constructing a “moderate” Muslim that reifies national conceptions of masculinity,
24 In his 1996 stand up tour Bring the Pain, Chris Rock famously demonstrated a version of this comic framing when he talked about the differences between “Black people” and “niggaz.” Rock explained that “niggaz have got to go” because every time “Black people try to do something fun, niggaz come and fuck it up. Can’t keep a disco open three weeks without ignint [sic] niggaz coming and shutting it down.” He goes on to say that the safest place to hide your money is in books, because “niggaz don’t read” and that “books are like kryptonite to niggaz.” It is possible that Rock is making a nuanced critique of respectability politics, or he is simply tragically scapegoating “niggaz” in order to distinguish them from the comically- framed, put-upon, respectable “Black people.” In an almost perfect parallel to Usman’s work, Rock then goes on to talk about “broke ass White people” eating “mayonnaise sandwiches” all over the country, thus establishing that there are broke, “irresponsible” White people who are just like “niggaz” just as Usman points out there are intolerant White people just as there are “extreme” Muslims 186 religious practice, and authenticity. Therefore, I apply a purely stylistic approach in this analysis and step away from the Burkean component of comic framing, which I have already demonstrated through my earlier case studies. In this final case study, I examine the preaching style of influential American Muslim preacher Imam Suhaib Webb.
Specifically, I examine his language and sartorial style and draw from various sources of his work to examine his style, including his Twitter feed, sermons, and TV interviews.
My goal for this section, then, is three fold. First, I explore how Webb establishes authenticity as a Muslim and American, and does so through style. Second, I explore the role of Webb’s sartorial style and language in forwarding a “moderate” Muslim image to counter the threat of “radicalism.” And third, I examine how Webb’s particular brand of masculinity (as an American Muslim) help reify national U.S. ethos.
Webb is a noted “moderate” Muslim leader in the U.S., and he is known for his
“relatable” sermons that advocate an “American Islam.” He also happens to be
Caucasian, a significant point I discuss later. In a unique stylistic move, he also engages elements of hip-hop performance in his preaching. These disparate components of style, coupled with his ethos as a White male, make a fascinating study in “moderate” Muslim performance. Webb was born into a Christian family but lost interest in religion. He later became a Muslim at age 19, and studied Arabic and Islamic studies. He is known for being the present Imam of the Islamic Society of Boston’s Cultural Center (ISBCC), the largest Islamic center in New England, and for his public lectures and sermons on
Muslim matters, particularly in the United States.
187 Imam Webb’s approach is notable for two things: his appeal to the Muslim youth, and his emphasis on an American Islam. During his 20s, he experienced an identity crisis that he said stemmed from being a Muslim in America. He believed that he could seek out a more “authentic” Islam in the Middle East, but discovered otherwise through his years of Islamic study (Reuters, 2011) Now, he is an advocate for the American-Muslim identity, believing Islam to be an “all-American” religion – an idea I introduced in
Chapter 2. Meanwhile, Webb’s Twitter feed and website deal with contemporary
Muslim, and more broadly U.S., issues. He comments on Donald Trump’s feud with the
Pope. He talks about the value of “communication” in relationships. He urges his readers to tell their significant others that they love them on Valentine’s Day. But perhaps more importantly, he uses uniquely American case studies in his sermons. In a talk on
“patience and perseverance” at the Muslim Community Association, he urged Muslims
“not to give up” because the Montgomery bus boycotters, the Jewish community, and
“our Hispanic brothers and sisters” did not cower and give up in the face of hardship
(Webb, 2015a).
At this point, I want to note that Webb has long been considered an influential
“moderate” Muslim voice in the United States. According to a series of leaked UK government documents in 2004, Prime Minister Blair was interested in cultivating “the hand of moderate Muslim leaders,” and Webb was one of four individuals named in these documents (World Socialist Website, 2004). Of course, this clearly echoes the sentiment of tokenism, where select minorities operate on the turf of the dominant under their approval (Cloud, 1996). Meanwhile, New York congressman Peter King identified Webb 188 and his efforts as the kind of “moderate” Islamic lead the country needed (Reuters, 2011).
Furthermore, Webb received wide recognition for raising $20,000 for the widows of New
York firefighters killed in aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. In this case, it is not Webb’s efforts as much as the cause towards which he was directing his efforts that marks him as
“one of the good ones.” That Webb took a high-profile stance against the 9/11 attacks addresses the familiar refrain that “more Muslims need to stand up and denounce terrorism.”25 Furthermore, Webb’s journey into adulthood contains elements of both the
American Dream and American exceptionalism. In his early teen years, he began to engage in delinquency and joined a local gang. Later, he became a hip-hop DJ and produced records with several artists. It was during his time as a DJ that he became exposed to an “American” version of Islam due to the strong presence of Muslim rappers in the late 80s. After becoming a convert at age 19, he struggled with his American identity until his later travel and Islamic studies helped him develop the notion of the
“American Islam” he forwards in his sermons.
Before I discuss Webb’s “authenticity,” as an American and as a Muslim, it is important to note that he is marked in a particular way that increases his chances of being perceived as “moderate:” he is Caucasian. He often remarks on this in his sermons, recognizing that mainstream America does not associate Muslims with European
25 Both Fox News and CNN anchors reliably use this phrase in the wake of “Muslim” terror attacks: after the Boston Marathon Bombings; the San Bernadino attacks; and certainly the 9/11 attacks, to name a few. It parallels the refrain “why don’t more people talk about Black on Black violence” in the wake of police shootings of unarmed Black individuals. Of course, Muslim leaders quickly and routinely denounce terror attacks (most notably, Imam Webb himself spent a week denouncing the Boston Bombing), but the fact remains that they are often not provided a platform to do so forcefully. And of course, the very expectation that Muslims ought to take responsibility and apologize for such attacks is obviously flawed 189 ancestry. He comments on this in a CBS interview, saying he does not “look” like a
Muslim preacher (The State of Religion in America, 2013). He took this one step further at a sermon at the Annual Muslim American Society, where he drew on his race and his clothing to comment on intersectional Muslim identities. He opened the sermon saying
“it’s very interesting being a blonde-haired, blue-eyed man with a daulah Falastina
[Palestinian State] shirt on,” grabbing the lapels of his jacket to show his t-shirt more clearly (Webb, 2015b). But why does Webb’s ethnicity mark him as a moderate? It’s because it doesn’t mark him. Because anti-Muslim sentiment relies on racial markers to exclude certain bodies, Webb’s race does not mark him as Muslim. This means that he is not a visible threat, which is one of the expectations of the “moderate” Muslim. Webb is integrated by his very body.
Authenticity as a Muslim, Authenticity as an American
Although Webb is racially integrated in the U.S. population and therefore immediately less of a “Muslim threat,” this very integration calls his Muslim authenticity into question. Imam Webb occupies the unique position of needing to claim authenticity as both an American and a Muslim, and he relies on style to accomplish both. As a
Caucasian, Oklahoma-born man, he must claim authenticity among the immigrant
Muslim population, which constitutes about 63% of all U.S. Muslims (Pew Research
Center 2015). And perhaps ironically, he needs to establish that authenticity among mainstream non-Muslims as well, since U.S. discourse identifies Muslim bodies as non-
White and often non-American. But on the other hand, and perhaps more importantly, as a Muslim male he must authenticate his American citizenship as well. As a high-profile 190 Muslim, Webb’s citizenship must prove two things: first, that he is culturally integrated.
And second, that he is a patriotic American who subscribes to nationalism, and even exceptionalism discourse. Naturally, this goes far beyond simply producing a passport and birth certificate; he must actively demonstrate that he does not sympathize with
“Muslim extremism.” Public fear of Muslims is so high, and perceptions so negative, that it has become unpatriotic to even seek to understand the motives of terror attacks. This is unique to events framed as Muslim terrorism. Therefore, Webb is in a double bind, where he must demonstrate both authentic American and Muslim identity.
