Suspect Communities: Anti-Muslim Racism and the Domestic War on Terror

Abstract

Nicole Nguyen’s Suspect Communities: AntiMuslim Racism and the Domestic War on Terror is an in-depth examination of the domestic Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program inaugurated by the Obama Administration and continued with a sharper law enforcement focus under President Trump. CVE strategies are made up of a range of federally funded communitybased interventions built on the contentions of radicalization research. This body of work mainly argues that violent extremism is an individuated outcome of personal crises evolving from cultural factors (e.g., living in two worlds) and psychological dispositions (e.g., alienation) that create ‘‘cognitive openings’’ and ‘‘at-risk’’ personalities susceptible to being lured and mobilized by proponents of theological perspectives promoting violent extremism (marking violent extremism as a specifically Muslim problem). Radicalization theories thus propose that Muslims who commit acts of violence are distinctly different from non-Muslims who commit violence (e.g., white supremacists), that complex events and emotions common to human life more easily go awry with Muslims, and that violence perpetrated by Muslims must be understood as unrelated to social, political, and economic conditions. Nguyen sets the historical frame for CVE within the larger context of recent global counterinsurgency tactics that include both hard and soft power, as well as within the FBI’s long history of domestic surveillance, especially among communities of color. Noting that more recent recalibrations of the war on terror include not only the hard power of weapons, assassinations, and domestic covert and sting operations but also the soft power of building knowledge through local relationships and community policing, Nguyen argues that CVE should be seen as a state strategy that ‘‘has strengthened, not mitigated the surveillance, monitoring, and policing of Muslims across the United States’’ (p. 31). Laying out the methods and arguments of radicalization theory, Nguyen notes in particular the admissions of radicalization researchers that there are no scientifically proven factors or warning signs that predict violent extremism, due in part to methodological flaws—the fact that all of their studies are conducted ex post facto and lack control groups—and to the untested assumptions of researchers. Nguyen asks readers to consider, if there are no such cues, what the reasons are for such invasive government-engineered attempts to identify and preempt ‘‘potential terrorists’’ living within U.S. Muslim communities. She argues that by asking leaders and social servants in Muslim communities to become active participants in efforts to identify at-risk individuals, the state is compelling them to perform ‘‘patriot acts’’ to prove their (presumed questionable) loyalty to the state, placing them in an ‘‘impossible dilemma’’ (p. 128). Resisting this role risks the attribution of the ‘‘bad Muslim’’ label, subjecting those among Muslim communities who refuse to collaborate to heightened surveillance. While ‘‘CVE practitioners’’ gain a (token) seat at the table of power and access to considerable funds, they do so at the expense of community trust. Nguyen is interested in articulating the ways in which state power is built through apparatuses that link powerful elites to community intermediaries, local institutions, and comparatively powerless individuals. She does so by deploying methodological frameworks of ‘‘studying up’’ (Nader 1972) and ‘‘studying through’’ (Reinhold 1994), qualitative methodologies of interviews and participant observation, and deep and widereaching textual analyses. In extensive detail Nguyen examines CVE policies and practices in a number of U.S. locations and the narratives of CVE actors, who must defend their 336 Reviews