By Amel Mohdali
Twenty-five years after September 11, 2001, being Muslim in America continues to come with an expectation that few other religious communities are asked to meet: the obligation to prove that one's faith is compatible with being American. Following the 2026 midterm elections, renewed discussions surrounding Muslim political representation have exposed how deeply Islamophobia remains embedded in American political culture. Muslim candidates seeking public office are still confronted with accusations of divided loyalties, extremism, and the supposed threat of Sharia law. Their religious identities become political controversies, often overshadowing their actual policies, qualifications, and commitments to their constituents. In a country founded upon principles of religious liberty, the question remains why Muslim Americans must repeatedly defend their right to participate in the very democracy that promises them equality.
The answer cannot be found simply in religious ignorance or individual prejudice. Islamophobia in the United States has been cultivated through centuries of political, racial, and imperial histories that have constructed Muslims as outsiders to Western civilization. European colonial powers frequently portrayed Muslim societies as irrational, violent, backward, and incapable of governing themselves, narratives that helped justify imperial domination across North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia. These representations established a political distinction between a supposedly civilized West and a threatening Muslim world, despite extensive histories of intellectual, economic, and cultural exchange between them. The War on Terror did not invent this distinction. Rather, it transformed longstanding prejudices into an expansive system of American domestic and foreign policy, one whose consequences remain visible in contemporary debates about immigration, national security, religious freedom, and political belonging.
Islam's Foundational Presence in Black American History
One of the most persistent misconceptions surrounding Islam in the United States is the belief that it is a foreign religion introduced primarily through immigration from the Middle East and South Asia. This assumption overlooks a fundamental part of American history: Islam has been present within Black communities since before the founding of the United States. Enslaved Africans brought to North America included Muslims from West African societies with established traditions of Islamic scholarship, education, commerce, and political organization. Many were literate in Arabic, possessed extensive religious knowledge, and came from communities where Islamic institutions had existed for centuries. Their forced arrival in the Americas represented the violent displacement of people whose religious and intellectual traditions were already deeply rooted in African history.
The history of enslaved African Muslims challenges the persistent portrayal of enslaved Africans as people without established intellectual or political traditions before European contact. Figures such as Omar ibn Said, a Muslim scholar from present-day Senegal who was enslaved in North Carolina, demonstrate the intellectual worlds that enslaved Africans carried with them. In 1831, Said wrote an autobiography in Arabic, preserving an extraordinary record of an enslaved African's experiences in the United States. Similarly, Bilali Muhammad, an enslaved Muslim living in Georgia, produced an Arabic manuscript containing Islamic religious instruction. These histories are particularly significant for institutions within the Atlanta University Center because they reveal that Islam was present in the American South long before contemporary debates surrounding Muslim immigration, terrorism, or religious freedom. The erasure of these histories has contributed to the mistaken assumption that Islam exists outside the development of African American identity.
The relationship between Islam and African American liberation became particularly visible during the twentieth century. As Black Americans confronted segregation, racial violence, economic exclusion, and the limitations of American citizenship, Islam emerged for some as a religious and political framework through which to challenge white supremacy. The Moorish Science Temple of America, founded by Noble Drew Ali in the early twentieth century, and the Nation of Islam, established in 1930, developed distinct religious and political approaches that challenged dominant narratives about Black identity and belonging. Although their teachings differed in important respects from mainstream Sunni and Shia Islamic traditions, these movements demonstrated how Islamic identification could become connected to struggles over racial dignity, self-determination, and the rejection of white supremacy. For communities whose humanity had been systematically denied, religious identity could become a means of reclaiming histories that slavery and segregation had attempted to erase.
Malcolm X remains one of the most significant figures in understanding the relationship between Islam, Black political consciousness, and international liberation movements. His early involvement with the Nation of Islam helped shape his critique of white supremacy and the political structures that maintained racial inequality. However, his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964 and subsequent embrace of Sunni Islam contributed to a transformation in his understanding of race, solidarity, and political struggle. His experiences among Muslims from different racial and national backgrounds challenged the racial separatism that had characterized some of his earlier political thought. More importantly, Malcolm X increasingly situated the struggle of African Americans within a global movement against colonialism and imperial domination. He understood that the conditions confronting Black Americans were connected to the experiences of colonized populations across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and he sought to internationalize the struggle for Black freedom through the language of human rights.