Let me begin by exploring how he establishes his Muslim identity. Webb employs a combination of sartorial and language-based style. In many of his sermons, he is seen wearing a long tunic and a kufi, a small cap similar to a Jewish yarmulke. These are classic markers associated with Muslim identity, and men are encouraged to wear kufis in mosques and/or during prayer. However, he appears to favor suits or button-down shirts in “outreach” appearances; he often wears blazers or shirts in televised interviews or panel discussions of Islam. This demonstrates audience awareness on the simplest level: he wears recognizably Arab clothing (i.e. the tunics and ankle-length thawbs) and the kufi, which is a recognizably Islamic marker, when addressing Muslim congregations.
Meanwhile, he leans towards attire that is not religiously marked in settings outside mosques even when the audience is primarily Muslim (as visible in his commencement addresses at the Institute of Knowledge and Bayan Islamic University in Claremont).
Although Imam Webb typically sports a long beard, he appeared on a religious panel on
CBS clean-shaven, wearing a black suit with a polka-dotted tie. Two of the other 191 panelists, a pastor and a bishop, wore crucifixes and clerical collars. The interviewer wasted no time in telling Webb that he did not “fit the preconceived notion” of what an imam should look like, because he is “American-born” and was attempting to introduce an “American Islam” to his congregants. Perhaps Webb’s goal was to be framed as an
“unexpected imam” so that he could introduce his philosophy, and he deliberately dressed in a way to match that expectation. Therefore, Webb’s appearance clearly demonstrates audience awareness as well as self-awareness as he mediates his race through style based on the context. Webb is able to be a particularly effective
“spokesperson” for Islam due to his ability to style himself as a “moderate Muslim” when the situation demands it.
However, Webb’s style is far more rooted in his use of language than sartorial style, and his language is a far more interesting component to study because it plays a larger role in establishing his “American” authenticity. He describes his purposeful use of language as an “American-esque style” of speaking and observes that “many of the
[Muslim] clergy weren’t able to speak the language [of young Muslims], or speak to the congregation in a way that was really effective” (CBS The State of Religion in America,
2013). Webb is clearly thoughtful about his style of speaking, and notes that his style is heavily informed by the demographics of his congregation, since 40% of U.S. Muslims are below 30 years of age. Bearing this in mind, Webb grounds his “American” identity in his use of slang as well as Hip-Hop Nation Language in his sermons. Let me address the slang first. Webb frequently peppers his sermons and discussions with phrases like
“aw snap” and “think ahead of the game bro” (Webb, 2015c). In one of his sermons, he 192 references Twitter when he comments on narcissism saying “hashtag you’re not important” (Webb, 2015a). This is absolutely deliberate on Webb’s part, who recognizes the large youthful Muslim population as well as the U.S.-born Muslim population, who feel alienated from the more traditional forms of Islamic sermons that are delivered keeping first generation immigrants in mind. Webb is able to bolster his youth appeal through his use of Twitter, where he regularly Tweets out jokes, workout tips and political commentary in addition to verses from the Qur’an, hadith, and Islamic teachings. There is no denying that Webb is making a concerted effort to appeal to the
Muslim youth in America, and young Muslim Americans are largely U.S.-born, often converts, and – in Webb’s own words – very “Westernized” (The State of Religion in
America, 2013). By prioritizing this stratum of Muslims, Webb shines a light on a group that is an immense departure from the prototype of the terrorist, who is often a foreign born male, typically brown-skinned, and certainly not acculturated to the United States.
In other words, part of Webb’s “moderation” derives from the fact that he appeals to a “moderate” base, which is evident in the language and cultural references he makes to appeal to this base. The slang he uses also acts as a foil to the Arabic he uses to establish his authenticity as a Muslim. In particular, Webb weaves verses from the
Qur’an and the sayings of Prophet Muhammad into each sermon, and beings all his talks with a recitation from the Qur’an. Webb is recognized for being fluent in Arabic, having studied in Egypt on a scholarship from the Muslim American Society (MAS). In his sermons, Webb makes it a point to switch to Arabic rather than simply translate verses from the Qur’an when providing textual evidence – at times, to a distracting degree. 193 However, this demonstration of fluency is a key component to establishing his authenticity not just as a Muslim, but as a White American convert who is now a Muslim leader. Therefore, Imam Webb’s language – the slang mingled with Arabic – establishes both his American and Muslim authenticity. However, it is worth asking whether such a tactic merges these two identity components, or simply acknowledges them. In A
Rhetoric of Social Style, Barry Brummett observes that wearing clothes across racial lines does not mean the clothes are not still demarcating those lines (2008, pg. 48). For instance, sagging pants or cornrow braids on White Americans still separate Whiteness from Blackness. I think the same is true of the language Webb wears during sermons; his use of Arabic, while establishing his credentials as an Islamic scholar, also fragment the various components of his identity. Through his language use, Webb is introducing two radical ideas at once: that Islam is an American religion, and that Americans can speak
Arabic. The trouble is that neither premise is currently accepted by the mainstream.
Therefore, while Webb does indeed manage to establish authenticity as an American and as a Muslim, as a “simple man from Oklahoma” (as he calls himself) and as a religious scholar, it is difficult to reconcile these disparate authenticities. It is perhaps this reason – that the mantle of “Muslim” does not sit quite comfortably on Webb’s shoulders from a stylistic point of view — that allows him to be read as “moderate.”
Creating the “Moderate” through Masculinity, Coolness, and the Black Cause
Anyone who watches a handful of Imam Webb sermons and interviews will notice his allusions to Black culture. He frequently uses African-American Vernacular
Language (AAVE) and Hip-Hop Nation Language (HHNL) in his sermons. Webb uses 194 HHNL phrases like “cruisin’ for a bruisin’” and AAVE double-negatives like “ain’t no need to talk to daddy” in Q&A panels (Webb, 2012). He also repeatedly references his involvement with hip-hop culture as a college student when describing his journey towards Islam. Webb joined an Oklahoma gang and became a hip-hop DJ and music producer as a teenager. In a talk at Bayan Claremont University, Webb explained that his first contact with Islam took place while he and his friends were “smoking marijuana…and listening to Dr. Dre,” and one of his friends turned to him and started talking about Islam (2015d). Webb is also no stranger to protesting violence against
African-Americans. In a sermon titled “I Can’t Breathe,” Webb talked about the “gift” of breath and how it was taken from Eric Garner, a Black man strangled to death by U.S. law enforcement. He made a call for the community to band together, regardless of faith, to protect humanity (2014). Webb delivered a sermon titled “The Danger of Hubris and the Murder of Trayvon Martin” wearing a black hoodie, pulling the hood on as he made a comparison between Trayvon’s attire and the attire of Muslims, both triggers for persecution.
There are several noteworthy things about Webb’s use of AAVE and HHNL, and his references to Black oppression. First, I mentioned earlier that it is difficult for Webb to reconcile Arabic with American slang; however, his use of AAVE and his alignment with the Black oppression provide the missing link. As I discussed in Chapter 2, there is a clear link between Black America and Islam, and Black Islam is recognizable through the public presence of the Nation of Islam, the Five Percenters, and high-profile athletes and activists like Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X. Therefore, Webb’s investment in Black 195 solidarity and Black culture makes sense from an Islamic perspective. However, the elements of Black language and culture in Webb’s sermons also provide the missing link between his American and Muslim identities. As a White individual, Webb would have struggled with authenticity if he incorporated AAVE and HHNL in his speech; after all, using language across racial lines, too, demarcates those lines. However, his Muslim identity coupled with his youthful participation in hip-hop culture helps validate his
Black cultural performances, which in turn roots both his Muslim and American identities.
However, the strands of Blackness in Webb’s persona help perpetuate an ideology central to American nationalism: the American Dream. Webb is an example of how an individual can rise from a delinquent, rudderless existence to becoming a leader at one of the largest Islamic centers in the U.S. The American Dream posits that the United States allows social mobility for anyone willing to work hard, because the nation affords liberty, democracy, and civil rights to everyone. The American Dream is particularly embedded in Civil Rights rhetoric, as it is in the title of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 historical speech at the March on Washington, and in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. King compared the sit-ins and nonviolent resistance shaped by his leadership as “standing up for the best in the American dream” (1963). Meanwhile, Oprah Winfrey frequently cites the American Dream when describing Black success. There is no denying that the
American Dream runs through Civil Rights discourse and is also heavily critiqued by it.
