Righting the Rift Between Muslim and American: Celebrating Abdullahi An-An\u27im

This Essay is a special contribution to the Journal of Law and Religion and the Emory International Law Review, honoring the work of Professor Abdullahi An-Na’im and his impact on my work, and more broadly, discourses on Islam in America, rights, and citizenship. This Essay, celebrating the landmark work of Professor An-Na’im and its impact on my scholarly and public work, will examine these two fronts. By challenging the political constructions of Americanness and Muslim identity that prevailed on the right, left, and in-between, An-Na’im inspired new frontiers of thought and thinkers that followed his footsteps. This line of intellectual impact emanates from his landmark contributions on human rights and Islamic law, but also stands alone to inform the work of thinkers, like myself, who write beyond the bounds of the spheres where Professor An-Na’im made his name

Lone Wolf Terrorism: Types, Stripes, and Double Standards

The recent spike in mass shootings, topped by the October 1, 2017, Las Vegas massacre, dubbed the “deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history,” has brought newfound urgency and attention to lone wolf violence and terrorism. Although a topic of pressing concern, the phenomenon—which centers on mass violence inflicted by one individual—is underexamined and undertheorized within legal literature. This scholarly neglect facilitates flat understandings of the phenomenon and enables the racial and religious double standards arising from law enforcement investigations and prosecutions of white and Muslim lone wolves. This Essay contributes a timely reconceptualization of the phenomenon, coupled with a typology adopted from social science, for understanding the myriad forms of lone wolf terrorism. In addition to contributing the theoretical frameworks to further examine lone wolf terrorism within legal scholarship, this Essay examines how the assignment of the lone wolf designation by law enforcement functions as: (1) a presumptive exemption from terrorism for white culprits and (2) a presumptive connection to terrorism for Muslim culprits. This asymmetry is rooted in the distinct racialization of white and Muslim identity, and it is driven by War on Terror baselines that profile Muslim identity as presumptive of a terror threat

A Demographic Threat? Proposed Reclassification of Arab Americans on the 2020 Census

“Arab Americans are white?” This question—commonly posed as a demonstration of shock or surprise—highlights the dissonance between how “Arab” and “white” are discursively imagined and understood in the United States today. These four words also encapsulate the dilemma that currently riddles Arab Americans. The population finds itself interlocked between formal classification as white, and de facto recognition as nonwhite. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the government agency that oversees the definition, categorization, and construction of racial categories, currently counts people from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as white. The United States Census Bureau (Census Bureau), the agency responsible for collecting and compiling demographic data about the American people, adopts these definitions and classifications for the administration of its decennial census. Since the racially restrictive “Naturalization Era,” Arab Americans have been legally classified as white