The Black Muslim Scare of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

Though Islamophobia has deep roots in both American culture and US society, its vitality in those domains is a result, at least in part, of the state repression of political dissent organized around Islamic symbols and themes. Long before 9/11, the US government was concerned about the possibility that Muslims on American soil would challenge the political status quo. Beginning in the 1930s, this fear resulted in formal government surveillance and prosecution of African American Muslim civil and religious organizations and their members. Organized and state-supported Islamophobia was not confined to the use of state surveillance, local police departments, and the US courts. After World War II, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) used mainstream media to prosecute a war of disinformation about Muslim groups, and by the 1960s, engaged in aggressive counterintelligence to repress what it deemed to be the threat of political radicalism among Muslim Americans.