Final Paper of Post-9/11 Islamaphobia

incorporate others such as the Italians and the Irish (Ignatiev 2008). The right side of the American political spectrum defines America as a “Judeo-Christian” nation and asserts that America is “a nation that professes to be a light unto the world, this self- styled God’s Country” (Zelinsky 2001). Zelinsky further notes that this identification “suggest[s] a serious nervousness within the national community. It is something not limited to funda- mentalist Protestants, this anxiety about identity and purpose, a restlessness and hunger no amount of material superabundance and technological bedazzlement can assuage” (2001, 582).

The majority of first- and second-generation American Mus- lims tacitly followed the dominant white narrative of American integration. Because of the class, level of education, and profes- sional status that it offered, the white narrative of American inte- gration was seen as a model for both secular and religious Muslims. Indeed, prior to September 11, integration into this way of life was the community’s most common path in terms of the evolu- tion of its national political identity ( Jamal and Naber 2008). The dominance of this trend often led to the marginalization of Afri- can American Muslims in the institutions built by first-generation American Muslims in the 1980s and 1990s, despite their older claim to a uniquely American form of Islam ( Jackson 2005). Some

first-generation American Muslims questioned the authenticity of existing forms of Islam and, in doing so, helped widen the rift between the mainstream African American Muslim communities (now represented by the community of the late W. D. Muham- mad) and the first- and second-generation American Muslim com- munities (broadly represented by the Islamic Society of North America).

I would posit the theory that in our era, African American Mus- lims are now generally more readily accepted by the public as Americans and are perceived as being more loyal to the nation than first- and second-generation American Muslims. This per- ception was fostered during the civil rights movement, in which African American Muslims such as Malcolm X wrote themselves into the American narrative by contesting the place of their race within a hierarchy of privilege. It is thus not surprising that post- September 11 the first American Muslim elected to Congress in 2007 was Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), an African American who was reelected in 2010. The second American Muslim, elected in the following year, Rep. André Carson (D-IN), is also an African American. These congressmen represent districts that are not Mus- lim majority, campaigned on local issues, and, despite anti- Muslim rhetoric from some members of the opposition, were elected and reelected irrespective of their religion. This unassail- ability in public does not, however, extend to private life. One 2009 Pew Center report on American Muslims found that in pri- vate life, African American Muslims feel a sense of double dis- crimination from being both black and Muslim (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life 2009).

Arab Americans, the majority of whom are of Christian descent and come from the Levant (U.S. Census Bureau 2003), have also been successful in national politics, partly as a result of their long

history of assimilation over the past century. More recent arrivals of Arab Muslims from other parts of the Middle East have dem- onstrated higher levels of political participation than South Asian and African American Muslims, perhaps because for Arab Amer- ican Muslims, “mosques are directly linked to political activity, civic participation, and group consciousness” ( Jamal 2005, 537). National policies after September 11 helped motivate Muslim Arab American voter registration and “appear . . . to be acting as an accelerant to political activism in many Arab American commu- nities” (Gimpel, Cho, and Wu 2007, 349).

THE POLITICAL RESPONSE TO SEPTEMBER 11: AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

In reaction to September 11, first- and second-generation Ameri- can Muslims of South Asian and Arab extraction were placed in the political category of the racial “other.” International perspec- tives and critiques of US foreign policy have not yet entered national public debate or forced a reevaluation of national policy, despite calls for such action as early as the days immediately fol- lowing September 11 (Milne 2001).

Americans generally, excluding the indigenous population and minorities, are a people cut in history. To be “cut in history” is to

engage two popular American perspectives on culture and history. First, American culture, in our age of rapid telecommunications and travel, has become increasingly defined by an ephemeral pop- ular culture that accounts for the vitriolic “culture wars.” Take as counter-example, the Scotsman in Edinburgh. He is Scottish by virtue of clan and his claim on the land that can go back a mil- lennium or more. His perspective on contemporary cultural or political issues is ancillary to his sense of Scottish identity. Sec- ond, telecommunications technology has allowed many Ameri- cans to have instant news feed that focuses on sensational news in microbursts of time. Deep reflection on a single idea or a compre- hensive historical background on a contemporary issue is more likely to be found in academia than on a cable news network. This, in part, accounts for the benighted state of many Americans, unable to connect the foreign policy decisions of their govern- ment, covert and overt, to the negative externalities that inevitably follow. The link between cause and effect is severed through an unshakable belief, religious in fervor, of American exceptionalism.

