How the construction of Muslim boys as proto-terrorists is integral to the story of American racial capitalism
How do we understand an incident where a five-year-old Muslim boy arrives at Dulles airport and is preemptively detained as a "threat"? To answer that question, Shenila Khoja-Moolji examines American public culture, arguing that Muslim boyhood has been invented as a threat within an ideology that seeks to predict future terrorism. Muslim boyhood bridges actual past terrorism and possible future events, justifying preemptive enclosure, surveillance, and punishment. Even in the occasional reframing of individual Muslim boys as innocent, Khoja-Moolji identifies a pattern of commodity antiracism, through which elites buy public goodwill but leave intact the collective anti-Muslim notion that fuels an expanding carceral and security state. Framing Muslim boyhood as a heuristic device, she turns to a discussion of Hindutva ideology in India to show how Muslim boyhood may be resituated in global contexts.
What People Are Saying
"Touching upon themes of contemporary religion, masculinities, race, and capitalism, The Impossibility of Muslim Boyhood adds much-needed nuance to the literature on the gender dimensions of representations of Muslims in 21st-century America." Reading Religion
"Muslim Boyhood makes a critical intervention in studies of race and religion." CHOICE
"A must-read for anyone interested in exploring gender politics and racism." LSE Review of Books
"Shenila-Khoja Moolji rises to the occasion, giving not only a compelling theorization of Muslim boyhood but also in bringing together a wide array of sources in a novel way. Crucially, she does not treat Muslim boys as a monolith but rather allows for complexity and nuance by considering the differing ways they are treated based on their varying social locations." Religion
About the Author
Shenila Khoja-Moolji is the Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani Associate Professor of Muslim Societies at Georgetown University. She is author of Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia; Sovereign Attachments: Masculinity, Muslimness, and Affective Politics in Pakistan; and Rebuilding Community: Displaced Women and the Making of a Shia Ismaili Muslim Sociality.