However, Webb fulfills the American Dream in an interesting way. In sermons and interviews, he frequently references his drug use and delinquency as a youth and also 196 mentions his promiscuity and gang participation. While these are not components of
Black culture, they are clearly associated with hip-hop culture and heavily referenced in rap music. In fact, several prominent rappers are known for being drug dealers and gang members before they became successful artists,26 thus fulfilling the American Dream themselves. Webb uses his own background to illustrate how he gained enlightenment, but in doing so he reinforces the American Dream, and thus his own American identity by extension, presenting him as a true “moderate.” It is important to remember, however, that as a White male Webb had greater access to the American Dream, yet his background and performance of Black culture (although they do not necessarily eclipse his race) do present his journey as a quintessentially American success story: an individual who was able to leave behind a life of crime and moral waywardness to become a religious leader. In this way, Webb’s troubling background ironically helps present him as a “moderate” because he deftly weaves together his own race with Civil
Rights Discourse, popular culture, and the American Dream.
There are two more things to be said about Webb’s performance of Black culture and its role in presenting him as a “moderate” Muslim. Webb enacts a deeply conventional form of masculinity, and his call-outs to Black culture bolster this. Webb’s heteronormativity is central to establishing him as a religious leader, since male leads is normative in U.S. religious leadership. However, Webb’s espousal of heteronormative style is an important factor in rooting his “moderation” because it provides a conduit for
26 Most notably Jay Z and 50 Cent, who both dealt crack cocaine and were targeted by gang violence on multiple occasions 197 Webb to continue enacting his American identity. Certainly his burly appearance, his openness about his past drug use and promiscuity, establish a base-level of aggression associated with masculinity that is familiar to the U.S. mainstream. However, for Webb, it also opens the door to perform conventional masculinity in other ways – ways that present him as unambiguously American. In particular, Webb frequently makes sports references in his sermons and interviews, saying that he “loves the Sooners, hate[s] the
Longhorns, you know, the whole nine yards… [and] a Celtics fan” (CBS The State of
Religion in America, 2013). Sports metaphors also make their way into his sermons:
“you have to think ahead of the game bro” (Webb, 2015c). While Webb only mentions sports occasionally, he does it deliberately at incongruous moments when it is unexpected and seemingly irrelevant, often to comic effect. However, these references establish his loyalty to place, i.e. Oklahoma and Boston, through his loyalty to sports teams. Once again, this is important to establishing his American identity, and it is one of the safest ways of doing so. Aligning oneself with a sports team is a quick way to establish school and state pride, thus also implying social class and national identity. Richard Lipsky traces the use of sports language in political campaigns, where its symbolic strength is able to obscure the complex modes of political communication (1979). Sports, and watching sports, occupy a unique place in U.S. gender identity formation because it goes beyond a bonding activity to become a “site of masculine affirmation and inscription”
(Winslow, 2009, pg. 87). This is what the sports language in Webb’s discourse reaches towards as well; it allows Webb to opt into this performance of U.S. masculinity, which is unquestionably an important component of gender and national identity. His mentions 198 of sports teams bolster his image of a “simple man from Oklahoma,” while (perhaps deliberately) gliding over the more complex parts of his American-Muslim identity – thereby allowing him to buy into a component of American masculinity that is not in opposition to Islamic principle. This does not mean that Webb does not or will not tackle those complexities, or that his investment in sports is inauthentic. Rather, his ability to funnel components of his identity through a sports lens makes him an ideal representative of the Muslims community for the mainstream, who expect an American imam who is familiar with sports culture and brings a familiar brand of masculinity that does not challenge any gender norms.
Furthermore, Webb’s ability to authentically participate in sports culture and therefore U.S. masculinity undermines the idea that he possesses the sexuality of terrorism aligned with “radical” Muslims. This hypertrophied heterosexuality, as Jasbir
Puar terms it, is a failed sexuality because it fails to achieve monogamy (since
Orientalized Arabs are necessarily polygamous), and therefore akin to a disability (2007, pg. 38). In particular, such terrorist sexuality is characterized by sexual deviancy and perversion, as was visible in the media’s preoccupation with Saddam Hussein’s “sex dungeon,” for instance. Because I apply Burkean scapegoating earlier in this chapter, I would be remiss not to mention that U.S. soldiers in Abu Ghraib enacted these very sexual deviancies and inflicted them on their scapegoat, i.e. their Arab and Muslim prisoners. However, to return to Webb’s performance of masculinity, it is interesting to note that he aligns himself with U.S. gender norms through his commitment to sports,
199 thus separating himself from the sexuality of terrorism and identifying with national gender ideology.
Finally, Webb’s engagement of Black and Hip-Hop culture, masculinity, and sports create a product indispensible to his “moderate” image: coolness. He is cognizant of this coolness and sums it up in his approach to preaching: he describes himself as a
“grass-roots imam” who can talk to Jay Z and Kobe Bryant (CBS, The State of Religion in America). Once again, we see Webb’s investment in young American Muslims and
Black culture, as well as his pride in being able to appeal to the former by drawing on the latter. There is no denying that Webb is cognizant of coolness, and its value in reaching in to his congregants while reaching out to mainstream America. Barry Brummett describes coolness as a “circulating commodity,” wherein association with the commodity or its user allows others to gain a measure of coolness as well (2008, pg. 14).
In Webb’s case, the commodities are clear: he draws from sports and popular Black culture, both of which are unflinchingly aligned with U.S. masculinity. Certainly these commodities do not represent the entire masculine experience, but it is precisely the function of style that allows individuals to be pulled together as imaginary communities
(Brummett, Rhetoric of Style, pg. 120). It is the “cohesive nature of style that…act[s] as a unifying center, pulling together diffused identities into collective groups” (Winslow,
2009, pg. 72). It is undeniable that style is essential to the politics of representation, and nationalism is expressed through aesthetics. It is also true that masculinity is represented, and approved, through style.
200 But what is the role of Webb’s coolness in reinforcing his “moderation?” It introduces a capitalistic element to Webb’s performance of Islam. His coolness becomes consumable and replicable, as coolness is meant to. His coolness becomes the cornerstone of his vision of an “American Islam” – which is an idea that I absolutely support, but never imagined being characterized as cool. Webb’s coolness becomes a skin, or a robe of moderation. As Stuart Ewen reminds us in All Consuming Images, style can become “like a skin that has been lifted off” (1984, pg. 24). Even though it is the underlying carcass that is the substance, the skin becomes the substance, in this case forwarding the skin of coolness as a vision of moderate Islam and thus obscuring (if not diminishing) the threat of radicalism.
Therefore, “moderation” draws from many different ideologies. As this case study demonstrates, Muslim “moderation” comes from Muslims’ ability to align with national racial attitudes – the ability to celebrate Black culture in unlikely places. Muslim
“moderation” runs parallel to an acceptance of the American Dream, where the journey towards any religion (Islam included) and its accompanying social mobility is unquestionably due to the American ideals of liberty, opportunity, and freedom. Muslim
“moderation” is in accordance with national gender identity, not only because it exonerates the “moderate” from a terrorist sexuality, but because American masculinity is important to U.S. identity. As Judith Butler points out, it is impossible to separate out
“gender” from the “political and cultural intersections in which it is invariably produced and maintained” (1999, pg. 5). It would be naïve to deny that gender and masculinity do not contribute to our notions of nationhood, and given that “Muslim terrorists” appear to 201 hate the U.S.’s national identity, it becomes essential for the “moderate” to reinforce U.S. gender norms.
In this chapter, I deliberately use disparate case studies to explore the different manifestations of the “moderate” Muslim, the many texts in which they appear, and the many sources from which they draw their “moderation.” These diverse case studies show that the “moderate Muslim” rhetoric is not just diffuse, but also a key factor in reifying national identity. Its roots spread into gender ideology, exceptionalism discourse, and patriotism. It supports exceptionalism discourse; the Miss America case study shows how the U.S. is best able to recognize diverse beauty. Meanwhile, the “moderate” is not always Muslim – they can be Sikhs who represent the aesthetics of peacefulness, or a
South-Asian Hindu like Nina Davuluri, who represents the model minority voice.
“Moderation” can obscure religion and even citizenship, as Ms. Davuluri’s story became that of the successful immigrant rather than an obscenely attacked American citizen.
