The demonization and racialization of post-9/11 Muslim identity

Terrifying Muslims highlights how transnational working classes from Pakistan are produced, constructed, and represented in the context of American empire and the recent global War on Terror. Drawing on ethnographic research that compares Pakistan, the Middle East, and the United States before and after 9/11, Junaid Rana combines cultural and material analyses to chronicle the worldviews of Pakistani labor migrants as they become part of a larger global racial system. At the same time, he explains how these migrants’ mobility and opportunities are limited by colonial, postcolonial, and new imperial structures of control and domination. He argues that the contemporary South Asian labor diaspora builds on and replicates the global racial system consolidated during the period of colonial indenture. Rana maintains that a negative moral judgment attaches to migrants who enter the global labor pool through the informal economy. This taint of the illicit intensifies the post-9/11 Islamophobia that collapses varied religions, nationalities, and ethnicities into the threatening racial figure of “the Muslim.” It is in this context that the racialized Muslim is controlled by a process that beckons workers to enter the global economy, and stipulates when, where, and how laborers can migrate. The demonization of Muslim migrants in times of crisis, such as the War on Terror, is then used to justify arbitrary policing, deportation, and criminalization.

"“Terrifying Muslims will be of great interest for those interested in a better understanding of the cultural and historical roots of the Pakistani diaspora. It will also appeal to those seeking to explore potential intersections between the fields of critical race studies and anthropology.”" - Journal of Anthropological Research

"“Terrifying Muslims is an exemplary study and should be required reading for anyone interested in understanding the complexities of transnational labor movements and the predicament of Muslims in the early 21st century.” " - American Anthropologist

"“Terrifying Muslims stands out in a crowded field. This is one of very few books to make consistently the point that the problem of Islamophobia is not new. . . . This book will no doubt prove critically important to anyone interested in race, labor, immigration, or Islamophobia."" - Contemporary Sociology

"“Junaid Rana has written a timely book that historically situates the concept of ‘race’ to illuminate the bind between religion and race in the construction of the racialised ‘Muslim’. . . . Terrifying Muslims is an insightful work as relevant for human rights activists as it is for historians, South Asian specialists, students of migration, policy-makers and popular culture enthusiasts.”" - South Asia

"Terrifying Muslims makes a valuable contribution to the growing literature on race and religion.... In sum, this is an excellent book and would be of interest to scholars across a number of disciplines." - Journal of International Migration and Integration