The history of African American Islam, however, extends far beyond Malcolm X or the Nation of Islam. Muslim communities have contributed to Black American cultural, intellectual, and political life through religious institutions, education, community organizing, prison ministry, and the arts. Jazz musicians such as Art Blakey and Yusef Lateef embraced Islam, while figures such as Muhammad Ali made their Muslim identities central to their public lives. Ali's refusal to participate in the Vietnam War, informed by his religious convictions and opposition to the conflict, demonstrated how religious identity could intersect with resistance to American militarism. His opposition became part of a broader critique of a government that demanded military service from Black Americans while denying them full equality at home. These histories reveal that Islam has not simply existed alongside African American political struggles. It has helped shape how generations of Black Americans understood justice, dignity, international solidarity, and the limits of American democracy.
Recognizing these histories is particularly important within historically Black colleges and universities, where students are encouraged to engage critically with slavery, colonialism, segregation, and racial resistance. African American history cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the enslaved Muslim scholars, religious institutions, political movements, and intellectual traditions that contributed to its development. Islam was not merely introduced into Black communities from the outside; it has been part of their religious and political lives for centuries. Any understanding of Black liberation that excludes these contributions risks reproducing an incomplete account of the very history our institutions seek to preserve.
September 11 and the Construction of the Muslim Enemy
The attacks of September 11 marked a turning point in the relationship between Muslim communities and the American state. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in attacks carried out by al-Qaeda, and the United States responded by declaring a global War on Terror. Although the attacks were committed by a specific militant organization, the political response extended far beyond those responsible. Muslim communities across the United States experienced increased hostility, harassment, surveillance, and discrimination, while people perceived to be Muslim, including Sikhs and other South Asian and Middle Eastern Americans, were also targeted. Religious identity, racial appearance, nationality, and presumed political allegiance became increasingly intertwined. The image of the Muslim terrorist became so normalized within political rhetoric and popular media that entire communities were subjected to suspicion based not on their actions but on their perceived proximity to Islam.
What followed was not simply a rise in interpersonal prejudice but the institutionalization of Islamophobia through the American security state. The USA PATRIOT Act expanded federal investigative and surveillance authorities, while immigration and registration programs disproportionately affected individuals from Muslim-majority countries. Mosques, Muslim student associations, community organizations, and ordinary religious gatherings became subjects of government monitoring. The New York Police Department's surveillance of Muslim communities, including students attending universities outside New York City, demonstrated how religious identity could become grounds for intelligence gathering even without individualized evidence of criminal activity. Muslim Americans were placed in a contradictory position: they were expected to demonstrate loyalty to the United States while being subjected to policies that treated their loyalty as inherently questionable.
The consequences of the War on Terror extended far beyond American borders. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the expansion of drone warfare, the detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, and the use of extraordinary rendition and torture reflected a broader transformation in how the United States exercised power in the name of national security. The Iraq War, justified in part through claims about weapons of mass destruction that were not substantiated by the discovery of the alleged stockpiles, resulted in immense civilian suffering, displacement, and political instability. Across these conflicts, Muslim populations were frequently discussed through the language of security threats rather than as communities with their own political histories, aspirations, and experiences of violence. The destruction of civilian infrastructure, the displacement of families, and the destabilization of entire societies were often presented as unfortunate but necessary consequences of protecting American interests.
This history raises an uncomfortable question about who possesses the authority to define violence and whose suffering is considered politically significant. When violence is carried out by nonstate actors against civilians, it is rightly condemned. Yet when powerful governments engage in military campaigns that kill civilians, destroy communities, or sustain systems of occupation, the language used to describe that violence often becomes considerably more restrained. Civilian deaths become collateral damage, military intervention becomes stabilization, and the exercise of overwhelming force becomes a necessary measure for maintaining international order. Recognizing these contradictions does not justify attacks against civilians or diminish the suffering of victims of terrorism. It requires acknowledging that political violence cannot be understood independently of the histories of colonialism, foreign intervention, and unequal power that shape the modern international system.
