Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:07 Uh, we are on with professor Aziz. Um, my name is Ahmed <inaudible>. I am the editor in chief of maiden and the maiden podcast at the I don't relax center for global systemic studies at George Mason university. And this is the first one that I am recording for me damn podcast. Um, um, as you know, my podcast is several chess sort of funeral channels. Uh, and you know, what we are doing today is an episode that is going to be plugged into our, um, uh, to any anniversary of nine 11 series on the mainland. And it's my great pleasure to welcome <inaudible>, uh, from Rutgers university law school and the center for security, race and rice it's, uh, and rights at Rutgers university. Um, I'll, um, you know, welcome, uh, for services.
Speaker 1 00:01:00 Thank you so much, so much for inviting me. It's truly an honor. I'm a big fan of your podcast.
Speaker 0 00:01:06 Oh, right. No, on their phone. Thank you so much. We're really grateful to you for making time. Um, our audience will not process these from her scholarship, from her sort of on the field in her presence. And we'll talk about, you know, some of her, uh, backgrounds, but a quick bio is, um, that, you know, process disease, um, is a professor of law of chancellor scholars, social justice scholar, and we the least legal studies spell red truck's Christy university law school. She is the founding director of the Rutgers center for security, race and rights, a C S R R that rutgers.edu is the website. And I highly encourage our audience to check the website art, which is full of wonderful resources. Um, and she, um, her scholarship is interdisciplinary and examines intersections of national security, race, and civil rights with a focus on the Edwards adverse impact of national security laws and policies on racial, ethnic, and religious minorities in the U S and she has other interests as well on Egypt, for example, intersections of terrorism, authoritarians, and rule of law in Egypt. Um, but also that she is the author of multiple, um, articles and a recent book that's coming up. And we will talk about the book as well, uh, called the racial Muslim when racism questions, religious freedom, coming to art from the university of California press, um, very soon, uh, right.
Speaker 1 00:02:38 Yes, it will be coming out in November, 2021 in child law. So I encourage everyone to pre-order it. Now it's available on the UC press.com website and also on amazon.com and other booksellers. But yes, I'm very much looking forward to its birth.
Speaker 0 00:02:56 Wonderful. That's um, that's, that's, that's wonderful. Um, okay. Let's jump into our conversation. Our audiences is familiar with our sort of free flowing conversation. Um, but I wanted to, even though I read your bio, um, I want to start off with a brief introduction in terms of how you would like to tell us about your scholarship. What has shaped your scholarship, uh, in the last 15, 20 years? And, um, perhaps we can also talk about, um, you know, some of your, um, your words next at the, at the center for security, race and rights traffickers as well.
Speaker 1 00:03:36 Well, I am an untraditional scholar proudly, so in many ways, the first is that I am what I call a general first and a half generation American, or I'm technically legally an immigrant. I was born in Cairo, but I was raised in America. So socially and culturally, I'm a product of American society and the education system, but I was raised by Egyptian Muslim parents who were born and raised in Egypt. And so my positioning socially is unique for the academy because you will not find many people who are what we call this one and a half generation, not, not first-generation American and not second generation America, or what kind of one we're in the middle. And that brings a perspective that is rarely brought to the academy. So that's one way that I'm untraditional. And the other is that I practiced law for almost a decade before I entered the academy.
Speaker 1 00:04:43 And before then I was a racial justice activist in my local community as a high school student, as a college student in the Dallas, Texas area in the 1990s, when being racially conscious was not popular when everyone had drank the Kool-Aid that we were colorblind. And even among minority communities, if you were raised, conscious was considered that you were a troublemaker, uh, this was the post civil rights era. This was when, uh, African-American communities were being vilified in the war on crime and the war on drugs, the media was, uh, full of negative images and criminalization of black men in particular, but black identity in general on television. And the way that often many minority communities were responding in the nineties was to try to integrate assimilate and work within the system. And if you were one of those people or groups who adopted more of the Malcolm X theory or approach, or the black nationalist approach or the anti-colonial approach, you were considered a radical in a very negative sense.
Speaker 1 00:06:11 And so what we're seeing today is very intriguing to someone like me, who came of age in the 1990s and came of age politically and intellectually because this so-called woke generation in this racially conscious, uh, world that we're, we just suddenly discovered is, is not the way it's been for the past, at least 30 years in, in my lifetime of being an adult. So I've learned to appreciate that there is a pendulum and the pendulum swings, and there's always a reaction to every progress. Uh, if we do one step forward, there's a risk of two steps back as we're seeing now with attacks on critical race theory. And so that's something else that I think brings a unique perspective to my scholarship. And then finally, I am a critical race theorist, and I didn't become one, two years ago when I became Bob Mueller or when people actually know what it was.
Speaker 1 00:07:06 I became a critical race theorist unofficially in the nineties just by default, uh, but really understood what it meant and adopted it as a scholarly identity and academic identity. When I started teaching and becoming a professor in 2011, and the reason I adopted critical race theory as my scholarly agenda and my scholarly identity was because it made sense to me, based on what I'd seen as an immigrant who was raised in the United States was a religious minority. It was also an ethnic minority, but who had also been raised in a, primarily a largely African-American community where I witnessed firsthand anti-black racism against many of my friends and was quite disgusted by it, where I heard a family members of my white friends use the N word as if it was not a bad word, which was quite a shock for me. Uh, and so I had witnessed things as a teenager and as a college student that made it clear as day that America had a serious racism problem, but these weren't things that people were willing to talk about in quote unquote, polite company.
Speaker 1 00:08:18 And I thought critical race theory was that stream of, of, of theory or that street, that academic path, that was much more honest and much more realistic about just how entrenched racism is in the United States, both explicitly and structurally or both intentionally and through what we call disparate impact. And that was not popular. And I had many advisers tell me, do not identify yourself as a critical race theorists. When you go on the academic market, do not write as a, for grace Cirrus, you'll be marginalized and you'll be stigmatized and people won't take you seriously. But my perspective, which again is unique was that if I wasn't going to be a critical race theorist academic, then I didn't want to be an academic. It really wasn't worth it. What's the point if you're not going into the academy to make interventions that are based on your analysis, your research in a way that, uh, may challenge the status quo.
