Why does a country with religious liberty enmeshed in its legal and social structures produce such overt prejudice and discrimination against Muslims? Sahar Aziz’s groundbreaking book demonstrates how race and religion intersect to create what she calls the Racial Muslim. Comparing discrimination against immigrant Muslims with the prejudicial treatment of Jews, Catholics, Mormons, and African American Muslims during the twentieth century, Aziz explores the gap between America’s aspiration for and fulfillment of religious freedom. With America’s demographics rapidly changing from a majority white Protestant nation to a multiracial, multireligious society, this book is an in dispensable read for understanding how our past continues to shape our present—to the detriment of our nation’s future.
Sahar Aziz is Professor of Law, Middle East Legal Scholar, and Chancellor’s Social Justice Scholar at Rutgers University Law School and Founding Director of the Center for Security, Race, and Rights.
“Thought-provoking.”
— Above the Law
"
The Racial Muslim is an important, timely addition to the literature on anti-Muslim racism. Aziz succinctly compresses a broad, yet relevant, range of topics into a relatively short text, all-the-while interrogating power, White supremacy, structural racism and the intersection of religion and race in racializing processes."
— Ethnic and Racial Studies
"From her law professor perspective with an interdisciplinary approach, Aziz’s work recalls that of Kimberley Crenshaw, in which juridical science is combined with social sciences to achieve change: indeed, her work is not limited to the analysis of society, but seeks as an ultimate goal, social justice."
— ReOrient
"Aziz unravels and then connects America’s torrid history toward religious minorities."
— Journal of Church and State