Finally, comic framing can be strategically self-inflicted as a form of ideological warfare, as the Azhar Usman case study illustrates. It is clear to U.S. Muslims that they will be used as political scapegoats for the foreseeable future, and comically framing themselves is not just an effective preemptive move; it allows Muslims to protect themselves from accusations of radicalism. Over time, perhaps, this self-framing will allow Muslims to establish features of “moderation” for themselves. What these three case studies show, however, is that while “moderate Muslims” are diverse, and “moderation” itself draws from diverse sources, style is undeniably a major source of cohesion that allows us to recognize such moderation in such disparate landscapes. 202 Chapter 6: Beyond Anti-Muslim Narratives
In this concluding chapter, I point to additional temporal components in and beyond anti-Muslim narratives, and discuss the role of style in constructing motives in anti-Muslim attacks.
When I recall my frustration at being able to discuss anti-Muslim attacks only after they took place, I realized that I needed to critique how motives are constructed in such attacks. Thus, in this chapter, I return to the key findings of my studies and how temporality and style impact the presentation of motives, and end with some thoughts on future studies to explore the new surge in anti-Muslim sentiment.
When I first developed the methods for this dissertation, I wondered how I would reconcile my temporal and stylistic approaches. However, the connection was present in my motivation all along: the goal was to use unusual methods to examine unusual texts. If
I wanted to understand how U.S. discourse constructs the “Muslim threat” as uniquely urgent and hidden, I needed to examine events that did not contain discernible anti-
Muslim sentiment. The question is not how U.S. discourse constructs Muslims in events related to Muslims; rather, it is about how its constructs them in unrelated discourse. I wanted to understand, for instance, how counterterrorism discourse and the language of nationalism indicted Muslims without necessarily mentioning them. We can endlessly examine events where U.S. politicians, attackers, or mainstream discourse persecute
Muslims, and there are reasons the fear of Muslims persists. These reasons are the temporal framing of individual crimes, and the expectations imposed on Muslims by the
203 “moderate Muslim” myth. In the next two sections, I critique the use of time and style in the production of motives that bolster anti-Muslim narratives.
PACING, PRIMING & TIME PERSPECTIVES: THE TEMPORAL
MANUFACTURE OF TERRORISM
In Chapters 3 and 4, I developed and applied a temporal approach to examine the coverage of the 2012 Sikh Temple Shooting. However, while my method focused on timescaping and urgency for the purpose of the analysis, there are other temporal components at play in anti-Muslim narratives. We must consider the role of temporality in not just constructing an event as anti-Muslim, but also how individuals engage temporality to respond to anti-Muslim narratives. In other words, the tools for understanding both the presentation and enactment of anti-Muslim sentiment lie in temporal theory, as do the tools for interrupting it.
Pacing: The Counterpart to Narratives of Urgency
In this section I discuss how the urgency created by anti-Muslim discourse in turn impacts how audiences perform time to combat the perceived Muslim threat. Here, I discuss the temporal enactment of pace and its role in what I call the “temporal manufacture of terrorists.” As I discussed in Chapter 3, temporal dimensions are grouped into temporal construals and enactments. While temporal construals refer to how group members interpret or orient to time, temporal enactments refer to how members perform time (which is influenced by temporal construals). For instance, when time is construed as being scarce, group members tend to enact time by increasing their pace and 204 scheduling. Therefore, I also take up sting operations against Muslims as an example to illustrate my arguments in this section.
As I discussed earlier, when 9/11 is included in the time horizon of terrorist attacks, and when individual attacks are constructed as uniquely urgent, they yield two more temporal products: the construal of scarcity, which in turn modifies the temporal enactment of pace. Therefore, the construal of time “scarcity” can result in enacting a quicker “pace.” While pace refers to the tempo of an activity or series of activities, it is the separation of activities that throw the tempo into sharp relief. By refusing to separate terrorist attacks from 9/11 narratives, or by deliberately grouping them together, media coverage is able to do precisely this: create a false sense of high tempo of Muslim terrorist attacks. Now, I want to consider the idea that anti-Muslim discourse also creates a false pace of “Muslim terror attacks,” which means that such events are presented as occurring more frequently than they actually are. One way to do so is to present
“Muslim” events as “aftermath” events that are part of a larger timescape. However, another and perhaps more damaging method of doing so is to artificially create “Muslim issues” periodically in order to sustain such a false pace, which in turn spawns urgency, fear, and preemptive attacks. The artificial creation of “Muslim issues” is best illustrated by sting operations and the increased surveillance that target Muslim individuals and entities.
Let us turn to a case study that illustrates this manufacture of urgency in anti-
Muslim discourse. In 2005, a Kurdish Muslim named Yassin Aref was entrapped in an
FBI terrorist sting operation and sentenced to 15 years in prison. The FBI claimed that 205 they had discovered Aref’s name in a notebook found in a bombed-out Iraqi encampment in 2003. They believed that he was connected to an organization named Ansar al-Islam, which was connected to a Jordanian terror suspect, who in turn had links to Al-Qaeda.
Despite the shakiness of this evidence, the FBI launched a sting operation to entrap Aref.
They employed a Pakistani informant, who had been arrested for immigration fraud, to strike up a fake deal with Aref’s friend and make him a money-laundering offer linked to illegal weapons trade. Aref, who was asked to bear witness to this loan as per Islamic law, was indicted as an accomplice in this “terrorist interaction.” Aref and his friend were both arrested and are currently serving 15 years in federal prison. Aref’s lawyers pointed out that he barely understood English and was oblivious to any wrongdoing, but both his appeals were denied. During Aref’s indictment, however, U.S. attorney Glenn Suddaby made a temporally loaded statement:
Obviously we had a couple of individuals that were prone to supporting
terrorism…[the] FBI did what they had to do (2006, emphasis mine).
Meanwhile, U.S. Magistrate Judge David Homer made a similarly temporally loaded comment about Aref’s conviction:
…Mr. Aref espouses and has adopted the goals of terrorist organizations
and has had an ongoing relationship with terrorist organizations…[i]t
seems the government’s case is extremely enhanced (2006, emphasis 206 mine).
Both these statements make a case for preemptive action using temporal language.
Suddaby uses the term “prone” to describe Aref’s inclination towards terrorist activity, implying that Aref was the agent “approaching” an act of terrorism at an undisclosed moment in the future. Meanwhile, Judge Homer stated that Aref’s involvement in terrorist activity was “ongoing,” which mirrors how U.S. discourse constructs Muslim- related terrorist activity in general. And this is just one example in a series of entrapments targeting Muslims in the United States. In 2012, Rezwan Ferdaus, a mentally ill U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi descent, was convicted for a plot to attack the Pentagon and sentenced to 17 years in prison. The evidence gathered against him was collected by sending informants into his mosque, and he was assisted with his “plans” by two undercover FBI agents. In 2006, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali – a U.S. citizen studying Islamic theology in Saudi Arabia – was sentenced to thirty years in prison for allegedly providing support to terrorists. His confession, which was obtained during torture, was admitted as evidence. In 2013, Adel Daoud was arrested for “plotting” to attack a bar, a plan that undercover FBI agents helped him develop in an online chat room. Daoud was 17 years old at the time he began communicating with the undercover agents.27 These are just a few example that held my attention in particular; in The Muslims Are Coming!:
Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror, Arun Kundani documents
27 A full list of Muslim “terrorist” surveillance and entrapment schemes was released by Human Rights Watch: http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/usterrorism0714_ForUpload_0_0_0.pdf 207 the extensive sting operations conducted by U.S. counterterrorism measures (2014). He critiques the nature of these attacks and eviscerates the “radicalization” model U.S. counterterrorism agencies have developed to identify terror suspects. Such calibrated sting operations, one might argue, can successfully entrap any individual from any community – whether guilty or not. Therefore, this artificial manufacture of Muslim terrorists inflates the extent of Muslim terrorism. While these individuals were not necessarily blameless, and their convictions were not so straightforward, such targeted sting operations do mirror the over-policing that several disenfranchised groups in the
U.S. experience: Blacks who are routinely arrested for minor traffic violations and misdemeanors; Hispanics who are routinely approached about their immigration status
(particularly in Arizona as a result of SB 1070), and so on. Such sting operations, meanwhile, also artificially sustain the pace of “Muslim terror attacks,” which in turn keeps anti-Muslim sentiment vigorous.