Speaker 1 00:09:16 Again, it's depends on what you find in your research, but that isn't automatically accepting all the assumptions and premise and facts that others put forth, because oftentimes what is so-called mainstream is not necessarily accurate. And it is always, and that includes myself and anyone else, but all knowledge production is affected by power or lack thereof. Uh, and we can disconnect, right? So whatever one we say about national security or whatever one reads about civil rights or Muslims, you have to understand the position of the author, the limited limitations of the author in their analysis, even if it's not intentional, even if it's not in bad faith. And that's why it's so important in the academy for us to have peer review, to have diversity of viewpoints, to have contrarian views and critical perspectives. Because I think our ultimate job as academics is truth seekers and too, we have such a privileged position.
Speaker 1 00:10:15 And I think during the Trump era was stark reminder for all of us were tenured. Academics is, you know, when you had someone like Donald Trump using the most powerful, uh, pulpit, right? The most powerful bully pulpit, which is the presidency of the United States to engage in such stark and explicit racism against so many communities, Muslim communities, black communities, Latin X communities, immigrant communities, women is when you realize how important it is to be an independent thinker and to be a free thinker, and to be able to speak truth to power and not have to worry, at least in theory about being fired. Whereas that's not the case, uh, and our capitalist society where hope will work at will the will of the supervisor and the employer. And that is one way to quash. Any type of independent thought creative thinking is to make employees always afraid that if they say something that they think is truthful or they think is actually going to help an institution, but it isn't what the powerful one to hear or may threaten the interests of the powerful, then they won't do it.
Speaker 1 00:11:21 And then you start getting decadence. So I think that, um, you know, in a nutshell, this, this long, somewhat long-winded introduction is to say that I, uh, I feel very, um, responsible and I feel a burden of responsibility as an academic and as someone who has these multiple experiences that are not commonly found in the academy, uh, I'm probably one of only a handful of Muslim women and a handful of Muslim Arab women and in the academy, especially in legal teaching. And so with that comes a great burden and responsibility to make sure that at least my voice is heard and that we bring more of those identities into legal academia, because of course not every Arab woman, not every Muslim woman, not every Arab Muslim woman has the same perspectives and the same experiences. And that's the whole point of diversity is to understand the diversity, both within, uh, identity groups and between different identity groups.
Speaker 0 00:12:23 Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, thank you so much. This is very, very helpful. And I just wanted to ask about the episode, I was listening to a lecture by you, and you're talking about your second year in law school and nine 11 happening. Um, and that's being a turning point in, in some ways in your personal and academic life. Um, how was, you know, now looking back almost 20 years now, how does it look? How does it feel to look back at that experience as a, as a law school student, you know, experiencing that
Speaker 1 00:13:00 I was a first year law student and relevant 2001, uh, in which matters in so far as I wasn't even settled into law school yet. We'd only been in law school for two weeks. It's always a very overwhelming experience at first semester of law school. And I write about this in my book and part in there in the racial Muslim about how that completely changed my career trajectory. And it brought social justice and racial justice issues to a very personal level. Before then, I was more of an ally to African-American communities. The racial justice work I was working on, it was a twofold one was with my African-American friends on racial justice issues that were very directly impacting black communities. And I had the privilege of not having to deal with as much of that type of discrimination. And then I also worked a lot with refugees from Muslim countries, like the Kurdish refugees in particular, who had come to Dallas and larger numbers in the nineties.
Speaker 1 00:14:09 But again, that wasn't personal, I was not a refugee. And so nine 11 brought all of that racism and all of the bigotry to our home in a, in a very personal level to our communities where me and my parents and my family and my friends and my mosque community felt under siege. We felt that everyone in the country was looking at us as if we had committed some horrendous treasonous act. We were guilty by association. We heard all sorts of extremely offensive comments made in the, by politicians, uh, by law professors that, you know, in my own university. And it was shocking because again, you know, especially when you know, there's racism, it's just different when it doesn't come home to you, it has more of an abstract academic, uh, or advocacy perspective rather than a very personal one where you literally are worried, you know, could I get arrested?
Speaker 1 00:15:24 Uh, will I ever find a job? Well, my mother who wears hijab get beaten in the streets or my parents get fired because they're Muslim. And if they do well, the legal system actually be able to protect them because now we would have to test it. There's all kinds of laws in writing. But as someone who also studies the developing world and authoritarian regimes in the middle east, I'm fully aware that you could have all sorts of laws on the books that officially protect civil rights and human rights, but enforcement is where you find out if it's merely a piece of paper or actually a robust legal system that supports such rights. And we had never had to test that being in the United States on a, on a personal level. So it completely changed my career trajectory, where I had gone to law school originally to work on rule of law issues and democracy and human rights in the middle east, because I had a deep interest in my own heritage and was very connected to the middle east, um, just through my own immigration experience to changing it, to working on civil rights in the U S especially on behalf of Muslim communities, national security was the legal and political context in which their civil rights were often violated.
Speaker 1 00:16:41 So that's ultimately what led me down the path of being an expert on the intersection of national security and civil rights, both in terms of what I did as a lawyer, especially on a pro bono matters, but also, uh, as an academic in my scholarship.
Speaker 0 00:16:56 No, that, that definitely makes sense. And thank you for giving us that background. Um, I want to talk maybe later on a little bit also about your, um, like school board members role, um, that's, that's, that's not all that's common. Um, but, but, but maybe we can do that after talking a little bit smarter about the center center for security, race and rights at Rutgers university. Uh, what were some of the, um, let's the journey of the centers? Uh, how did you establish the center? What has been its small, small sorority accomplishments in, in, in, in your perspective? Um, and can you tell us maybe a little bit about, you know, the plan for the year ahead, um, for the centers, um, the, the tree falls sort, you know, issue sort of focus at the center is, is really sort of, I think, you know, uh, creative and interesting, and I'm sure our audience would love to hear more about that as well.
Speaker 1 00:18:00 Yeah. The center for security race and rights is a culmination of my 20 years. What that point we started in 2017 had Rutgers law school. So at that point it was 17 years of work on post nine 11 discrimination issues. And I learned many lessons in on my path because as I mentioned, I wasn't a first year law student. So I had to, uh, it was trial by fire, right? It was learning by being thrown in the middle of the ocean and trying to learn how to protect a very tiny minority. And we're talking about no more than 1% of the population, uh, against systematic discrimination, immigration, and, uh, antiterrorism prosecutions and surveillance and investigations in schools and workplaces. It, it was unfortunately all encompassing. And that doesn't mean that every single Muslim experienced it directly, but we were all, uh, in anyone who's a Muslim identity was known or who was presumed to be Muslim, even mistakenly like Sikh Americans was at least indirectly impacted by those stereotypes.