Gellner writes (Bloom 1987),

America’s fabulous wealth and its relatively wide dispersal, the wide (of course not complete) participation in the national cultural ideal, the egalitarianism and stress on mobility, and above all the absence of any real recollection or even haunting smell of any ancien régime— all these traits make Americans absolutize their own culture, and to equate it with the human condition as such, and hence uncon- sciously to treat other cultures as perversions of the rightful human condition. (1992, 52)

The dominant political class in America cherishes an unshak- able belief in American exceptionalism, which I define as an ahistorical perspective on the role of American power and the

Because of the class, level of education, and professional status that it offered, the white narrative of American integration was seen as a model for both secular and religious Muslims.

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role of cause and effect in the history of American foreign policy in the Middle East and South Asia leading up to September 11. American exceptionalism visualizes a world in which the right- ness of the American cause is helped by Providence, and in which America lies outside of history and can even defy it (Haberski 2010).

The narrative of colonization also plays a complex role in the American self-perception. The United States’ founding narrative is that of a colony resisting the ties of the colonizing nation in the pursuit of liberty and self-determination (Bellah 1975). But in the intervening years since the Declaration of Independence, the nation has transformed from a relatively minor agrarian and mer- cantile economy to an advanced postindustrial global hegemon— and yet the narrative of the “underdog” continues to be invoked against the criticism of neocolonialism. Because America’s role in the chain of events leading to September 11 was invisible to the majority of its population, the only explanation for these events that the public could produce was that Islam and Muslims had attacked the United States because of their irrational hatred of democratic values and freedom (Gottschalk and Greenberg 2008, 1–12). The subtle distinctions within the world of Islam were ini- tially considered irrelevant as the United States created the civil-

ian Department of Homeland Security and the military U.S. Northern Command Headquarters. And so began political action to “deter, prevent, defeat, and mitigate” transnational terrorism. These events constitute the beginning of the national political problematization of both the American Muslim and global Islam. As with previous national enemies, from the Japanese and Ger- mans to the Communists, Islam and Muslims became the new national security threat that the government aimed to attack both within and beyond the country’s borders ( Jackson 2011).

THE POLITICAL PROBLEMATIZATION OF THE AMERICAN MUSLIM: STATE TO CITIZEN

As the focus of this article is political identity, this section exam- ines the American Muslim as citizen in the post-September 11 era as a figure whose isolation by religion and race is partly produced by American exceptionalism. To be more precise, I offer here an overview of the political identity of first- and second-generation American Muslims as seen through two relationships. The first is the citizen and his or her institutions in relation to the state. The second is the relationship of citizen to citizen and focuses more generally on civil society.

The first dimension of the political problematization of the American Muslim can be seen in the relationship between the state and the citizen/institution. The national security policies produced by Washington after September 11 had profound impacts on American Muslim political identity. The irony is that the col- lective effect of these policies was to strengthen the same reli- gious component of American Muslim identity (Peek 2005) that had been problematized.

The most direct impact that the state had on individual Mus- lims can be seen in the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) policies and execution in the wake of September 11. The haphazard securitization of US airports and the absence of sys- tematic oversight of TSA employees produced a very challenging experience for all airline passengers. However, Muslims encoun- tered targeted racial/ethnic profiling and disempowerment through the creation of the special security lines with additional intrusive searches and the inability to question the manner and rationale of the searches. Any signs of resistance were catego- rized as “creating a disturbance” or “being uncooperative”— serious charges in an environment where the mere accusation of terrorism could authorize indefinite detainment, especially for noncitizens. As a result, for Muslims, the act of air travel physi- cally reinforced a feeling of social exclusion (Pew Research Cen- ter 2007). The no-fly list is still not subject to transparent review, and there is little recourse for people challenging their inclusion on it—a situation that many American Muslims and liberal advo- cates in the American Bar Association (ABA) view as basic vio- lations of Fourth and Sixth Amendment rights.

National laws changed drastically in the aftermath of Septem- ber 11. The Patriot Act (H.R. 3162) passed quickly through Con-

gress without much debate and granted extraordinary powers to law enforcement. Mosques were monitored, and charitable insti- tutions closed on the basis of suspicion and circumstantial evi- dence (Al-Marayati 2004).