Perhaps one of the most enduring consequences of the War on Terror was the creation of a political environment in which Muslims were expected to assume collective responsibility for violence committed by individuals with whom they shared no political relationship beyond religious identity. A Christian American was rarely expected to account for every act of violence committed by another Christian, yet Muslim Americans were routinely asked to explain or apologize for actions occurring thousands of miles away. The expectation that Muslims must publicly condemn terrorism before their humanity or political legitimacy can be recognized established a standard of citizenship that was fundamentally unequal. It suggested that Muslim belonging was conditional, something that could be withdrawn whenever political circumstances made their religious identity inconvenient.
Sharia Law and the Politics of Fear
The 2026 midterm elections have brought renewed attention to one of the most persistent themes in American Islamophobic rhetoric: the alleged threat of Sharia law. As Muslim candidates seek and win elected office, accusations surrounding Islamic law have resurfaced in political discussions, often implying that the presence of Muslims in government threatens the American Constitution. These arguments rarely engage seriously with the candidates' policies or the actual meaning of Sharia. Instead, they rely on an image of Islam as an inherently authoritarian religion whose followers are incapable of separating personal religious commitments from constitutional responsibilities. The implication is that Muslim Americans cannot be trusted to exercise political authority without secretly attempting to impose their faith upon others.
Yet Sharia is neither a single legal code nor a universally agreed-upon political system. Broadly understood, it refers to the Islamic understanding of a moral and ethical path, encompassing religious worship, charitable obligations, personal conduct, family relationships, economic transactions, and questions of justice. Islamic jurisprudence, developed through centuries of scholarly interpretation, differs considerably across schools of thought, societies, and historical periods. Some governments have used particular interpretations of Islamic law to justify restrictions on individual freedoms, and those practices deserve scrutiny and criticism. However, equating the entirety of Sharia with the actions of particular governments ignores the diversity of Muslim religious thought and the distinction between personal religious practice and state-imposed law.
The political construction of Sharia as an existential threat is especially revealing when compared with how other religious traditions are discussed within American politics. Christian elected officials frequently invoke their religious convictions when discussing abortion, marriage, education, and public morality, yet their participation in government is not automatically treated as evidence that Christianity itself is incompatible with democracy. Jewish Americans similarly participate in public life while maintaining religious traditions that include extensive systems of ethical and legal interpretation. Muslim Americans, however, are often confronted with the assumption that practicing Islam necessarily entails a desire to replace American constitutional law. This unequal standard demonstrates how religious freedom can become contingent on whether a particular faith is perceived as part of the nation's cultural identity.
The American legal system and Islamic jurisprudence emerged from different historical traditions, but both exist within broader histories of legal reasoning and debates about justice, obligation, and social order. Islamic scholars developed sophisticated legal frameworks governing commerce, property, contracts, charitable institutions, and individuals' responsibilities to their communities long before the founding of the United States. The intellectual history of the modern world cannot be separated from the contributions of Muslim scholars and institutions, including their work in mathematics, medicine, philosophy, and the preservation and transmission of classical knowledge. This does not mean that American constitutional law was directly derived from Sharia, but it does challenge the idea that Islamic intellectual traditions exist outside the development of modern legal and political thought. The suggestion that Islamic law represents nothing more than violence or oppression is therefore not simply an inaccurate understanding of religion. It is a historical distortion that makes it easier to portray Muslims as incompatible with modern society.
Islamophobia Within the Atlanta University Center
While national political rhetoric provides an important framework for understanding Islamophobia, these prejudices are not confined to Washington, conservative political movements, or predominantly white institutions. They can also emerge within communities that understand themselves as committed to racial justice, diversity, and collective liberation. Within the Atlanta University Center, I have noticed a troubling lack of knowledge surrounding Islam, accompanied at times by assumptions about Muslim beliefs, religious practices, and cultural identities. These experiences have made me question how deeply our commitments to inclusion extend when we are confronted with religious traditions unfamiliar to us. The AUC has a long history of producing leaders who challenge racial oppression and structural inequality, yet that history does not automatically prevent students or institutions from reproducing other forms of exclusion.