Speaker 1 00:19:13 And one of the lessons of the stereotypes specifically is that you are either an outright terrorist or that you are a potential terrorist or that you sympathize with terrorism either explicitly or implicitly, or that you are associated with terrorism. And then from there, there are suspicions that you're not loyal to America. That you're anti-American that your religion is, uh, cannot be reconcilable democracy, that your religion is against human rights, that your religion oppresses women. So all sorts of there were multiple, multiple stereotypes that all intertwined together and that you would see them come out in the way that people interacted with you. Again, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly. When one of the lessons I learned when I was in the 17 year path was that you got to build institutions because for the first four or five years, we were reacting. It was one thing after the other one crisis after the other, from, you know, when, when America bombed the Taliban in Afghanistan, ultimately defacto occupied Afghanistan.
Speaker 1 00:20:24 And now we're seeing 2021 that was an utter failure. And I won't go into the details of that. That would be a separate discussion, but every time that the us goes to war with a Muslim majority country, there are all sorts of negative media depictions, and the only prism through which American audiences, the vast of them don't know, I'm Muslim personally. I've never traveled to a Muslim majority country. I know absolutely nothing about his song. So if their introduction to it is through terrorism, that's their first impression. And not only is it an introduction, but it's repeated over and over and over again through the media, because it's all of the focuses on the war, the war on terror, the war in Afghanistan, and the only Muslims they've seen now are the Taliban Osama bin Laden and a guy that, and that is the equivalent of introducing the world to America by only showing them the Klu Klux Klan.
Speaker 1 00:21:25 Yes, this plan exists. Yes, white supremacist exist, but anyone who's lived in America knows that they do not represent the entire country. And yes, there may be Klu, Klux Klan members in our government, but they're probably a minority. I'm pretty confident they're a minority. Uh, and that wouldn't be a fair depiction of the country. Although of course, we have to take into account that that's a reality in American society, that there is anti-black racism, but it doesn't all come through the form of the Klu Klux Klan. I'm just giving that as a, as an example. So when all you see as the Taliban or some of it Latin and Al Qaeda, but it doesn't mean that they don't exist. Of course they exist. And it doesn't mean that they don't have followers, but there's no perspective, no context, given that, in fact, we're talking about 1%, maybe less than 1% even, and you were talking about 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, and there's a war and there was a conflict.
Speaker 1 00:22:19 And we used to arm, or some of Atlanta who was actually an ally. You know, we could go on and on about how complicated the war in Afghanistan, uh, was. And then we go into Iraq where we discovered very recently that afterwards, that Bush lied to the American people. And in fact there was no lawful basis for invading Iraq. It was an unlawful war by international law standards by the law of war standards. And yet, how could he justify it to his people in terms of the trillions of dollars that would be spent in terms of American soldiers being killed and dying in battle, he and his administration had to make your Rockies and Muslims writ large into demons, right? He had to make them into monsters and he had to scare his population into accepting what was otherwise a completely legitimate war, especially by legal, from a legal basis.
Speaker 1 00:23:19 And also I think from a political basis. And again, we've seen the outcome of, of that failed attempt of at least apparently whatever it is he declared, he was trying to do that's for a different conversation, but all of that connects to how Muslims were treated in the U S because the American public that wasn't Muslim didn't have any other source of information, but that very few people actually went and studied Arabic or actually traveled, or did a debris in middle east studies or even took a class in high school about the middle east. I mean, that's another big gap we have in our education system is America is it's very isolationist and we don't learn about other cultures. We don't learn other languages, uh, beyond the minimum. Uh, so what we were doing the first five years was just playing, um, defensive and we had to respond to all sorts of crises, and then it started to shift into litigation.
Speaker 1 00:24:19 So there was a lot of maybe grassroots advocacy and trying to just protect people from being deported, from being, uh, investigated or charged, or, um, bullied to more active litigation, but still there were not very many institutions that would be able to sustain that kind of work and what we realized around. And I see we meaning there was a large growing number every year. A row of Muslim Americans were either by choice or by necessity, uh, becoming civil rights advocates in one way or the other, because we were just also deeply impacted. I was one of the first in the group only because I was a law student. And there was a Darth of lawyers in Muslim American communities in America for cultural reasons, because oftentimes at least those who were immigrating from south Asia and from the middle east, north Africa, it's considered more prestigious culturally to be a doctor or an engineer, or to be a business owner.
Speaker 1 00:25:25 And law just was not a degree or a career path from their countries of origin that was considered high status. And so they were not encouraging their children to become lawyers. That's one reason there are other reasons such as language, uh, and, and lack of networks. But the point being is that there were very few Muslims, much less Muslim students in 2001. And so by just by necessity, you end up becoming one of those, those few numbers. I'm very happy now, and very proud to see larger numbers of Muslims from various races and ethnicities who are, uh, lawyers in, um, you know, American lawyers. But what we discovered was that if the, if we didn't have institutions, then it would always be reactionary and it would not be strategic. It would not be forward-thinking. And the non Muslim institutions that were assisting Muslims in defending their civil rights, which was quite courageous because it was not popular at the time organizations like the ACLU, like the center for constitutional rights, uh, uh, the, um, well, the Arab American anti-discrimination committee, which wasn't institution, at least for Arab Americans, but there really weren't that many.
Speaker 1 00:26:39 And then there were some local organizations, the immigrant rights organizations were certainly very helpful, but none of them focused exclusively on our communities. And so if a particular crisis ended or succeed subsided from the national agenda, then we didn't really have anyone that would look out for our rights. And so one of the positive developments was the new organizations were created and, uh, Muslim advocates was one of them. Um, there was other organizations like Solodev and the south Asian legal defense and education fund, there was salt, the south Asians leading together. There were, I mean, there were multiple organizations that were created and all of that, these were new organizations created by very young people in their twenties and thirties. And so the center for security rights is just one within this larger on there's also the Muslim anti-racism coalition, Muslim art, which focuses on a very important issue of anti-black racism within Muslim communities, right in the intersectional identities. So this is the center for security reason. Rice is really just one of this larger ecosystem of institutions that is, I think, a positive byproduct of post nine 11 discrimination. And that is the institutionalization of civil rights groups. That focus only on, well, not only, but primarily on Muslim civil and human rights, uh, in the U S and then connecting that with international developments, because for better or worse, who we as Muslims, even African-American Muslims, not just those who are immigrants or direct recent children of immigrants are affected by these negative stereotypes.