Such selective narratives, and the “uncovering” of terror plots at regular intervals, create an eerie pace for “terrorism” – one that lends credence to the manufactured fear.
And so I ask, what is the result of this production of urgency, this manufacturing of fear, and these sting operations designed to create artificial terrorists at regular intervals? The result is that we are being primed to “receive” terrorist attacks by “Muslims” on a regular basis. Broadly speaking, priming is a non-conscious memory system in which exposure to one stimulus can influence the response to another stimulus. Scholars studying cognitive media effects have pointed out that priming is a result of agenda-setting, where individuals develop memory traces after exposure to particular information (Tulving & 208 Watkins, 1975), and that these memory traces influence subsequent information processing (Salancik, 1974). Given that a 24 hours news cycle governs the U.S. media, and that many “Muslim issues” are artificially created through sting operations and improper timescaping, I believe that U.S. residents are primed to receive (if not expect) news about “Islamic” terror attacks at regular intervals.
Let us consider two premises that bolster this claim. First, the “anniversaries” of paradigmatic “Muslim terror acts” are recognized publicly and with great regularity.
Newspaper headlines mark September 11 annually, and the 10th anniversary of 9/11 was marked with great fervor. Furthermore, in April 2014 U.S. news media flooded viewers with images of Boston Marathon survivors “one year on” from the attacks. Rather confusingly, during this same time, in the midst of Ukraine negotiations in April 2014 former UK prime minister Tony Blair reminded the “West” to focus on radical Islam” and to “put aside their differences on Russia” for this reason (2014b). While Tony Blair and the Boston Marathon Bombing anniversary in April 2014 actively remind us of the
“Muslim threat” out there, there was no mention of the most devastating terrorist attack on US soil prior to 9/11: the Oklahoma City Bombing, which also took place in April in
1995. This primes news consumers, and U.S. residents in general to not only recall the devastation of “Muslim terrorism” with great regularity, but also selectively.
Second, there is a sporadic tendency to attribute undetermined acts of terrorism to
Muslims. I believe this is a consequence of priming, as viewers are sensitized to expect sporadic reports about Muslim terrorism. For instance, as I mentioned earlier, after the
2011 attacks on a youth camp in Norway, U.S. and Norwegian media speculated that the 209 attacker was “Muslim.” However, the perpetrator was actually an anti-Muslim
Norwegian Christian named Anders Behring Breivik, whose goal, ironically, was to protest the “colonization” of Norway by Muslims and immigrants. He drew inspiration from several prominent anti-Islam spokespeople, including Pamela Geller (the blogger who coined the term “Ground Zero Mosque”) and Orientalist Bernard Lewis. One might wonder why Muslims were initially indicted before Breivik was apprehended, and one reason might be that the U.S. public is primed to expect “Muslim issues” to erupt sporadically.
So far, I have discussed how urgency, pace and priming impact how an event is constructed to fit within anti-Muslim narratives. Now, I want to discuss the temporal framing of terrorist actors as well – specifically, how Muslim terrorists are temporally framed. Since Wade Michael Page fit the construction of hate criminal rather than terrorist, I have not had the opportunity to discuss how U.S. discourse temporally frames
“Muslim” terrorists to perpetuate anti-Muslim sentiment. For this reason, I will go beyond the Sikh Temple Shooting to make a few broader observations.
The Present-Fatalistic Muslim Terrorist
There is no doubt that temporality plays an important role in citizenship discourse, which in turn allows certain “terrorist” bodies to be readily recognized as
“foreign.” Notions of belonging and citizenship in the United States are grounded in how
“long” an individual has lived in the country. Unfortunately, U.S. immigration law does not recognize time spent in the country until after citizenship has been acquired; therefore, an individual who was brought to the country at the age of 5 but naturalized in 210 his/her 20s is perceived as having “grown up” outside the country. Additionally, citizens who are not born in the United States (i.e. naturalized citizens) can never run for the highest political office. Markers such as accent and even muscle mass become evidence of “foreignness;” those who haven’t “lost” their “original” accent are either “visiting” or have simply not been in the U.S. “long enough.” Indian and Arab-Americans who were raised in the United States tend to be taller and more muscular than their immigrant counterparts; thus, these bodily markers become evidence of citizenship because they testify to how long an individual has been part of the United States. The temporal evidence of ones citizenship becomes inscribed on the body.
For these reasons, those identified as hate criminals and “domestic” terrorists are situated in a very different timescape than those who are merely “terrorists,” who are almost always implied to be “foreign.” To be more specific, this means that narratives of
“homegrown” criminals often examine the childhood of the perpetrator. I observed this in my analysis of the Sikh Temple Shooting coverage, which detailed the childhood of the perpetrator Wade Michael Page. Similarly, the Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy
McVeigh’s childhood received intense media scrutiny despite his vocal anti-U.S. government stance that he developed as an adult. Such childhood narratives search for an explanation for the perpetrator’s actions, often painting a more sympathetic picture of some perpetrators and separating them from “foreign” terrorists. It provides a context for
“domestic” terrorists that is not provided for terrorists who inhabit different physical bodies, and whose bodies and religious beliefs themselves stand in for motives. For instance, as of 2016, I could find no news reports focusing on the childhood and 211 upbringing of Major Nidal Hassan, the 2009 Fort Hood gunman. It is true that he readily claimed “jihadist” motives for his actions; however, even though the Sikh Temple gunman and Timothy McVeigh made their own racist and political motives rather explicit, the news reportage still offered a large volume of information about their early childhood. Following this logic, the narrative of Major Hassan – who is also a U.S. born citizen and army veteran – should have received a similar contextualization. This reveals that narratives selectively place actors in broadened or narrowed timescapes, which influences how we construct certain bodies as “terrorist” or otherwise.
Undoubtedly the temporality of citizenship narratives and selective timescaping help single out certain bodies in terrorism discourses as more culpable, more “foreign,” and more dangerous. However, there is one other temporal element that contributes to the creation of the terrorist body: the portrayal of “Muslim” terrorists as present-fatalistic.
“Present-fatalism” is one of five temporal orientations developed by Zimbardo and Boyd in 1999. These five orientations describe the different approaches individuals take towards the past, present, and future. The perspective “present-fatalism” is particularly salient because it reflects the time perspectives assigned to terrorists perceived to be
Muslim. Zimbardo and Boyd describe present-fatalism as:
[a] helpless, hopeless attitude toward the future and life…[characterized
by feelings like] “My life path is controlled by forces I cannot
influence”…[present-fatalistic individuals] lack the goal focus of future-
oriented individuals, the emphasis on excitement of hedonists, and the 212 nostalgia or bitterness of those high on the two past factors. Instead, it
reveals a belief that the future is predestined and uninfluenced by
individual actions, whereas the present must be borne with resignation
because humans are at the whimsical mercy of “fate.” Such individuals
should score high on measures of depression and anxiety” (1999, pgs.
1275 – 1278, emphasis mine).
This present-fatalistic perspective perfectly encapsulates how Palestinian suicide- bombers are portrayed in news reports, in direct opposition to the “organized” military establishment of Israel. I emphasize the phrase “mercy of fate” above because that is exactly how Muslim terrorists are portrayed in relation to their “missions:” resigned to self-destruction (as with the case of suicide missions, like 9/11) and at the mercy of both fate and faith. In particular, they are presented as lacking future focus. For example, if we return to the case of Yassin Aref who was entrapped for money laundering, news reports repeatedly commented on the fact that he had left behind three children and a wife as a result of his actions. In this way, Aref was presented as a father who shirked his responsibility to be future-oriented for his family. Additionally, the news media scrutinized the impetuous behavior of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the mastermind of the Boston
Marathon Bombings. It reported on his short temper, his rash decision-making in relationships, and his lack of direction or “purpose” when it came to education and raising his child. Even Tsarnaev’s style of boxing and mixed martial arts was described as “resigned” and “fatalistic.” (2014) and that he lacked “competitiveness” (Yahoo 213 Sports, 2013). While news reports typically (or at least, ideally) refrain from commenting on the “attitudes” of perpetrators, a clear picture of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s present-fatalism still emerges based on the selective reports of his prior behavior.