Part of the challenge lies in how religious difference is approached within educational spaces. There is a difference between genuine curiosity and treating someone's religious identity as an invitation for interrogation. Questions about why Muslim women wear hijab, why Muslims pray five times a day, or what Muslims believe can create opportunities for meaningful exchange when approached with respect. However, when these questions are accompanied by assumptions that Muslim women lack agency, that Islam is inherently oppressive, or that Muslim religious practices are incompatible with contemporary society, they reproduce narratives historically used to justify the domination of Muslim populations. The problem is not that students lack knowledge about every religious tradition. It is that ignorance becomes prejudice when individuals treat their limited understanding as evidence of another community's inferiority.
This is especially troubling because many of the narratives used to portray Muslims as dangerous, irrational, uncivilized, or incapable of self-government emerged from the same colonial systems that constructed Africans as inferior and justified their domination. European imperial powers frequently portrayed both African and Muslim societies as populations requiring Western intervention, governance, and civilization. These representations were not simply cultural misunderstandings; they helped legitimize political conquest, economic exploitation, and racial hierarchy. When Black communities reproduce assumptions that Islam is inherently backward, violent, or incompatible with modern society, they risk repeating ideas historically used to justify the subjugation of African peoples themselves.
There is also a broader contradiction in spaces that emphasize liberation yet fail to confront prejudice within their own communities. Experiencing racial oppression does not automatically produce an understanding of every other form of marginalization, nor does belonging to a historically oppressed community guarantee a commitment to challenging exclusion. Black communities, like all communities, can reproduce xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, and other hierarchies of belonging. Recognizing these contradictions does not diminish the significance of Black liberation struggles. Rather, it challenges us to consider whether our political commitments extend beyond the forms of injustice that directly affect us. A liberation movement that recognizes racism while overlooking Islamophobia risks reproducing the very structures of exclusion it seeks to dismantle.
For the Atlanta University Center, addressing Islamophobia requires more than celebrating diversity as an institutional value. It requires creating an intellectual environment in which students understand the historical relationships between race, religion, colonialism, and political power. It requires recognizing that Muslim students should not bear the sole responsibility for correcting misinformation about their faith. Most importantly, it requires acknowledging that religious literacy is not separate from the study of global politics, racial justice, or the histories of communities across the African diaspora. If our institutions seek to cultivate globally conscious leaders, they must be willing to confront the assumptions that lead to the misunderstanding or exclusion of entire populations.
Too Black for the Arabs, Too Arab for the Black Community
However, any serious conversation about Islamophobia, Black liberation, and religious solidarity must also confront the anti-Black racism that exists within Arab and Muslim communities themselves. It would be intellectually dishonest to criticize the exclusion of Muslims within American society while overlooking the racial hierarchies reproduced within communities that experience Islamophobia. As a Sudanese American, I have witnessed these contradictions firsthand, particularly in the treatment of Sudanese people by other Arab communities. Sudanese identity often exists at the intersection of multiple histories, cultures, languages, and racial classifications, yet these intersections are frequently treated as contradictions rather than realities. We are sometimes considered too Black to be fully accepted within Arab communities, yet too Arab to be recognized as belonging within Black or even other African communities. This experience raises a larger question about the boundaries of belonging and the racial hierarchies that continue to shape communities that themselves experience marginalization.
The relationship between Arab identity and Blackness has long been complicated by histories of slavery, colonialism, colorism, and racial stratification across North Africa and the Middle East. Anti-Black racism within Arab societies cannot be dismissed as a recent consequence of Western colonialism, although European imperialism and modern racial classifications intensified and transformed existing hierarchies. The trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trades, the historical enslavement of African populations in parts of the Arab world, and the continued marginalization of Black communities across the region reveal that racial domination has existed within societies that are themselves subjected to Western stereotypes and discrimination. In some contexts, darker skin continues to be associated with lower social status, while proximity to lighter skin or particular ethnic lineages can carry social privilege. These inequalities are not universal across Arab societies, nor do they define every Arab community, but they are sufficiently persistent that they cannot be ignored in discussions of racial justice.