Speaker 0 00:28:26 And, and the center is sort of like receive support from Rutgers, but as well as, you know, from the community and those outside. And, um, I dunno if, if you, um, like, you know, navigate the grants landscape and other things, um, what does is institutional, um, sort of a plan, you know, for, for years ahead, and especially this year, uh, in regards to nine 11 and marking its its anniversary, I think you were part of, like you mentioned in the beginning, a conversation on the critical race theory, uh, recently, which, which was very, um, interesting. I unfortunately couldn't attend. Um, but what is the center's focus this year and how can folks support the center?
Speaker 1 00:29:13 Well, first I will tell you that we are primarily donors supported. We are fortunate to have some support from Rutgers university in Newark. We're very fortunate to have a very progressive, uh, chancellor Nancy Cantor, who I am a big fan of. So I, she definitely deserves credit because not all chancellors and not high level administrators was, would allow such a center to exist, uh, because we've certainly had our share of hate mail. Uh, but that's the comes with the territory. I call it an occupational hazard and you can't do civil rights and you can't do critical race theory if you don't have a thick skin. And if you're not a fighter and if you're not ready to upset people, right. And that is just something you have to accept. Uh, and as long as you do it in good faith, and you do it in attempting to make the world a better place.
Speaker 1 00:30:03 Uh, but powerful people do not like to be told that they are wrong and they don't, they certainly don't want changes in the system that will decrease their power or wealth in any way. And that's a universal phenomenon, not just in the United States. So I just say that to also say that we use this time to make a pitch. If you want to support the center, please go to our website, CSR r.rutgers.edu. We have a donate page and we prefer and want to be a funded by private donors. So that is always an option from now and in the future with regard to our plan. So we have three different themes, which one can find on the website, which is the color of religion, criminalizing Muslim identity, and transnational rights and security. Those are our three major themes. The color of religion is effectively the intersection of race and religion.
Speaker 1 00:30:53 It tends to happen more. What we call the civil sphere in law, there's the civil, and then there's the criminal sphere. And the civil sphere tends to be in schools in workplaces, uh, in public squares, just hate crimes. And anytime you have religious freedom being, uh, threatened by private actors and sometimes state actors as well, he had a lecture series on the color of religion last year, and that all of our lecture series are available on our YouTube channel. So if anybody wants to, YouTube wants to search the center's name on YouTube, you'll find it. Or you go to our website and there's a YouTube button. And last year we did a lecture series on transnational rights and security, where we intentionally wanted to highlight, uh, events and history and politics that were happening in Muslim majority countries, especially as they connect to see us foreign policy or us engagement, uh, or intervention, whether it was military and diplomatic, uh, to show how those events abroad affect the civil and human rights of, of Muslims, uh, in the United States.
Speaker 1 00:32:06 And again, that's all we had authors such as professor <inaudible>, professor Isla, Bali, professor shoring. Resoc, uh, we were very fortunate to have had kind of an all-star lineup in all of our guests lectures, uh, excuse me, in all of our lectures. And we also intentionally invite experts who bring the perspectives, whether based on their research of Muslim Arabs. So fasion, African-American Muslim, uh, perspectives, right? Because oftentimes those are the perspectives that are not included in the mainstream media. And those are the perspectives that are ignored in the us state department and in the department of Homeland security. And they lead to bad policy and they lead to loss of life, loss of American life, loss of life of people, abroad and loss of trillions of dollars, right? Lots of treasure. And this is a point that people seem in the U S still can't seem to understand.
Speaker 1 00:33:14 They see diversity only in terms of the equitable, uh, justification, which is a, certainly an important one, but it's also a very practical, uh, there's also a practical justification, especially when you're dealing with foreign policy. And so I think the U S government has excluded the perspectives and expertise of those who bring, you know, the, this analysis of those who are not simply in a bubble of Ivy league, primarily white, upper middle class America. They, they only, when you only have this group thing, you're going to have bad foreign policy. You need people actually understand the cultures have lived there, understand the languages and can ensure that foreign policy doesn't wreak havoc as it has in Afghanistan, and also in Iraq, although not as bad as Afghanistan. Um, so this year, our, the theme is de securitizing Muslim identity. And that's where we're going to be focusing more on that second prong, the criminalizing Muslim identity, because that is effectively in a nutshell, what's happened in the last 20 years, is there has been a criminalization of Muslim identity.
Speaker 1 00:34:22 Now with African-American Muslims, they have been criminalized at least until the early 20th century, early 20th century to the nation of Islam, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, uh, I mean, J Edgar Hoover's at the, I was targeted the Muslim, the nation of Islam very explicitly. And they were part of the COINTELPRO Dragnet, which was intended to quash any kind of political dissent, especially during the cold war era. So it's important to note that African-American Muslims have always faced the criminalization, both from anti-black racism, but also from anti black Muslim racism, right? The Muslim African-American Muslims were particularly especially dangerous, and it was not a coincidence in my opinion, and based on my research, uh, that they were never, the government was never going to integrate or incorporate a Malcolm max into the civil rights agenda, whereas Martin Luther king, because he was a Christian. And because he was able to appeal to many white Americans through their own religion, right? They're all an indigenous religion of Protestantism. That was something that is, uh, relevant and no worthy. And I think under under-resourced in the literature, so this year we're doing the de securitizing Muslim identity series to try to break down those stereotypes, to try to disconnect Muslims from only the security paradigm. And we have three, uh, speakers this fall, we have more lined up for the spring, which have not yet been revealed, but we have Dr. <inaudible> <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:35:56 who will be talking about co post-colonial, the galleon human rights. We will. We're talking with professor Julianne hammer, who we'll be talking about her book about domestic violence in American Muslim communities. And then we have professor Shereen Razak who will be speaking about her latest article academic article on white, uh, white supremacist terrorism, or political violence by wise pharmacist, and the double standards between how the government treats these are far right-wing extremists and how it treats so-called Muslim extremists because racialized criminal justice system is as American as apple pie. The only difference is how particular communities are racialized, but unfortunately, America, the American legal system is not colorblind because it's a product of the culture and the society and the society is not colorblind. So those who enforce the law, those who write the law, those who interpret the law are simply not colorblind, uh, and whether it's intentional or implicit, and as a result, we have to be critical.