While I have largely cited news reports to support my claims so far, I feel compelled to incude other narratives in this discussion of present-fatalism. There is a plethora of popular texts that present the Muslim as present-oriented, lacking focus, and resigned to “fate.” The 2007 film A Mighty Heart, which traces American journalist
Daniel Pearl’s kidnapping and execution in Pakistan, presents the kidnappers as intensely present-focused. Each kidnapper is not even aware of the full kidnapping plot, so narrow and present-focused is each of their roles. They appear resigned to their eventual capture, torture, and execution, and we catch glimpses of the screaming wives and children they leave behind. Meanwhile, John Updike’s novel Terrorist explores the psyche of a young, would-be terrorist named Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy growing up in New Jersey and slowly becoming radicalized. While Updike attempts to paint a balanced picture of the protagonist, he still presents the character as living a separate “American” life apart from his “Muslim” life. While the character’s “American” life involves school events and his infatuation with a girl, his “Muslim” life involves giving up college and other future- oriented activities for a career as a truck-driver, which leaves him freer for religious pursuits. We see the “American” characters in his life – a guidance counselor, his mother
– try to persuade him to return to the future-oriented path of a college career. However, the “Muslim” characters in his life – his largely absent Egyptian father, an imam at the local mosque – steer him towards truck driving and potentially using his truck as part of a 214 suicide terrorist mission.
However, while I can offer evidence to illustrate how the Muslim terrorist is presented as present-fatalistic, I am not arguing that only Muslim terrorists are portrayed this way. I cannot make such a claim without exhaustive comparative analyses of texts portraying Muslim and non-Muslim criminals. In fact, perhaps portraying terrorists as present-fatalistic is the only way narratives can make sense of such premeditated violence. However, such a time-perspective allows terrorists to be presented as profoundly damaged and shortsighted individuals. Therefore, their time perspective is constructed as a disability. Second, there is an instructive component to such a depiction, as it cautions consumers of such narratives to be “future oriented” and reminds them that they are agents of their own actions. Therefore, U.S. discourses successfully present terrorists as significantly different from the mainstream population in part through their depiction of terrorists’ time perspectives.
CONSTRUCTING MOTIVES IN ANTI-MUSLIM ATTACKS
So far in this chapter, I have added to the temporal considerations that affect anti-
Muslim narratives. In this section, I critique how motives are constructed in attacks on
Muslims, and the role of style in constructing these motives. U.S. discourse primarily features Muslims when they are attackers, or are being attacked, physically or discursively. Therefore, whenever we examine an anti-Muslim attack – whether it is the murder of Muslim youths, the defacing of U.S. mosques, or Donald Trump’s call to shoot
Muslims with bullets dipped in pig’s blood – we are too late to prevent that attack. We 215 find ourselves in a situation where we have to work backwards, beginning with the attack and then piecing together the events and rhetoric leading up to it. Then, we clumsily ascribe motive. When Muslims are the victims, the motive becomes “hate,” which frames it as an “aftermath” crime that can be traced to an agitating event – usually an act of
“Islamic” terrorism. Such timescaping of motives ignores the strands of nationalism, U.S. exceptionalism, and citizenship performance through temporality and style.
While my temporal analysis in Chapter 4 demonstrates how timescaping helps construct motives, my analysis of the “moderate” Muslim myth also examines the presentation of motives in anti-Muslim sentiment. In Chapter 5, I used a stylistic approach to examine three manifestations of the “moderate” Muslim trope, and how it causes fissures among minority groups while reifying U.S. exceptionalism. However, the case studies also reveal the motives behind producing the “moderate” Muslim discourse: the “moderate” is a means for U.S. discourse to identify Muslims who are not a threat, since “Islamic terrorists” are purportedly stealthy. Meanwhile, the performance of
“moderation” reveals the motive of U.S. Muslims: to comically reframe themselves and thus escape tragic scapegoating. By choosing three diverse case studies, I was able to examine the various permutations of the “moderate” Muslim in texts that do not explicitly express anti-Muslim sentiment.
This is in keeping with my goal of examining anti-Muslim sentiment, but not by focusing on direct attacks on Muslims. When we identify a crime against a Muslim, or simply identify a Muslim victim, our attempts to understand the motive becomes constrained by the act itself that has already taken place. Any attack on Muslims becomes 216 a “hate crime” or “retaliation.” This turns motives into uncomfortable binaries: it either was a hate crime, or it was not – the two are disparate. After the 2015 Chapel Hill
Shooting, the news media stated that the murders were a result of a parking dispute, and therefore not a hate crime – as if the crime could not be both.
This is a terribly shortsighted way of understanding motives in attacks on
Muslims. It sets a dangerous precedent by flattening motives: a perpetrator has to have an explicit and consistent history of expressing bigotry in order for a crime to be considered a “hate crime.” The shooter in the Chapel Hill case, Craig Stephen Hicks, had posted social media messages generally criticizing Christianity and advocating the “rights of many individuals” (New York Times, 2015c). This was enough to undermine the case that Hicks could be an “Islamophobe.” In particular, Wade Michael Page – the gunman in the 2012 Sikh Temple Shooting – particularly fit the bill of a neo-Nazi bigot in style and reputation. However, Page became what Kenneth Burke calls the “representative anecdote,” i.e. a narrative that represents a much larger phenomenon. Page becomes the quintessential hate criminal, and his motivations utterly lack complexity. Meanwhile, bearded and swarthy males have long been the representative anecdote for terrorists in the U.S. In both cases, the motives are flattened, which makes it more difficult to combat anti-Muslim sentiment.
This representative anecdote, which (as I will explain in a moment) is constructed through style, blithely obscures the idea that Muslims can be victims of terror; instead, they become victims of hate crimes. On February 22, 2016, a Florida man was arrested for vandalizing a mosque and leaving raw bacon at the doorstep. He faces the possibility 217 of life in prison for his “hate crime,” but was found to be “acting alone” (Florida Today,
2016). The news report showed the mug shot of a White male with a mostly shaved head, and video surveillance captured him committing the act wearing camouflage pants and tshirt and carrying a machete. In this case, the perpetrator fits the representative anecdote of the hate criminal primarily through style: his appearance matches that of the quintessential neo-Nazi. Furthermore, his camouflage pants bring up the strand of nationalism that appears to motivate many such misguided attacks. However, calling such an act a “hate crime” minimizes the reality that such crimes are sweeping the nation, and are rather isolated acts by unhinged individuals. Yet, there have been 71 incidents of attacks on U.S. mosques in 2015 alone, including intimidation, harassment, and anti-
Muslim remarks at zoning meetings (CAIR, 2015). This does not include all attacks on
Muslims in 2015 – just on mosques.28
I am not quibbling with the labeling of such acts as “hate crimes;” that is a legal term, and one I defined earlier in this dissertation. Rather, I am pointing out the consequences of such labels, and how they act as terministic screens that deflect any overlap with the term “terrorism.” And such labeling shifts public discussion away from the complexity of racially or religiously motivated crimes, i.e. ostensible “hate crimes.” It does do by flattening the motives of criminals, and simultaneously by distancing them from the audience. They become single-minded individuals who are “unlike us.” A similar flattening of motives is visible in narratives about many marginalized U.S.
28 Even more disturbingly, there have been many other “pig attacks” on mosques across the U.S. and UK; bacon and a bacon sandwich were left in mosques in Edinburgh and Bristol respectively, and a severed pig’s head was left outside a Philadelphia mosque. 218 communities. It is visible in narratives about police brutality against Blacks. When police gun down unarmed Black men, journalists are quick to ask: was the motive racial? Once again, this is a frustratingly narrow way to examine motives. I believe it is gaslighting because such a question makes it difficult to engage in discussion in an honest way. The goal shifts to proving whether the police officer ever uttered a single racial slur, or mistreated a person of color at any time in their past – as though proving that one way or the other is a reliable indicator that the officer is, or isn’t, “racist.” It would seem incredible that a police officer would simply execute an unarmed Black man because he is Black; such a motive is unrealistic, and far too simplistic. Rather, there has to be a climate that undervalues Black bodies, and “Muslim” bodies, and such a climate empowers individuals to take action without acting (at least cognizantly) on overt racist impulses. Does that mean that race was not a factor in the execution of Eric Garner, or
Tamir Rice, or Oscar Grant? Of course it was – just as (perceived) Muslim identity was a factor in the execution of the 2015 Chapel Hill victims.
