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ABSTRACT
Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) programs in the US attempt to prevent Muslims toward radicalization by encouraging them to build relationships with law enforcement agencies, educators, public health officials, and nonprofit organization, thereby fostering “resilient” Muslim communities. However, the language of Muslim resiliency extends Orientalist narratives of Muslim and Arab populations, while simultaneously denying the genuine resilience that Muslims exhibit in the face of State violence and US imperialism. In this essay, I problematize the liberal-Orientalist framing of resiliency in counter-terror policy discourses, identify various modes of Muslim death-making, and offer examples of Muslim resiliency in the face of State violence.
Notes
1 Zahra Ali, “You Have to Walk in the Path of Life and in The Path of Death at the Same Time. I Walked Both Paths and I Survived: On the Recent Uprisings in Iraq,” Versopolis, February 6, 2020, https://www.versopolis.com/times/reportage/822/you-have-to-walk-in-the-path-of-life-and-in-the-path-of-death-at-the-same-time-i-walked-both-paths-and-i-survived?fbclid=IwAR0phvqf0zK6_nE4DGjc_8glLzZg0m1cYsw7M1odAb4jZCrqPF3MC1opMxc.
2 Shereen Yousuf and Bernadette Calafell, “The Imperative for Examining Anti-Muslim Racism in Rhetorical Studies,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 15, no. 4 (2018): 314.
3 Maya Dukmasova, “The Problem with the ‘Public Health’ Approach to Ideological Violence,” Chicago Reader, December 10, 2018, https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-problem-with-the-public-health-approach-to-ideological-violence/Content?oid=64917858.
4 Department of Homeland Security, “What is CVE?” Countering Violent Extremism Taskforce, accessed June 15, 2020, https://www.dhs.gov/cve/what-is-cve.
5 This has been rebranded under Trump as Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP). Department of Homeland Security, “DHS Countering Violent Extremism Grants,” Preventing Terrorism, accessed August 15, 2020, https://www.dhs.gov/cvegrants.
6 M. Bilal Nasir, “Mad Kids, Good City: Counterterrorism, Mental Health, and the Resilient Muslim Subject,” Anthropological Quarterly 92, no. 3 (2019): 817–44.
7 Ibid., 826–8.
8 Arun Kundnani, The Muslim are Coming!: Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror (London: Verso Publications, 2014), 12.
9 Federal Bureau of Investigations, “What is Violent Extremism: Distorted Principles,” Don't Be a Puppet, n.d., https://cve.fbi.gov/whatis/?state=principles (accessed 14 March 2020).
10 United Nations Development Programme, Preventing Violent Extremism Through Promoting Inclusive Development, Tolerance and Respect For Diversity: A Development Response to Addressing Radicalization and Violent Extremism (New York: 2016), 5, https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/democratic-governance/conflict-prevention/discussion-paper---preventing-violent-extremism-through-inclusiv.html.
11 Yousuf and Calafell, “The Imperative for Examining Anti-Muslim Racism.”
12 Nadine Naber and Atef Said, “The Cry for Human Rights: Violence, Transition, and the Egyptian Revolution,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 7 no. 1 (2016): 72. This citation draws on Leti Volpp, “Feminism Versus Multiculturalism,” Columbia Law Review 101, no. 5 (2001): 1181–218.
13 Ibid.
14 Ali, “You Have to Walk.”
15 “Iran Pleads for Medicine as it Fights Epidemic Under Sanctions,” Al-Monitor, March 12, 2020, https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/03/iran-request-medicine-fight-coronavirus-covid19-sanctions.html
16 Though Donald Trump's executive order, commonly known as the “Muslim Ban,” serves as the most recent example of immigration policies that separates families, it has its origins in post 9/11 policies such as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (or NSEERS) Act, a system of registering non-citizens residing in the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was also created in response to the 9/11 attacks. For more information on the rise of profiling and entrapment cases, see Piotr M. Szpunar, “Premediating Predisposition: Informants, Entrapment, and Connectivity in Counterterrorism,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 34 no. 4 (2017): 371–85.
17 Sohail Daulatzai and Junaid Rana, “Writing the Muslim Left: An Introduction to Throwing Stones,” in With Stones in Our Hands: Writings on Muslims, Racism, and Empire, eds. Sohail Daulatzai and Junaid Rana (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2018): xi.
18 Alexia Underwood, “How Ahed Tamimi, a 17-year Old Palestinian Activist, Became an International Icon,” Vox, August 3, 2018, https://www.vox.com/2018/8/3/17639254/ahed-tamimi-palestinian-activist-israel.
19 United Nations Development Programme, Preventing Violent Extremism, 5.
20 Rebecca Dingo, “Speaking Well: The benevolent public and Rhetorical Production of Neoliberal Political Economy,” Communication and the Public 3, no. 3 (2018): 232–46.
21 Shenila Khoja-Moolji, “Why the West is Praising Malala, but Ignoring Ahed?” Al Jazeera, December 28, 2017 https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/west-praising-malala-ignoring-ahed-171227194606359.html.
22 Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi, “Palestinian Resistance and the Invisibility of Justice,” in With Stones in Our Hands: Writings on Muslims, Racism, and Empire, eds. Sohail Daulatzai and Junaid Rana (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), 56–72.
23 Nasir, “Mad Kids,” 833.
24 Ibid.
25 Dingo, “Speaking Well,” 242. Dingo draws on Grace Hong, “Existentially Surplus: Women of Color, Feminism and the New Crisis Of Capitalism,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 18, no. 1 (2011): 87–106.