Speaker 1 00:37:01 And we have to really look underneath what seems to be facially neutral laws, to see how in practice they're far from facially neutral and the, the January six insurgency and the seasonal and the us Capitol was, uh, exhibit a of how you can have a lot thousands, tens of thousands of right wing, white extremism, extremist organizing in plain sight on social media and via telephone and via other forms of communication. And they were not stopped yet. If a Muslim just posts a video about ISIS or supporting ISIS, they're immediately targeted for sting operation and ultimately usually in trap and some fake terrorist plot and in prison. And it doesn't matter if there were free speech rights implicated. It doesn't matter if this person may have been mentally hill or maybe the Muslim. Usually a young man was completely inapt and was just an armchair extremist who was offensive, but, but harmless, in terms of his ability to do anything other than posts, offensive speech that then could be usually was taken down anyway in accounts were closed by Facebook.
Speaker 1 00:38:16 Any of these right-wing extremists could plan in plain sight and insurgency on the U S capital, which I can't think of anything more treasonous than that. And more threat to national security than that. And so then again, that's evidence right there of racialized criminal justice. And then the next question is, are they facing the same criminal charges as the Muslims are, are they facing the same sentencing? Is there a crime taking a seriously? And you can take that even farther and compare it with how African-Americans have been treated by the criminal justice system. And their communities have been completely devastated by the war on drugs, for example. And just now, are we decriminalizing marijuana, which was the pretext through which police officers and police departments were jailing hundreds of thousands of, of black men and destroying their families destroying their lives. Uh, so these are very real social, systemic racial problems that have been going on for decades.
Speaker 1 00:39:14 And yet you have Americans per you far, right? White Americans who are completely appalled by the fact that now this has become part of the mainstream conversation that we're having. We're talking about facts now about systemic racism. And they see that in the most perverse way as anti white racist, which I find to be a laughable proposition, because if you printed for anti-black racism to be anti-white, you would then have to show that those who have power, those who exercise power, uh, are in fact doing it in a way to harm whites. And you would see that by not seeing white people in CSC, you see that as not seeing white people among the wealthiest in the country, if not the world, you would see that by nice seeing white people in other positions of power. As professors, as deans, as presidents of universities, you would see that as whites being disproportionately represented among the poor and among those in jail and all of the other harms that come from discrimination, and that is not what we see in American society.
Speaker 1 00:40:22 So this whole claim that critical race theory or racial justice is anti white is a red herring, and it's made in bad faith. And it's not based on the facts. It's based on people who are afraid to not have dominance and privilege that isn't necessarily earned. And in a society that has made blacks and Browns and immigrants and Muslims pay the price for those privileges. And I think that if we're serious about equality, and if we're serious about democracy, we need to fix the structures. So that, uh, it really is about individual effort and individual responsibility. And it's not about your immutable characteristic or your identity that you, your religious identity, which you should absolutely never have to change, and you should not be punished for. So there's, there's a lot of work to be done in American society, but the start is you have to first understand the problem, acknowledge the problem, question it, argue debate, and have these open forums, which hopefully is what we're trying to do with the center for security, race and rights.
Speaker 0 00:41:27 Yeah, no, absolutely. And once again, um, I highly encourage everyone listening to us to check out the resources section of the webpage as well, uh, which is full off multimedia and then others sort of, uh, resources, which has been really a great sort of both teaching tool, uh, and also, you know, full of references and, and others, um, resources, um, for, um, for all of us who are working on, on different aspects of, of this. Um, so this has been a wonderful conversation when, you know, we also, you know, uh, want to, um, ask you, uh, disease, some of our, um, uh, some of the questions that we are addressing in our round table on, uh, on nine 11. Um, and so I'll, I'll move to some of those. Um, and I think, you know, you have been, you have, you've addressed some of these, so, you know, if, if you need to skip some, uh, feel free to do so. Um, but one question quickly, what has been the most consequential impact of nine 11 for your field of study?
Speaker 1 00:42:35 The most consequential impact for legal studies has been that Muslims are now a permanent part of the civil rights agenda for all of the wrong reasons. But I think that's a positive silver lining because before nine 11 Muslims and Arabs and south Asians and African American Muslims were invisible in the civil rights conversation, it was one, it would be a rarity that you would find people connecting the dots between what's happening to African-American communities with what's happening to, uh, south Asian Muslim communities, and even connecting the dots between African-American Christian and African-American Muslim communities. And now, because of all of these harmful government policies and practices and entrenchment of Islamophobic and anti Muslim stereotypes, and the Muslim ban, I think was a major turning point in a major wake up call for the U S and I want to take a moment just to emphasize one of the impacts of the Muslim ban, that people who weren't in the trenches like me and many others, uh, who are been working on post-lab discrimination may not have realized is that from 2001, until 2000 and 17th of January, the Tommen response to our advocacy was that's too bad.
Speaker 1 00:44:13 It's an anomaly, or that's too bad, but it's not as serious as you're claiming it is, or that's too bad, but it's not as bad as what's happening to African-American and non Muslim communities, or what's happening to Latin X communities. And that was the general either explicitly articulated response, or just kind of the general tone, they would help when there was a particular crisis, but in general, it wasn't seen as part of America's racial problem. And when Trump issued that Muslim ban and explicitly said, I don't want any Muslims here. We don't want them. They are bad people. They are anti American, they are disloyal. And he had ran on that platform in 2015 and 2016. And not surprisingly. Then we saw a huge uptick in hate crimes and violence and discrimination against Muslims in 2015, 2016. And I would recommend your audience to the bridge initiative, uh, hosted by Georgetown university and also by, uh, John, Dr.
