Table Of ContentThis Muslim American Life
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This Muslim American Life
DISPATCHES FROM THE WAR ON TERROR
Moustafa Bayoumi
NEW Y ORK UNIVER SITY PRES S
New York and London
NEW Y ORK UNIVER SITY PRES S
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2015 by Moustafa Bayoum i
All rights reserved
References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing.
Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that
may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
ISBN: (hardback) 978-1-4798-3684-0
ISBN: (paperback) 978-1-4798-3564-5
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: My Muslim American Life 1
PART I. MU SLIMS IN HIS TORY
1. Letter to a G- Man 23
2. East of the Sun (West of the Moon): Islam, the Ahmadis,
and African America 35
3. Racing Religion 48
PART II. MU SLIMS IN THEOR Y
4. Sects and the City 75
5. A Bloody Stupid War 78
6. The God That Failed: The Neo- Orientalism of Today’s
Muslim Commentators 99
PART III. MU SLIMS IN POLITIC S
7. The Rites and Rights of Citizenship 121
8. Between Acceptance and Rejection: Muslim Americans
and the Legacies of September 11 128
9. Fear and Loathing of Islam 140
10. The Oak Creek Massacre 148
11. White with Rage 152
v
vi ◆ Contents
PART IV. MUSLIMS IN C ULTURE
12. My Arab Problem 169
13. Disco Inferno 175
14. The Race Is On: Muslims and Arabs in the
American Imagination 185
15. Men Behaving Badly 210
16. Chaos and Procedure 217
17. Coexistence 240
Conclusion: Our Muslim American Lives 253
Notes 259
Permissions 291
Index 293
About the Author 309
Acknowledgments
This book was written over several years, and I am very grateful
to the many people who have patiently listened to me test out my
ideas, heard me rant loudly at a television screen, watched me
throw a book across a room in disgust, or observed me arch an
eyebrow in genuine confusion. I’m even more grateful for their
wisdom and generous help in improving my writing and thinking.
My parents Hoda and Mohamed Bayoumi, my brother Ahmed,
and my sister Imaan have been constant sources of stability, inspi-
ration, and creativity in my life. Eric Zinner and Alicia Nadkarni at
NYU Press have been extraordinary to work with. Their patience
and professionalism are unmatched, and collaborating with them
has been both stimulating and rewarding. My agent Katherine
Fausset always has my best interests and best writing at heart, and
I thank her for that. Over the span of writing the essays that make
up this book, I have also benefited directly from the help of so
many people, including Hisham Aidi, Younis Ali, Nezar Andary,
Abed Awad, Joel Beinin, Padmini Biswas, Marissa Brostoff, Susan
Buck- Morss, Rachel Ida Buff, Roane Carey, Lillian Cho, Rosemary
Corbett, James Davis, Ashley Dawson, Ira Dworkin, Emily Field,
Anna Liza Gavieres, Zareena Grewal, Jonathan Guyer, Juliane
Hammer, Salah Hassan, Sally Howell, Richard Kim, Robert Ji- Song
Ku, Amitava Kumar, Cynthia Ai- Fen Lee, Ben Lerner, Neil J. Levi,
Alex Lubin, Timothy Marr, Sophia McClennen, Patrick McGreevy,
Scott McLeod, Scott Michaelson, Vanessa Mobley, Rob Nixon,
John Oakes, Sana’ Odeh, Gary Okihiro, Amitabh Pal, Christian
Parenti, Vijay Prashad, Lizzy Ratner, Betsy Reed, Shara Richter,
Corey Robin, Colin Robinson, Andrew Ross, Matthew Rothschild,
vii
viii ◆ Acknowledgments
Hussein Saddique, Zohra Saed, Liliana Segura, Andrew Shryock,
Paul Silverstein, Nikhil Pal Singh, Neil Smith, Michael Sorkin, Jean
Stein, Jean Tamarin, John Kuo Wei Tchen, Chris Toensig, Ellen
Tremper, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Sudhir Venkatesh, Carl Wein-
berg, Naomi Zeveloff, and Sharon Zukin. My profound thanks to
all of you.
Introduction
My Muslim American Life
In August 2011, almost exactly ten years after the terrorist attacks
of 2001, the Associated Press published an article titled “With
CIA Help, NYPD Moves Covertly in Muslim Areas.” The article’s
authors, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman, described how the
New York Police Department was working with officials “on loan”
from the CIA to develop a massive and covert surveillance program
that directly targeted the entire Muslim community in and around
New York City.1 Initially, the NYPD flatly denied the reporters’
findings. “Someone has a great imagination,” NYPD spokesman
Paul Browne said.2 The AP then posted on their website a trove of
leaked internal documents from the police department that proved
not only the existence of the program but also that the department
felt free to lie outright to its public about its actions. Veteran police
reporter Len Levitt also gained access to internal documents, and
on September 5 published an article (reprinted two days later by
the Huffington Post) on the scope of the surveillance.3 Levitt noted
that the NYPD had placed confidential informants in seven Mus-
lim student associations (MSAs) at local colleges and that Brooklyn
College, where I teach, and Baruch College had been listed as
MSAs “of concern.” Levitt wrote about one confidential police
report that listed “42 top tier ‘persons of interest,’” which included
“a lecturer at Brooklyn College.” For weeks, people assumed that
this lecturer must be me.
Frankly, I wondered the same while also thinking that it would
be absurd for the police to waste their resources on me. The Asso-
1
Description:Over the last few years, Moustafa Bayoumi has been an extra in Sex and the City 2 playing a generic Arab, a terrorist suspect (or at least his namesake “Mustafa Bayoumi” was) in a detective novel, the subject of a trumped-up controversy because a book he had written was seen by right-wing media