Extrajudicial actions were also taken, with the most notable being the expansion of the detainment center at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, to accommodate detainees suspected of being terrorists. The new legal category of “enemy combatant” was created to avoid the legal restrictions on treatment of prison- ers of war that were established in Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Reports of torture at the facility leaked out and were later confirmed to have been authorized by the admin- istration (The New York Times online). As time has passed, it has become clearer that the Bush administration directed Americans officials to engage in extrajudicial conduct against Muslim terror- ism suspects. The extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects to CIA black sites and the events that unfolded at Abu Ghraib Prison in 2004 were just a few points in the greater trend of Muslims being characterized as a security threat so extreme that neither military nor civilian judicial processes would suffice to deal with them. The American extrajudicial approach can be contrasted with Indonesia’s approach to a home-grown terrorist organization, Jemaah Islamiyah. In the same decade that the American security bureaucracy has expanded, the Indonesians have had a more suc- cessful approach in controlling militant extremists.

Jakarta has arrested more than 450 radicals since the first Bali at- tacks. All have been prosecuted transparently rather than being detained indefinitely without charge. More than 250 have been re- leased. Only a few militants are thought to be at large. Brigadier

The new legal category of “enemy combatant” was created to avoid the legal restrictions on treatment of prisoners of war that were established in Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

Fe a t u r e s : R a c e a n d R e l i g i o n i n t h e P o l i t i c a l P r o b l e m a t i z a t i o n o f t h e A m e r i c a n M u s l i m .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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General Tito Karnavian, the head of Detachment 88, the Indonesian police anti-terror unit, believes the secret of the nation’s success is the use of “law enforcement, prosecution and the judicial process.” He added: “We do not use the military approach.” (Aglionby 2009).

The Indonesian case illuminates an indigenous Muslim response to the threat of militant-extremism as form of criminality rather than categorizing it as an existential threat to the nation and thus inadvertently bolstering the claim of these extranational entities. If the Obama administration were to chart a similar course, it would serve both the purpose of partially delegitimizing the “Islamic” narrative of these groups as well as advance the integra- tion of Muslims into the American political mainstream.

For many Muslims in the United States, the experiences of detained and expelled foreign Muslims took on a new urgency with the case of the detention of Army Chaplain Captain James Yee, an American Muslim convert and West Point graduate who was serving at the naval base at Guantánamo Bay in 2003. Yee was accused of being an operative in an alleged spy ring passing information to al-Qaeda from suspected terrorists at Guantá- namo. On the basis of these accusations, Yee was arrested, blind- folded, manacled, and placed in solitary confinement for 76 days on a Navy brig (Parker 2004). All charges were later dropped, but Yee’s military career was over. For American Muslims, this case symbolized the limits of religious and ethnic integration. This experience begs the question on the minds of many American Muslims: If a person so loyal and committed to the United States could be mistreated and his career destroyed on the mere suspi- cion of disloyalty based on his religion, then what could happen to the average American Muslim (Yee 2005)? If a person who has committed his life to public service and the loyal defense of his nation is not beyond suspicion, what is necessary to prove one’s loyalty to the United States short of dying for it? As in the immortal words of Wilfred Owen, “. . . that old lie, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (it is sweet and proper to die for one’s own country) (Owen 1983).

THE POLITICAL PROBLEMATIZATION OF THE AMERICAN MUSLIM IN CIVIL SOCIETY: CITIZEN TO CITIZEN

The second dimension of the political problematization of the American Muslim can be seen in the relationship between citi- zen and citizen that occurs in civil society. The reaction of the American public to September 11 generally followed the lines of political orientation (conservative to progressive/liberal ), with independents shifting in the conservative direction. This section seeks to outline how civil society interacted with the Muslim as religious other.

After September 11, a desire arose in the United States to under- stand Muslims and the world of Islam. Progressive and liberal American religious groups worked to connect with American Mus- lims on both the individual and the community level through various efforts such as interfaith dialogue (Takim 2004), expand- ing interreligious communication. On the American Muslim side, tremendous efforts were made in this direction, with one notable example being Eboo Patel’s Interfaith Youth Core, which aims to articulate a pluralist American Islam and promote interfaith dia- logue in the United States (Patel 2007).