Speaker 1 00:45:13 John Esposito. I'm a big fan of, and then I have much respect for his work. And if anyone hasn't read his work, I would highly recommend it. And I was very honored to have Dr. Esposito write the forward to the racial Muslim books so that the bridge initiative is, is sets a precedent. I think even for my center and other centers, but that being said, what the Muslim ban did, was it announced to the entire country that Muslim anti-Muslim racism and Islamophobia is entrenched. It is official us policy. Now those of us working on these issues already knew that because we've seen it with NCS the national security entry and exit registration system, which was a special registration system for Muslims. And for those who want to know more, I wrote a book, excuse me, I wrote a law review article called a Muslim registry Cola and the precursor to internment question mark, which you can find on my ssrn.com page, which is social science research network.
Speaker 1 00:46:09 And I wrote that article because a special registration programs are actually legal and immigration law, and they can be based on ethnicity, which has been used as, or national origin, which has been used as a proxy for religion against Muslims. And a lot of Muslims don't know that, or excuse me, a lot of Americans don't know that. And because there had actually been many people. And if you go back and look at the media in 2001, 2002, there had been elected officials were calling for the internment of Muslims. And I distinctly remember that because that frightened me. And it prompted me to learn and study about Japanese internment, because I didn't learn about Japanese internment in American schools. I didn't learn about it in college. And so then I went and started learning about it, uh, and under started to see these very frightening parallels.
Speaker 1 00:46:57 Um, so, so now we're in 2021 and four years after Trump and 20 years, right after nine 11 is I think that's the biggest change is that if you're going to hold a conference or a panel, or if you're going to write a book, or if you're going to address civil rights issues in the U S uh, you would be incomplete and you would not be, um, you would be missing a major civil rights issue if you didn't at least, uh, bringing that perspective in the analysis of anti-Muslim racism. And I, I very much wish that was not the case. Um, but it is. I expect that my children and my children's children will continue to have to face this entrenched form of racism. And it will be a real challenge to try to end it, but I don't think it's going to end without cross racial coalitions because the root causes of this all phobia are very similar to the root causes of auntie Latin next, uh, racism and anti-black racism and antisemitism is they come from a deep level of ignorance and a lack of education in our public school system.
Speaker 1 00:48:08 They come from a failure for, uh, of a, of a provincial isolationist mentality that we have in this American exceptionalism that we think we're better than everyone else. We think that we make no mistakes. And we think that everyone is inferior to us across the world, especially in non Europe, you know, in the global south and global east. And, oh, I mean, that has been devastating for our foreign policy and also has made us imperialistic, but it's also really been devastating for our own society, which cannot afford to have that level of ignorance, uh, that produces bias and prejudice because we're so diverse, like of all countries in the world, the United States should mandate that children are learning a second language from kindergarten. They should have a third language by high school that they should study abroad, that they should, uh, everyone should have a passport.
Speaker 1 00:49:01 We are a highly diverse society. We should embrace that. We should own it. We should be proud of it. But instead, what we do is we forcibly coercively pressure immigrants to assimilate into a white Protestant normativity that is based on an era in America from the 17 hundreds when the country was racist in even worse ways than it is now where African-Americans were enslaved. Africans were not even treated as humans by law, and most certainly not by society. And, uh, when all land owning people were white and male and wealthy. So those are not the norms that should be dictating the 21st century United States that in 20, 30 years from now, 2050 will not have a majority race. We will not have no race, no ethnicity, national origin will dominate, uh, in terms of, of majority. And so if we don't learn to become more tolerant and more accepting of different cultures and embrace different languages and cultures and become more worldly as a people, I worry about how that's going to affect our society.
Speaker 0 00:50:17 Yeah, no, absolutely. And, um, and I think, you know, that's definitely in the minds of many who are, uh, in academia and other places, you know, navigating, um, this year. Um, the next question very quickly that I wanted to ask, um, is what are some field shaping works? You know, this can be a book, articles, reports feel more documentary that you think influenced yourself fields in the post nine 11 era.
Speaker 1 00:50:51 Well, I'll, I will, because I'm a critical race theorist. I tend to, uh, we focusing more on that particular area, but I think Derek bell, I did not have the privilege of meeting him. He was an African-American law professor at Harvard who, uh, re resigned and essentially refused, walked away from his tenure position because they refuse to hire an African-American woman on the tenure track at Harvard law school. And ultimately ended up teaching at NYU law school, not in a tenured position. And so his work on critical race there, he's essentially one of the major founders influenced me quite a bit. And I would highly recommend that people it's not even a one particular book, it's just all of his work and he was not popular. And he said things that people thought were outrageous. And now he's, you know, after his death is now seen as a brilliant man who I know saw what others didn't see it during his time. Um,
Speaker 0 00:51:54 And I think you referenced SIM quite often in like the racial hierarchy sort of concept and, and all of that, right?
Speaker 1 00:52:03 Yes. And so he and I talk about that in the racial Muslim. And I adopt that as, as one of my kind of underlying theoretical, uh, Fijian structures is that, uh, the black white paradigm is the curse of American society, right? That you have blacks permanently at the bottom and whites permanently at the top. And then you have different other groups who are put into the system into this hierarchy, where oftentimes they're competing to try to get as close to whiteness as possible, and as far away from blackness as possible. And that then creates all sorts of inter minority conflict. It also creates different forms of identity performance, where people within a particular group want to be as white looking as possible, where white looking people are more beautiful and dark people, darker skinned or dark looking, you know, black looking people are African looking, people are considered on attractive or are inferior.
Speaker 1 00:53:05 And this is actually a global phenomenon. I think we all, those of us who are familiar with like colonial era is this, isn't just in the U S I mean, this is part of that broader white supremacy system. And in people think, when you say white supremacy, that you're only talking about the KU Klux Klan, but that's not what we're, that's one extreme branch of white supremacy. White supremacy is what, it's, what it says. It is. It is the presumption that white people are superior in beauty and intellectual ability and physical ability and whatever skill. And even if that's not stated it's presumed, and then the farther away you are from that. And then the last, uh, the more inferior presumed. And now I also, as a quick way, serious have to put out the most important, uh, theoretical point, which is that race is socially constructed.