We must recognize that such a flat characterization of motives is deliberate, limiting, and a form of gaslighting. It demands that bigotry must be visible and voiced in order to be considered bigotry. Consequently, it completely overlooks the damage caused by microaggressions. The 2015 Oscars race controversy illustrates this particularly well; critics argued that Black actors shouldn’t “complain” about receiving zero nominations because theirs was a privileged problem, and furthermore, there was no evidence that the jury was “racist.” By constructing “race” as a deeply serious issue, U.S. discourse has limited how we can address it. By constructing racism as (almost exclusively) a matter of 219 intent, it has limited our ability to correct it. By presenting race in a vacuum and ignoring intersectionality, it undermines our ability to recognize female or gender-fluid victims of racism. It places a burden on the victim community to prove, without a doubt, that the perpetrator acted with “racial intent.” But more importantly, the victim has the impossible task of proving that racism was the sole intent of the crime.
Temporality and style are visible on both sides of the issue of police brutality against Blacks. Those who argue that the police are not culpable use the familiar “Black on Black violence” argument, listing the frequency of Black deaths caused by Black criminals and the urgency of tackling inner-city drug violence. However, critics of the police shootings highlighted the number and proximity of other killings of unarmed
Blacks to show that it was a pattern.
Meanwhile, style was an important component of constructing the age of many of the victims, which is important because a few of them were children. Trayvon Martin’s hoodie, Michael Brown’s Cardinals hat, and Tamir Rice’s posture while handling his toy gun were widely reported as factors that made them look older and more suspicious.
However, the media reported that Martin was carrying a pack of Skittles, and pictures of
Brown in graduation regalia were splashed across the Internet after his death. These details, in turn, construct the victims as teenagers in high school. Clearly, temporality and style are at work in presenting these victims as well as the motives of the shooters.
By limiting how we discuss motives, we ignore the immense ideological structure that is the moderate Muslim discourse, which functions well outside anti-Muslim discourse. The moderate Muslim is not just the dream of the ideal Muslim; its specter 220 also haunts other groups, including Sikhs and Hindu beauty-pageant winners. Funnily enough, as I reported my findings in Chapter 4, I realized that the Sikh Temple Shooting coverage actually presented Sikhs as moderate Muslims. They were casualties in a 9/11 retaliation attack. They are a “model” minority group being precluded by Muslim terrorism. This is precisely what moderate Muslims are – collateral damage, individuals who suffer due to “justified” U.S. resistance to “Islamic radicals.” In other words, both
Sikhs and moderate Muslims are misunderstood because of the work of Muslim extremists, and both groups seek to simply exist “peacefully,” inert in the face of bigotry.
This inertia is aestheticized into “peacefulness,” a word that is deployed in a very particular way for “moderate” Muslims. What is more, this demonstration of peacefulness by Muslims becomes an expectation of citizenship. In the next section, I revisit this notion of an aesthetic of peacefulness, and examine how it emerges in narratives beyond anti-Muslim sentiment.
AN AESTHETIC OF PEACEFULNESS: CREATING A COWED MUSLIM
POPULATION
I introduced the phrase “aesthetics of peacefulness” in Chapter 4 to describe the expectation of how Muslims should react when facing bigotry. Specifically, such an aesthetic demands a particular “approved” performance of peacefulness, which in the case of Muslims means absolute passivity, yet absolute action when denouncing terrorism and preaching moderation. It is a demand that “moderate” Muslims must meet, and meet often, through style. For instance, the “moderate” Muslim woman is one who does not 221 cover her face, and ideally not her hair either. A policy paper issued by the U.S. military described hijabs as a form of “passive terrorism,” which ruptured the aesthetic of peacefulness demanded of Muslims. Meanwhile, in the wake of the Sikh Temple shooting, CNN anchor Don Lemon commended the Sikh community (who, ironically, were constructed as “moderate Muslims”) for “not being angry” in the face of these attacks. Meanwhile, when armed anti-Muslim protestor Jason Leger was invited into the
Phoenix mosque he was protesting outside, he had a change of heart and said he would not wear his “Fuck Islam” t-shirt again (Daily Mail, 2015). Just so we’re clear, an armed, belligerent male, wearing a “Fuck Islam” t-shirt, brought his fight to a mosque where children were present, but the expectation was that the Muslim worshippers should not be reactive. Meanwhile, “moderate” imam Suhaib Webb says that it is Muslims’ responsibility to go beyond just throwing “banquets” in order to promote interfaith relations, and they should also get involved in “community projects” (2015a).
Furthermore, in a Q&A session, comedian Azhar Usman said that the reason Muslims are so poorly perceived is because “they’re not doing a good job explaining themselves, and explaining their faith, and in many ways they have just become disconnected from their own tradition” (2008). When religious studies scholar Reza Aslan called a CNN anchor’s line of questioning (about Islam promoting violence) “stupid,” the news channel rebuked him on a later show, saying he was exactly the sort of violent and angry Muslim he claimed Islam did not produce (CNN, 2014). His tone and hand gestures, which I would describe as exasperated, were framed as threatening – possibly even dangerous. There is no doubt that there is a certain expectation of how Muslims should perform peacefulness, 222 and it is rooted in aesthetics. I want to stress here that there is an expectation that
Muslims should perform a particular aesthetic of peacefulness; I am not saying that U.S.
Muslims necessarily do so, or have done so consistently since 9/11. However, the expectation is clearly present in the discursive patterns I have described above. What is more, several prominent U.S. Muslims regularly succumb to the pressure to perform such an aesthetic and urge their congregants to follow suit.
As I mentioned earlier, these expectations of inertia are apparent in narratives about police brutality against Blacks as well. From Rodney King to Eric Garner, unarmed
Black males have been accused of “resisting arrest” when detained by the police, and their complete inertia in the face of violent force becomes part of the narrative built against them. We expect a similar inertia from “Mexicans,” who are expected to provide labor but have no stake in U.S. identity-building. Any attempt at influencing U.S. identity by introducing Spanish to schools or protesting against restrictive immigration legislation becomes a clear departure from their “peacefulness.” The similarities are clear, and the
“moderate Muslim” discourse bears homological similarities to other such discourses.
While I can touch on these discursive similarities superficially, there needs to be sustained study of this phenomenon. It is important to note that there has been some scholarship on the aesthetics of peace, particularly in times of war, but not on peacefulness. Furthermore, I believe that these aesthetics manifest during social movements in general – it is especially evident in descriptions of Black Lives Matter activists, who are routinely described as “thugs” damaging property. Of course, such descriptions are heavily critiqued by those who study respectability politics, i.e. policing 223 how a community voices issues rather than engaging the issues themselves. However, I believe the aesthetics of peacefulness is an arm of respectability politics, but it characterizes how individuals are expected to react during an instance of bigotry rather than in response to it. For example, Fox News host Sean Hannity said that African-
Americans who are stopped by the police should “lift up their shirts” to declare any firearms. Unfortunately, Hannity did not realize that the police might still construct such utter compliance as a threatening action. This means that the burden is on victims to behave in a very particular way to demonstrate peacefulness, but what their behavior ought to look like is determined by the individual in power. This is precisely how the moderate Muslim myth functions as well, and it would be worth mapping out this aesthetic of peacefulness in other contexts. Having a term for this phenomenon can help avoid distractions during a debate; when the discussion shifts to how a victim should behave during an attack, we must call out the aesthetic of peacefulness.
MOTIVES AND MOVING BEYOND 9/11
Temporality and style mediate anti-Muslim sentiment. They do so by constructing the motives of “Muslim terrorists,” who are stealthy and whose attacks are always imminent. They construct national motives, i.e. to preempt these attacks and identify the
“moderates” among U.S. Muslims. While my temporal and stylistic methods help explain how discourse constructs these motives, there is still work to be done.