In academia, religious studies and the demand for university courses related to Arabic and Islam also exploded in much the same way that Slavic and Russian-language studies experienced a surge during the Cold War. Washington’s perspective of Islam

became binary, identifying Wahabism as bad and Sufism as good, and a push for reformation began within the largely Protestant nation. This idea of “reformation” would naturally emerge from a society that saw the Protestant Reformation as beneficial in the history of Western civilization. Many of the proponents of the idea of an “Islamic Reformation” outwith the Islamic tradition, see Islam and particularly the sharı̄¨a as medieval, incompatible, and irreconcilable with the values of a modern society, such as the United States (Palmer 2008).

With the aid of federal funding from the 2002 Homeland Secu- rity Act, a dubious multidisciplinary academic category of “homeland security” emerged. This area of study was organized to directly support the federal government’s counterterrorism efforts. Of course, credentialed scholars had published scholarly work on terrorism and militant extremism among Muslims before September 11; groundbreaking examples are such works as Mark Juergensmeyer’s Terror in the Mind of God (2000) and after Sep- tember 11 such as Olivier Roy’s Globalized Islam. But the rapid proliferation and dubious credentials of “terrorism experts” in both the new field of security studies and the popular media, especially on cable news channels, meant that a low-quality level of scholarly analysis exacerbated popular stereotypes of Mus- lims and Islam.

While liberal and progressive elements of American society sought forms of interfaith dialogue and understanding, some main- line conservative and almost all evangelical denominations (who constitute “slightly more than one in five” of all Americans [Wines- man 2005] ) promoted the image of Islam as the enemy of Chris- tianity and the embodiment of evil, echoing the rhetoric of medieval Christendom (Tolan 2002). In 2002, the Reverend Jerry Falwell said in a 60 Minutes interview, “I think Muhammad was a terrorist.” According to Cimino, for most American evangelicals

This polemic against Islam takes three forms: apologetics to prove the truth of Christianity against Islam; prophetic literature linking Islam as the main protagonist in end-times scenarios; and charis- matic literature applying “spiritual warfare” teachings to Islam. . . . The greater and more visible pluralism in American society is chal- lenging evangelical identity, leading to the erection of new boundary markers between evangelicalism and other religions. (2005, 162)

According to 2009 national data compiled by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, hate crimes against and civil rights complaints by American Muslims have increased every year since 2001 (Council on American-Islamic Relations [CAIR] 2009). This phenomenon has been termed “Islamophobia,” or fear of Islam. The multicultural context of contemporary America assumes that fear can be overcome with knowledge of the other—but what about the people who do not wish to engage intellectually with Islam and understand it beyond its stereotype? Islamophobia is too benign a term to describe the more extreme hatred directed toward American Muslims; rather, these sentiments are a form of anti- Islamism. I assert that this perspective views Islam as the existen- tial other, and as a stream of religio-political ideology that must be publically delegitimized for American Muslims to achieve a mainstream political identity.

THE CORE OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN MUSLIM POLITICAL IDENTITY

Having briefly outlined how race and religion are tied to the polit- ical problematization of the American Muslim, the following

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sections present four markers of integral components of contem- porary American Muslim political identity in the post-September 11 era.

Democrat In the 1980s, significant discussion occurred among first- and second-generation American Muslims about whether involve- ment in the American political system was halāl, or religiously permissible in Islamic jurisprudence. A generational debate ensued that was in part based on self-identity. Did first-generation American Muslim in the United States consider themselves to be visitors who would return home after retirement, engaging in what Nyang termed the “myth of return” (1999, 18), or did they see themselves as “here to stay” permanently? The majority of post-1965 American Muslim immigrants to the United States, excluding asylum seekers, came not as political or religious refu- gees, but as economic migrants who became acculturated to the norms of American society and, owing to their children’s future in the country, made return to their homelands impractical if not impossible. The shift in self-identification has been genera- tional, but September 11 also catapulted the American Muslim community into political activism as the costs of political quiet- ism increased exponentially.

Observant Muslims are more socially conservative than the average American owing to religious restrictions such as commu- nal gender segregation and adherence to strict dietary codes. As such, one might conclude that the Republican Party would be this group’s natural home. Indeed, in the 2000 election, first- and second-generation American Muslims formally endorsed the Republican Bush on October 23, 2000, through a new national umbrella organization called the American Muslim Political Coor- dinating Council (AMPCC). This endorsement was partly due to a slight tilt, as the release states, “Bush challenged the use of ‘secret evidence’ at the second presidential debate” (Rose 2001). This is in contrast to the Gore campaign, which refused to meet with leaders of the Muslim community and did publically acknowl- edge the constitutional concerns shared by the American Muslim community. Simultaneously, however, African American Muslim organizations refused to endorse Bush through the AMPCC and voted overwhelmingly for Al Gore.

