American Islamophobia, Khaled A. Beydoun
American Islamophobia, Khaled A. Beydoun
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American Islamophobia
Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear

Author: Khaled A. Beydoun

Narrator: Neil Shah

Unabridged: 7 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 07/18/2018


Synopsis

“I remember the four words that repeatedly scrolled across my mind after the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City. ‘Please don’t be Muslims, please don’t be Muslims.’ The four words I whispered to myself on 9/11 reverberated through the mind of every Muslim American that day and every day after . . . . Our fear, and the collective breath or brace for the hateful backlash that ensued, symbolize the existential tightrope that defines Muslim American identity today.”

The term “Islamophobia” may be fairly new, but irrational fear and hatred of Islam and Muslims is anything but. Though many speak of Islamophobia’s roots in racism, have we considered how anti-Muslim rhetoric is rooted in our legal system?

Using his unique lens as a critical race theorist and law professor, Khaled A. Beydoun captures the many ways in which law, policy, and official state rhetoric have fueled the frightening resurgence of Islamophobia in the United States. Beydoun charts its long and terrible history, from the plight of enslaved African Muslims in the antebellum South and the laws prohibiting Muslim immigrants from becoming citizens to the ways the war on terror assigns blame for any terrorist act to Islam and the myriad trials Muslim Americans face in the Trump era. He passionately argues that by failing to frame Islamophobia as a system of bigotry endorsed and emboldened by law and carried out by government actors, U.S. society ignores the injury it inflicts on both Muslims and non-Muslims. Through the stories of Muslim Americans who have experienced Islamophobia across various racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines, Beydoun shares how U.S. laws shatter lives, whether directly or inadvertently. And with an eye toward benefiting society as a whole, he recommends ways for Muslim Americans and their allies to build coalitions with other groups. Like no book before it, American Islamophobia offers a robust and genuine portrait of Muslim America then and now.

About Khaled A. Beydoun

Khaled A. Beydoun is a law professor and public intellectual. His work examines constitutional law, critical race theory, Islamophobia, and their intersections.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Noel نوال on January 25, 2021

Khaled Beydoun is one of my favorite activists and this is a highly important piece of American literature for a multitude of reasons. Islamophobia is so deeply entrenched within American culture, media, foreign policies, political campaigns, immigration, laws, and so many other areas where it is wi......more

Goodreads review by Joanna on April 29, 2019

While Beydoun is clearly passionate and well-versed in the subject of Islamophobia and the Muslim experience in America, I found the writing to be repetitive and the content painted its perspective with a broad brush: The book spoke generally about Muslim fears and attitudes throughout centuries of......more

Goodreads review by Jacob on December 14, 2018

I felt that this book did a good job explaining how institutional Islamophobia has motivated and exacerbated acts of individual Islamophobia. A greater focus on the individual stories of those who deal with both manifestations of Islamophobia would have made the book more impactful as it would’ve ha......more

Goodreads review by Beth on October 16, 2022

In my rating system 3 stars translates to "recommendable" (4 = impeccable; 5 = transformational). And that's how I would describe this book at this particular point in history at this particular point in my life: recommendable. I think if I'd come across this book when it first came out in 2018 I wou......more

Goodreads review by Sarah on December 30, 2021

This book is great to understand the mechanisms of 'private and structural' (American) Islamophobia, as the author calls it. There are some very insightful parts and the personal stories throughout the book moved me. However, I really had to struggle my way through this book because of the amount of......more