Three days after the twin towers fell, then-President George W. Bush called for Americans to “unite.” What followed was the decades-long United States military-led campaign — the “war on terror” — which has resulted in the death of over 2 million Muslims; the expansion of a network of over 800 global U.S. military bases; and the creation of codified Islamophobia, the violence of which knows no bounds. The rhetoric framing and otherizing of Muslims as people inherently prone to terrorism has been embedded in the design of post-9/11 policies “overtly and covertly, domestic and external,” Maha Hilal recounts in her new book, Innocent Until Proven Muslim.
From the get-go, the Bush administration swiftly deployed a version of public morality upholding dichotomous ideological values between the West and Islam — painting any response by the U.S. as “acceptable and even necessary.” As reported in the book, the five dimensions of the war on terror are: militarism and warfare, draconian immigration policy, surveillance, federal terrorism prosecutions, and detention and torture.
The root of the war on terror — institutionalized Islamophobia laced with white supremacy — has allowed the U.S. government to carry out state-sanctioned violence without an ounce of accountability. Two decades later, Muslims abroad and in the U.S. are facing the repercussions of a plethora of xenophobic programs like the National Security Entry-Exit Registration system, the use of Guantánamo Bay prison to house and tortureCountering Violent Extremism is a surveillance initiative that monitors Muslim men. Muslims in the U.S. are forced to reconcile with their identities, whether they’re making a trip to the mosque for Jummah prayer or calling out the U.S. government for the destruction of their homelands.
Innocent Until Proven Muslim is an accumulation of Hilal’s ongoing research and efforts to organize to dismantle the war on terror by highlighting the most devastating impacts of U.S. empire. Hilal analyzes everything, from the surveillance’s panoptic violence to the ongoing violations against fundamental rights. He envisions a world where Muslims are no longer under suspicion.
Three Presidents Developed, Maintained, and Expanded The War on Terror
The U.S.’s narrow framing of moral culpability under the guise of national security has persisted under three successive presidencies, broadening the scope of state violence at every turn. Hilal describes the extent of Muslim lives being dehumanized.
Consider the pattern in performative accountability: Americans were stunned when photos of the Abu Ghraib scandalThe extensive torture of Muslim prisoners was documented. They were punched and kicked, doused with hot tap water, forced into stressful positions for hours, threatened by dogs, and slapped. In response, former President Bush stated, “The prison does not represent the America that I know,” evading any critique of the government while intentionally disregarding the livelihood of the Iraqis who were tortured.
Hilal writes, “The extent to which this has been allowed is a testament to the power of narrative to create real-world systems and the resilience that same narrative power displays to evade responsibility for the human cost of the systems it supports.”
During Barack Obama’s administration, a U.S. soldier massacred 16 villagers in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The immediate administrative focus, as Obama put it, was the “sacrifices that our men and women have made in Afghanistan” — sacrifices for whom? These examples show how Obama and Bush were both skilled at ending the victimization of Muslims in order to justify the war against terror. The initial days following 9/11 saw the creation of a whole infrastructure for systematic Islamophobia. These attitudes towards counterterrorism have been codified in law as well as policy. It is difficult for us to imagine the true extent of the war on terrorists.
Trump used to openly glorify brutality and took pride in the state violence he witnessed during his presidency. This helped him gain support for extreme policies such as the Muslim ban. In 2015, Trump said the U.S. needs to “watch and study the mosques.” Four days later, he indicated that he would “certainly implement” a databaseHe began to track Muslims in America two days later. falsely claimed that “thousands and thousands” of Muslims cheered in New Jersey when the World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11.
Trump’s efforts to further perpetuate harmful tropes about Muslims make their deaths seem unimportant. Hilal reminds us that, in turn, “The dominant narrative becomes more difficult to dislodge from the imagination of a public who accepts this political landscape as matter of course.”
The Government is spying upon Muslims
Innocent Until Proven MuslimThis is not just a description of the pattern and nature of physical abuse against Muslim women. Woven together with Hilal’s critical analysis of the human cost of post-9/11 warsThere are many examples of sinister surveillance methods that can be used to profile entire communities racially or religiously. For example, consider the creation of The National Security Entry-Exit Registration System. This required all immigrant men over 16 from Muslim-majority nations to register with government. Even though the program ended in 2011, 80,000 men were still subject to intense interrogations, and not one was ever charged with a crime.
Considering the superficial construction of the war on terror, Hilal reminds us that the government was able to “establish a differential system of justice,” paving the way for the normalization of entrapment, informants and so-called “fishing expeditions” — used to create conditions that lead to an actionable offense. Perhaps the most well-known example of an arbitrarily domestic trial case is the Holy Land Five.
The Holy Land Five, a charitable organization that was created to aid displaced Palestinians in the Middle East were accused of diverting funds to Hamas. Although there was no direct link between them, all five men were sentenced at 15 to 65 years imprisonment. Many American Muslims are still struggling with the criminalization and denigration of Muslim charities.
During the Obama administration, the authority of the U.S. government to surveil its citizens was expanded both in intent and practice — Hilal explains how these programs “disrupted community bonds” and “the confidence that stems from a reasonable expectation of freedom.” Mere months before the government launched the Countering Violent Extremism Program, Obama declared in his state of the union address that, “Muslims Americans are part of our American family.” A quick look at what this program entailed, however, was the pairing of vulnerable Muslim youth — disproportionately Black — with police officers who were trained to pathologize mental health issues. The psychological impactThe insurmountable challenge facing Muslim Americans since 9/11 is unsurmountable.
To answer the question, “is the war on terror over?” Hilal closes with 11 interviews that feature Muslims from a variety of different backgrounds. These conversations reveal that collective liberation is justice for all and, in that sense, the elimination of oppressive institutions that continue excluding Muslims. In the words Zahra (a Somali chaplain Hilal quotes from the book):
Islam has always been a theology and political tool that liberates people, even when they’re caged, even when they’re enslaved, even when they’re imprisoned. Even when our bodies have been placed in cages, such as in Gaza’s borders or Philadelphia prisons or Gitmo’s, Islam allows us the ability to survive the unsurvivable. That makes you a threat for an empire whose sole function is to oppress, kill, dominate, pillage, and pillage.
It is difficult for many Muslims to not internalize and absorb antisemitic rhetoric in a climate that attempts to normalize it. The U.S. has a history of Islamophobia. From being treated as a suspect community when going through airport security to global militarism that continues to yield unrestricted violence in countless Muslim-majority countries — imagining a better future requires rising up together. Zahra and the ten other interviewees discuss the importance of uniting to end anti-Muslim bigotry. Even though different Muslim communities are subject to state-sanctioned violence in different ways, collective liberation would eventually free us all.
Racism is the root of the war on terror. Although Trump was able extend its executive reach, Obama was able to pave the way. The difference between administrations isn’t the severity of violence or the human cost, but the preference for one type of violence over the other. It was Bush who created a xenophobic immigration system with the creation of ICE, it was Obama who earned his place in history as “deporter in chief,” and it was Trump who reigned terror with a series of executive orders banning Muslims from entering the country. There’s no singular definition of justice for Muslims in the U.S and abroad, but perhaps demanding accountability from the war criminals who’ve once occupied the oval office is a start.
