Copyright by Lamiyah Zulfiqar Bahrainwala 2016
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
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,”