Law Commons^™

Walking While Muslim, Margaret Chon, Donna E. Arzt

Faculty Articles

In the post-9/11 era, what exactly is meant by race? This essay claims that both domestic civil rights law and international human rights law simultaneously create and obscure racial identity increasingly constructed through Muslim religious identity. The argument unfolds in several parts. First, by analogy to the racial formation process that occurred with the Japanese American community after World War II, we argue that a group's religious identity can contribute to the perception of a group as a racially different and inferior "other." Second, among other elements, religious identity is under-analyzed as a key element of racial formation. Third, post-9/11 …