Speaker 1 00:54:01 So we decide what white is as a society. We socially constructed. We decide what black is our society. And American decided that if you had one drop of black blood, you were black, regardless of what you looked like. And that was for many reasons, one of which was economic, because if you had one drop of black blood, you were then enslaved during slavery. And at a time when white men were actively raping their black female slaves in order to produce more slaves, because each slave was worth a lot of money. And especially after the slave trade was banned in the U S where there were no more slaves that could be imported. There was even more pressure on slave owners to, uh, force their female slaves to reproduce. And rape was one means that they did it. There were other reasons why they raped them, obviously, but, uh, but this is a socially constructed concept.
Speaker 1 00:55:02 One drop of black blood, uh, is it makes you black same thing with whiteness. There was a, an, I talk a lot about this in the racial Muslim, where racism questions, religious freedom. I dedicate the three chapters to how Jews Catholics and Mormons were discriminated against at the turn of the 20th century. Up, at least you're looking at the late 18 hundreds all up until 1924, when our immigration laws, uh, effectively stopped immigration from Eastern Southern and Southern Europe because white Protestant Americans didn't want any more Jews and they didn't want any more Catholics. Most of whom were Eastern European or Italian. And the reason was because they didn't consider them white. They were white by law because as compared to Asians, they were still white, but socially they were not treated white, or they weren't given the full privileges of whiteness in large part, on account of their religion, not being Protestant.
Speaker 1 00:55:57 And then to some extent also because they were immigrants and had different languages that had different cultures, which were not English, right? So again, whiteness is socially constructed. Blackness is socially constructed. And, um, so I would, I would recommend all that is to say, I would recommend Derek Bell's work. There are other authors, you know, rather than recommend books. I think I'd rather recommend authors because oftentimes they produce multiple great works. I would recommend a Cheryl Harris, who is her very famous article, whiteness as property is certainly worth the read. She's also written other great pieces, but that affected my scholarship. I would, um, recommend Devin Carballido, uh, who he wrote a book he's written a lot on identity performance. And in fact, his book acting white inspired me to write my article called coercive assimilation, ism, colon the perils of Muslim women's identity performance in the workplace.
Speaker 1 00:56:57 And that really talks about how all of these stereotypes affect how you perform your identity in ways to try to offset those stereotypes. So for example, Muslim women are often stereotyped as meek and weak and oppressed, not as highly educated as their male, uh, partners or their male, uh, you know, the brothers or family members. And so oftentimes I put pressure, put pressure on you to try to prove that you are smart, that you are competent and that you're not oppressed, and that you are a leader, but then when you do that, you run up against stereotypes of women who are strong and assertive and confident as being Mitch's excuse my language, but that is the stereotype. And so what do you do in the workplace when you want to, not for people to believe that you are not oppressed and they are not me and you don't need to be saved, but at the same time, you're dealing with the stereotype that, uh, women who are strong and smart, Mr.
Speaker 1 00:57:54 Are not desirable in the workplace. And they tend to be punished instead of promoted. And that's the complete opposite of, of men and particularly white men, but even non white men, Devon Comano is, is, is someone that I would recommend, uh, hadn't been doing. And I we're we're, uh, in the same cohort, we started, uh, the academy together, both critical race theorists who look at Muslim Asians, but I would recommend, uh, his work as well. He's done some great stuff on, um, African-American Muslims, antebellum Islamism is a great article that I've enjoyed or I've benefited greatly from. Um, and, uh, Angela and watching Willis, who is now the Dean at Boston university law school. She's, she's written some very good work, especially on employment discrimination, race. And she wrote with Mario Barnes and article on, um, how Muslim names or how names on resumes produced stereotype or cause people not to get interviewed.
Speaker 1 00:58:52 And there had been a lot of work on African-American sounding names, whatever was stereotypically African-American, like the name to, or Jamal was presumed by people that that was a black applicant. So there've been studies showing that those people weren't even getting interviews. And so she did some, a piece about Muslims and Arameans, which was really beneficial. So I could go on and on, but I would, I would recommend the critical race theorists, um, that, that published work. And just lastly is our social media. Our UCS are our, we often tweet the work of critical race theorists. So if you follow us, you'll see many recommendations of critical race theorists work, and that's a great resource. No
Speaker 0 00:59:37 Wonderful. And, um, for our audience, we are in the process of getting transcriptions of these podcasts, um, puts down, um, prepared. Uh, so we will be sure to link to some of these scholars that you have, uh, noted. Um, we are coming to the end of our time, but I wanted to also ask you what have been some gaps in scholarship and you know, what to, I mean, we may be some works that have not received the attention that they deserve.
Speaker 1 01:00:08 Yeah. So one major gap in scholarship has been looking at the intersection of race and religion. Oftentimes race studies, whether they're in law or whether they're in social science or American studies or political science tend to be in their own silo and their own morals. And then religious studies tend to be in their own world. And while there is discussion among race studies of those who focus on different racial groups and same with religious studies, those are focused on different religious groups. You don't see those two groups coming together frequently enough. And when you're researching Muslims in America, you're dealing directly with both types of bigotry and you can't talk about civil rights and Muslims without talking about religious freedom, but you also can't talk about it. Let's talk about them or research them without looking at, uh, anti racial racism. Right? So in fact, that's why I wrote my book.
Speaker 1 01:01:07 The racial Muslim is because I couldn't find the book I wanted to read. I followed Toni Morrison's famous advice, which is write the book that you, uh, that you want to read when that isn't there. And so that's something that I hope there will be more, um, scholarship on. And I, I certainly hope that my book will also help trigger some of those conversations. Um, I think the other gap, which is starting to be filled is the work on, on, excuse me, on African-American Muslims. And so we have Edward Curtis, the fourth has written on it. We have Marjorie disease, a Hale, who's an advocate who's been doing more advocacy on it. Uh, we have Sherman Jackson who's written about African-American Muslims. Um, Sylvia Chon, Malik has written, uh, there's, there's a growing number of experts. Scholars. It's still not enough, but there is starting to become more scholarship on African-American Muslims.
Speaker 1 01:02:05 And then how that connects, how it's the same, how it's different from those who arrived in the U S uh, as immigrants or who their parents or grandparents, or great-grandparents arrived as immigrants and the other, the final gap, I think, which has been written about. But I think warrants more attention and maybe revisiting is, uh, how Arabs are raised. There's been some great work. So I wrote on it in my book had by dunes weren't written on it. Ian Haney Lopez wrote a great book called white by law, which includes, uh, why Arabs and history of why middle Eastern north Africans are white on the U S census, which means we do not get counted in any kind of diversity initiatives or diversity programs. We are on paper treated as if we are from England, or we are from Germany originally when that is not our experience in the United States.
