United States, Muslim Politics in the

Abstract

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Muslim Americans became a more vulnerable and visible group. Representing only 1 to 2 percent of the total U.S. population, during the first decade of the twenty-first century they were swept into national debates about U.S. foreign policy, civil rights and religious liberties, racial and religious equality, and cultural assimilation and integration. Their symbolic value to such critical national discussions often trumped their role as political actors in their own right. The myopic lens of the twenty-first-century war on terrorism obscured their long-standing presence in and contributions to political life in the United States. Though Muslim Americans did not engage formally in electoral politics until the twentieth century, they have been participants in U.S. politics, broadly conceived, since the birth of the republic. This article recovers the lost political voices of Muslim Americans from 1776 to the present, focusing first on the era of slavery, and then exploring the roots and flowering of formal Muslim politics among American- and foreign-born Muslims in the twentieth century. It concludes with a discussion of Muslim politics in the United States after September 11, 2001.