In the 2004 elections, after what was perceived as four years of increasingly negative policies against Muslims both domestically and internationally, the AMPCC overwhelmingly voted for John Kerry (Fernandes and Skerry 2004). It is clear, especially with the 2008 election, that the Democratic Party has secured the Ameri- can Muslim vote as a permanent constituency for a generation.

Pro-Palestinian, Internationalist (Foreign Policy) Unlike Christianity, Islam and Judaism share a common view of community. Religion and ethnicity bind the Jews in a worldwide community (Denny 2011), and for Muslims, the importance of umma (the worldwide community of believers) has only increased in the postcolonial period as innovations in communications tech- nology have been made and pan-Islamic ideology has expanded (Roy 2006). As such, US foreign policy toward the Muslim world is of special interest to American Muslims.

Historically, American Muslim political engagement has taken the form of pro-Palestinian activism. For Muslims, the Palestin- ian question is the most symbolic issue of the twentieth century and is tied to fundamental questions of self-identity, power, and

postcolonialism. Much of early first-generation American Mus- lim political organization focused on foreign policy and this issue in particular, arguing against what they perceived as the power of the “Israel lobby,” in Walt and Mearsheimer’s terminology (Mearsheimer and Walt 2008).

With regard to major recent foreign policy decisions, the major- ity of American Muslims opposed the invasions of both Afghan- istan and Iraq. In terms of overall foreign policy orientation, they tend toward internationalism. That is to say, among this group, US national security is not seen as exclusive from the interests of international community; rather, international political coopera- tion and adherence to the rule of international law is considered to be important, placing American Muslims closer to the progres- sive position on the political spectrum.

Progressive/Liberal (Domestic Policy) In the summer of 2002, American Muslim leaders of various orga- nizations including the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Coun- cil on American Muslim Relations, and the American Muslim Council, among others, observed the marginalization of Mus- lims within the American political system. One response to this state of affairs was to push for recognition of the “American- ness” of first- and second-generation American Muslims by focus- ing on domestic issues as opposed to exclusively foreign policy. This suggestion provoked an initial divide between African Amer- ican Muslims and first- and second-generation American Mus- lims. The Islamic concept of working toward social justice has been highlighted by the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) so that the American Muslim community now promotes Muslim immigrant and civil rights in addition to its foreign pol- icy platforms. The focus on civil rights cases by other organiza- tions, such as the Muslim Public Affairs Council and National Association of Muslim Lawyers, signifies a larger trend within American Muslim political and professional organizations toward curbing a perceived tilt toward security by successive presiden- tial administrations in lieu of liberty.

Since September 11, American Muslim commentary on domes- tic events has also become more important in promoting a posi- tive image of the American Muslim. A major critique by the conservative base of the Republican Party is that Muslims do not condone terrorism (Peña 2009). “Where are the moderates?” they ask. As a result, American Muslim organizations like CAIR and the Islamic Society of North America now regularly release press statements condemning terrorism both abroad and within the United States.

One common sentiment that American Muslim political lead- ers have expressed since September 11 is succinctly stated by Bayoumi:

Frankly, it’s beleaguering; like living on a treadmill, and exhausting condition. University of Michigan anthropologists Sally Howell and Andrew Shyrock succinctly describe the situation when they write that “in the aftermath of 9/11, Arab and Muslim Americans have been compelled, time and again, to apologize for acts they did not commit, to condemn acts they never condoned, and to openly pro- fess loyalties, that for most U.S. citizens are merely assumed.” Yet despite the apologies, condemnations, and professions, their voices are still not heard. (2008, 5)

This form of silencing stems from credibility judgment. Mus- lim organizations engage regularly in group testimony (Tollefsen

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2007) against terrorism and are not heard. If this situation is due to anti-Islamism, as I suspect in part it is, then this form of group preemptive testimonial injustice constrains the political freedom of American Muslims as a group to contest events and to be know- ers in defining their own experience (Fricker 2009; Fricker 2010). This is to suggest that in mainstream American media outlets a bias exists in which American Muslim voices voicing opposition to militant-extremism or trying to articulate a nuanced definition of Islam are actively not heard.