From a temporal perspective, it is worth examining anti-Muslim sentiment when it is placed in a different timescape than “9/11 aftermath.” This can reveal the degree to 224 which a “9/11 culture” constrains our interpretation of terrorism, as well as the discursive struggle that must take place to reimagine the concept of “terrorism.” There is no denying that the September 11 attacks have become the representative anecdote for Muslim terror attacks in the United States. It was these 9/11 attacks that propelled the “War on Terror,” which in itself was a clever temporal construct. While a “War on Iraq” would have to end at a finite point, a “War on Terror” can continue infinitely, for as long as it is convenient to U.S. national interests. However, the 9/11 attacks were not the first Islamic extremist attacks on U.S. soil; in fact, another attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 was one of the worst on U.S. soil, causing six fatalities and over a thousand injuries. First of all, it is surprising that news coverage of the 2001 Trade Center attacks did not widely reference this attack. And second, the September 11 attacks were not presented as a consequence of this 1993 attack, thus framing 9/11 as an isolated, monolithic event. This is not a coincidence; the 9/11 attacks were temporally framed as a turning point in U.S. history, the moment when Muslims became the national enemy. Presenting 9/11 as a sudden turning point rather than an aftermath event itself, a long-simmering act of Muslim violence, helped galvanize support for the “War on Terror.” Invoking 9/11 begins to stand in for a motive in itself, and therefore liberating “terrorism” from the 9/11 timescape can enable a greater understanding of terrorist motives.
From a stylistic standpoint, a worthwhile future project would be a stylistic analysis of “god terms” and “devil terms” in anti-Muslim sentiment. Richard Weaver first coined these terms in The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953), and they refer to deliberately vague, propagandist phrases that have entered public consciousness (for example “freedom” and 225 “uncivilized,” to give an example of a god term and devil term respectively). I would argue that “troops” and “radicalism” have become god and devil terms respectively, and anti-Muslim discourse is rife with both. For instance, radicalism has become an exclusively negative term, particularly associated with Islamic terrorists or “Black terrorism,” specifically the Black Lives Matter movement and, retroactively, the Black
Panthers. Of course, the term radicalism could also describe otherwise widely celebrated individuals and actions, such as President Lincoln’s view of slavery; Martin Luther King
Jr.’s view of economic reform; and Thomas Jefferson’s libertarian views. Meanwhile, the use of god terms like “troops” and “veterans” is used to eclipse any honest examination of Islamic terrorism or Muslim rights by foregrounding U.S. bravery and goodness. As an example, Fox News anchors were outraged when they discovered that some Harvard students believed that U.S. interference in the Middle East allowed groups like ISIS to form. One of the guest anchors on Fox News responded to the students’ comments saying “I mean obviously these are kids who don’t know somebody who’s serving [in the
U.S. army]” (as covered by The Young Turks, 2014). This is just one example of a god term being deployed in a gauche way to redefine the terms of the debate. In fact, war veterans themselves have recognized that they are often used as props to push healthcare and welfare reform. Consequently, veterans have been organizing to publicly push back against certain policies, like Donald Trump’s 2016 proposal to “ban” Muslims from entering the United States.
As with the invocation of 9/11, such god and devil terms limit our understanding of motives, and particularly the motives of “Muslim terrorism.” Since these terms are so 226 pervasive in anti-Muslim sentiment, it would be fascinating to examine how they developed, and I believe their development is contingent on style and tragic scapegoating.
Perhaps the scapegoating of Muslims enables the creation of a heroic figure to reflect the
U.S.’s “own” virtues, and the “troops” are turned into these heroic figures. The glorification, and even sexualization of the “troops” acts as a direct foil to the barbaric sexuality of the “terrorists.” Furthermore, the terms “troops,” “army,” “military” and
“soldiers” have come to exclusively mean the U.S. military (just as the term “Ground
Zero” has come to exclusively mean the Twin Towers site). A Google search of any of these terms reveal images almost exclusively of White, male, American soldiers. In most of the pictures, they are armed and in camouflage gear and sunglasses, usually against an arid (desert) landscape. There are very few images of female soldiers, and even fewer of military office personnel. I found the “troops” narrative throughout anti-Muslim sentiment fascinating, of course, but the strands of style and tragic scapegoating it engages would be well worth studying in a future project.
Therefore, applying stylistic and temporal methods in other case studies can further our understanding of motives in anti-Muslim rhetoric and discourse. And as anti-
Muslim sentiment becomes more pervasive and adaptable, it becomes vital to apply such innovative methods to unusual case studies.
A NEW ERA OF HATE
227 When I began this dissertation in 2014, I offered examples of U.S. anti-Muslim sentiment to establish how prevalent it is. I knew there would be daily examples I could include. However, I believed that not everyone was necessarily aware of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. simply because they did not belong to any of the groups
“contaminated” by Islam: South Asians, Arabs, North Africans, people of color with beards and/or head coverings, and – of course – Muslims. The majority of Americans do not know anything specific about Islam, nor do they know any Muslims personally (Pew
Research Center, 2015), which is unsurprising since Muslims comprise about 1- 2% of the U.S. population. Therefore, a large section of the population either has not experienced anti-Muslim sentiment, or does not know anyone who did. This dissertation became as much an attempt to demonstrate that the problem was widespread as it was to understand the mechanisms sustaining anti-Muslim sentiment.
But today, there is no question: anti-Muslim sentiment is deeply embedded in the
U.S. public sphere, and now there is no doubt that is it prevalent. While three years ago, most Muslims faced discrimination, it is not an overstatement to say that today many fear for their safety – particularly if they do not bear the trappings of a “moderate” Muslim.
At least eleven Muslim individuals in the U.S. have been murdered in the year since I began writing this thesis29 (not including the murders of those mistaken to be Muslim), and countless others have been arrested or have lost their jobs, property, or ability to live in the U.S. I believe we have ushered in a new era of hatred, but I also believe that such
29 Abdul Jamil Kamawal in Oregon; Ziad Abu-Naim in Texas; Golam and Shamima Rabbi in California; Ahmed Al Jumaili in Texas; Deah Barakat and Yusor and Razan Abu-Salha in North Carolina; and Mohammed Omar, Adam Mekki and Muhannad Tairab in Indiana 228 public sentiment ebbs and flows. After all, in the days since 9/11, anti-Muslim attacks reached a historic high, but then gradually declined. After all, it is difficult to sustain intense bigotry over a long period of time. However, anti-Muslim sentiment has surged again since 2015 and has not diminished since. The temporal proximity of the San
Bernardino shootings and Paris terror attacks in 2015 triggered a rash of anti-Muslim attacks in the U.S. and France, ranging from beatings to property damage. Donald Trump has fanned the discourse, making anti-Muslim statements on a nearly daily basis in his campaign for U.S. Presidency. However, what is alarming is that this surge has not resulted from a single, massive event like 9/11; it has been a long-simmering anger that was nurtured by the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings; the 2015 San Bernardino and
Paris terror attacks; and perhaps most importantly, the vague yet urgent presentation of
ISIS activity. While one might recognize that gun and gang violence occurs at a much higher rate that Islamic terror attacks in the U.S., the former are presented as temporally discrete and therefore neither urgent nor necessitating preemptive action. The belief that
“Muslim terrorism” is organized and has a political end whereas these other crimes are not has allowed anger towards Muslims to build.
This means that anti-Muslim sentiment is no longer a “niche” issue, and therefore
U.S. citizens are forced to take a stance for or against it. It is no longer possible to be unaware of anti-Muslim attacks, and therefore have no particular “opinion” on the matter.
How mainstream America feels about Muslims has become a key component of how mainstream America feels about itself. This is evident in the process of scapegoating U.S.
Muslims, and evidenced by the fact that the specter of the Muslim terrorist looms in 229 events and discourses unrelated to Muslims. It is evident in the creation of the
“moderate” Muslim, who bolsters our faith in U.S. exceptionalism. Therefore, for perhaps the first time since 9/11, anti-Muslim sentiment has become essential to the fabric of U.S. national identity.
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254 Vita
Lamiyah Bahrainwala grew up in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. She earned her B.A. from The American University of Sharjah and M.A. from Michigan State University before entering the doctoral program at The University of Texas at Austin.
Her research interests include critical race theory, Burkean analysis, and media criticism. More specifically, she is interested in how individual construct their identities through statements of religious and national loyalties. As a result, her work focuses on inserting marginalized communities into constructions of national identity to explore any resulting disruptions.
Permanent email address: [email protected] This dissertation was typed by the author.
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