Speaker 1 01:03:05 And there needs to be more research on that because there was a effort to change that in the USS is to make middle east, north African and ethnic groups, similar to Hispanic, at least for purposes of identifying those people and recognizing that there, they don't have the same experiences and that it's they're completely then denied any kind of funding or any kind of programmatic work by the U S government or universities or any, any groups that, that want to look at diversity. And so the more research that can be done about why that's inaccurate, because again, race is a social construct. So we have to ask ourselves, well, what's the point of having race. And at least in my perspective, as long as people are treated differently on account of their race, which they are, then we have to be accurate in identifying those relatively common or different experiences within groups and middle east, north African simply are not treated the same way in society as someone whose origins are German or Swedish or English.
Speaker 1 01:04:08 Um, so that's, I think that would be kind of the last area. And then finally, which again, which is what the center works on center for security, race rights is more research on Muslims. That's not through the security lens research that humanizes Muslims. There are Muslims are a diverse community, racially, ethnically socially from class, from age. And there needs to be more research on the communities through just mundane and mental health, marriage schooling, uh, poverty, you know, things that are not related to, or success well forms of industrial success, science technology, but things that are not related to security. And I will put a plug in for the Institute for social policy and understanding which I'm a proud fellow of, uh, they've been slowly working on that, but again, there needs to be more work and it would be ideal that it's also from academics, not just from independent institutions or think tanks, but I think we're headed in the right direction in terms of having more of conversations, like what we're having today, having more books, having centers like mine being created, and hopefully there'll be more and there'll be an expansion of those through their existing.
Speaker 1 01:05:24 And, and finally, I just hope that those in the audience who are not Muslim or not Arab or not south Asian, that you will take it on yourself to learn, to educate yourself. I think the worst thing you can do is rely on the media, uh, or rely on hearsay or rumors or stereotypes. And it is a lot of work. And I say that to myself and to my children about cultures and parts of the world that I am very unfamiliar with. And I have to take it on myself to learn. I cannot depend on the U S government. I cannot depend on the public education system or the media. And, and that I think is time well spent. Absolutely.
Speaker 0 01:06:02 No, thank you so much for, uh, for that. I think that that perspective was really helpful. Um, process is we are at the end of our time and I want to finish with this question. Um, what are themes that you think will be perhaps more prominent than others in the coming say to the decades in the next 2, 10, 10, 20 years? Uh, how do you see your field evolving?
Speaker 1 01:06:32 I think two main changes I predict. So the first one is that America has made a pivot east and China is going to be the big boogeyman and the U S government is going to just as it did during the cold war. Vis-a-vis the Soviet union just as it did in the 1990s until about now, uh, it made the middle east and Muslims, the boogeyman, we will now be the, will be China and people of Chinese origin and people of east Asian origin, because oftentimes Americans do not know or care to know the difference between people who are, whose origins are from Japan or China or Indonesia, or the Philippines or the Vietnam or Vietnam or any other of the many far east countries. And that is going to be something that we should get ahead of this critical race theorist, civil rights scholars and social justice scholars, because that we already saw just a little bit of a sneak peek of it during the COVID virus pandemic.
Speaker 1 01:07:32 And when Donald Trump intentionally called it the Wolfgang virus and the Chinese virus, and he was not, you know, he was doing that on purpose. And as a result we saw anti-Asian hate crimes rise. So unfortunately I think that is in the horizon for the next decade or two. And it will be again, a product of international geopolitics. The second issue that is going to be a real challenge. And I don't think enough people are paying attention to is the competition between minorities and for power. And right now, the way in which advocacy and cross racial advocacy has occurred is between various minority communities. Vis-a-vis a white establishment. And that makes sense because factually white communities are at large control, many aspects of American society, and they are overrepresented in many positions of power and wealth, but as America diversifies, as we have no majority race and as these efforts to have more racial and ethnic minorities in positions of power, which I support because that's more representative of society, we will then start having inter minority competition in ways that may be quite racist against various groups.
Speaker 1 01:08:55 And we need to be cognizant of that. We need to understand that racism and prejudice is in the air. We breathe. We can be prejudice against people of our own group. We can be self-loathing in ways we don't even realize we can. You know, I wrote a book called the, I wrote an article called the alpha female and the sinister seven. And, uh, excuse me, it's a book chapter and presumed in competent to which I highly recommend for female academics, because it's about the challenges that women academics in all fields, not just law face in the academy, but in that chapter of the alpha female in this industry are seven. I talk about the, the typology of, of the patriarchal female. And there are many women who are quite patriarchal and they don't even realize it, or maybe they do, but as long as they benefit from it, then they will continue to treat other women, uh, in ways that perpetuate patriarchy.
Speaker 1 01:09:47 So minorities can do that too. In the system itself is racist or the system itself is Islamophobic. And just as the government will look for those native informants or will look for those tokens to be the legitimising phase of an otherwise, um, discriminatory system against that, that any group of the token that phenomena continues. But I worry it may get worse as we diversify. So I think that's another area that warrants more research because we just don't want to research it as a reaction to a problem. We want to research it in anticipation of that.
Speaker 0 01:10:37 Indeed. Indeed. Thank you. So, so much for all of this, there were a few additional things that I wanted to talk, but I think it's better to leave those for perhaps a feature conversation and also hopefully a contribution tomato from you and the book comes out in November, uh, for services. Thank you so, so much for this wonderful conversation on, on low, on security, on, on nine 11 on Mr. My identity, I think we covered such important themes and you've been so generous with your time. I really appreciate you joining the main down podcast. Um, the, our URL is the maidan.com/podcast, and we hope to talk to you soon again, and really grateful for your scholarship for all your work, uh, and your time, um, for us today.
Speaker 1 01:11:28 Thank you so much. And I look forward to continuing to support the maiden podcast, and I thank your listeners and encourage everyone to pre-order your racial, the racial Muslim today, and please join our newsletter, uh, for the center for security, race and rights. And I hope that, uh, this is not the last time that you and I engage and we will continue to, um, enlighten people with knowledge and be true seekers.
Speaker 0 01:11:59 Inshallah, thank you so much once again, for all of us. Yes.