Conservative (Religious) Despite their support for domestic civil rights and liberal or domes- tic foreign policy positions, American Muslims’ political progres- sivism does not generally extend to contested social issues such as gay marriage or abortion rights. Islam is evolving quite rapidly as a result of the high level of assimilation that is possible in the United States. The Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform orienta- tions found within American Judaism can be applied to American Islam as well, although the boundaries are less defined and not yet codified as seen in the Shı̄¨a community (Takim 2009). Secular Muslims do exist, as do Muslims who self-identify as “progres- sive,” but their collective numbers appear to be small, their reli- gious ideas are largely confined to elite academic discourse, and they are not as politically organized as followers of the more con- servative and orthodox orientations. Furthermore, some Ameri- can Muslim conservatives espouse progressive ideas such as interfaith dialogue and religious pluralism, revealing the diffi- culty in establishing strict delineations (Safi 2003).

While American Muslim attitudes toward social issues tend toward the conservative (explaining the initial political inclin- ation toward the Republican Party in the 2000 presidential elec- tion), the anti-Islamic rhetoric that is common within the Republican Party and on the conservative Fox News is profoundly alienating. In the same way that black and white evangelicals share similar perspectives on social issues yet fundamentally disagree on political orientation and thus are in opposing political camps along racial lines as in the South, so too do American Muslims tend toward functional institutional secularism as the practical issues of civil rights and public policy outweigh symbolic cultural and religious debates over private morality.

CONCLUSION: SECOND-GENERATION LEADERSHIP AND THE FUTURE

The previous sections attempted to outline some of the major forces that have created the core of the American Muslim constit- uency. The majority of American Muslims, like most Americans, generally tend toward political apathy and ambivalence, except at those points in history that excite their spirit, such as the election of President Barak Hussein Obama. The minority political class is driving the redefinition of the American Muslim on behalf of the community. The American Muslim constituency is evolving rapidly because of the efforts of its political class, and its future lies in the hands of its second-generation leadership.

A bifurcation naturally emerges between first and second gen- erations in a diaspora context. Many first-generation American Muslims who come to the United States are searching for a better life and are willing to bear higher levels of discrimination and hos- tility, because they perceive these burdens as less important than what they can achieve. Second-generation American Muslims, in

contrast, are thoroughly Americanized, generally adopting the civil religion and the civic ideal of equality. When confronted with per- ceived discrimination, they react negatively and viscerally. It is with this passion that many second-generation American Muslims have entered the various parts of the political establishment to help the larger society achieve its stated ideals. Such political engagement is significant, because it depends on the internalization of and com- mitment to the American experiment.

The pioneering organization for the political mobilization, edu- cation, and networking of second-generation American Muslims is the Muslim Public Service Network, formerly the Muslim Stu- dent Network. Established by Marghoob and Renae Qureshi in 1994, the program has graduated summer alumni yearly since its inception. With its motto of “Engaging American Muslims in Pub- lic Service and Public Policy,” the Network runs an intensive sum- mer program that allows American Muslim university students to intern in various political offices in Washington, DC, from the White House to the Council of Foreign Relations, and attend lec- tures on Islamic civilization by university lecturers and promi- nent Muslim leaders in the evenings. On completion of the program, the network of alumni is assiduously maintained through online communities. Prominent alumni have created many impor- tant networking institutions, such as the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association and the National Association of Muslim Lawyers.

One of the major accomplishments of the American Muslim political class is the ongoing development of these institutions. First-generation American Muslims have come to many of the same conclusions that their African American coreligionists have reached. Two clear trends can be seen in the evolution of Ameri- can Muslim political identity: the redefinition of a racial narrative and the expansion of the Judeo-Christian definition of American identity to include an Abrahamic definition.

As the leadership of American Muslim political institutions transitions from first- to second-generation hands, the primary question that needs to be unequivocally answered in the mind of Americans is: Can American Muslims be loyal? If testimonial injustice exists because of anti-Islamism, making American Mus- lims unable to assert their loyalty, the causes of this prejudice must be identified and contested. In addition, the assumed con- nections between race and religion, and Americanness will need to be reconsidered. The 2010 controversy over the Park 51 project in New York City revealed an underlying national unease with Muslim identity in public spaces and took a decidedly political tone when local, state, and national politicians weighed in on the ability of the project to proceed. The primary challenge for the American Muslim political class in the new decade will be to pro- mote a mainstream image of the unquestionable loyalty of the American Muslim so that a shift can take place to organize the American Muslim constituency from a fragmented political lia- bility on the defensive to an allied asset on the offensive. �

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