For Sudanese people, these hierarchies are especially painful because our identities challenge the racial categories through which both Arabness and Africanness are often understood. Sudan is home to extraordinary ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity, and its history cannot be reduced to a single racial or cultural identity. Yet Sudanese people are frequently placed in a position where their belonging is questioned from multiple directions. Within some Arab spaces, our Blackness becomes the basis for exclusion, ridicule, or assumptions of inferiority. Within some Black American and African spaces, our Arabic language, cultural traditions, or identification with Arabness can lead others to question our Blackness or African belonging. These experiences reveal how racial categories are socially constructed and policed, even among communities whose histories are deeply interconnected.
The contradictions are particularly visible in the way Sudanese people have been treated during the ongoing war in Sudan. While millions have been displaced and forced to seek refuge in neighboring countries, Sudanese refugees have encountered discrimination, exploitation, and unequal treatment, including in societies with which they share language, religion, and longstanding historical ties. The expectation that a shared Arab or Muslim identity would necessarily produce solidarity has repeatedly collided with the reality of racial and national hierarchies. These experiences demonstrate that cultural proximity does not automatically translate into political responsibility or equal treatment. A community can share a language, a religion, and centuries of historical exchange while still reproducing systems of exclusion against those it considers racially or socially inferior.
There is also a broader historical contradiction in the relationship between Sudanese identity and Arab nationalism. Sudan's political history has been shaped in part by the privileging of Arab identity within state institutions, often at the expense of communities whose languages, cultures, and ethnic identities did not conform to dominant definitions of national belonging. These hierarchies contributed to political exclusion and conflicts that cannot be understood solely through the language of religion or ethnicity. The violence in Darfur, for example, cannot be separated from histories of racialization, political marginalization, unequal access to resources, and the manipulation of communal identities by successive governments and armed actors. The categories of Arab and African have often been presented as opposing identities, although Sudanese communities have histories of intermarriage, cultural exchange, and overlapping identities that make such divisions far more complicated. These distinctions have nevertheless been politically mobilized in ways that have contributed to devastating consequences.
This is particularly important within the Atlanta University Center, where discussions of Blackness, African identity, and global solidarity are central to the intellectual environment. Blackness is not culturally or religiously uniform, and African identity cannot be confined to a particular language, geography, or understanding of racial authenticity. Sudanese, Somali, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Egyptian, and other African communities occupy diverse relationships to language, religion, ethnicity, and racial identity. Their histories challenge the assumption that being African necessarily means identifying with a single cultural tradition or that speaking Arabic somehow diminishes one's African identity. Arabic is not exclusive to the Arabian Peninsula, just as Islam is not exclusive to the Middle East. Both have histories deeply embedded within the African continent, and neither should be treated as evidence that someone is less African or less Black.
At the same time, confronting the exclusion of Sudanese people within Black spaces cannot become an excuse to overlook the anti-Blackness that exists within Sudanese and other Arab communities. Arab and Muslim communities cannot demand protection from Islamophobia while dismissing anti-Black racism as an insignificant cultural issue, just as Black communities cannot advocate for racial liberation while reproducing assumptions that Muslims or Arabic-speaking Africans are outsiders. These struggles are connected, but they are not interchangeable. Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, xenophobia, and colorism operate through different histories and institutions, even when they intersect in the experiences of the same individuals. Genuine solidarity requires recognizing these differences while remaining accountable for the ways our own communities may participate in systems of exclusion.
For Sudanese Americans, the demand to choose between Blackness and Arabness reflects the limitations of racial categories that cannot fully account for our histories. These identities are not necessarily mutually exclusive, nor must every Sudanese person understand or describe their identity in the same way. Sudanese people should not have to diminish their African heritage to claim connections to Arab culture, or abandon their Arabic language and traditions to have their Blackness recognized. Our identities are shaped by histories that predate the modern racial boundaries through which others attempt to define us. We should not have to become less Black to be accepted as Arab, less Arab to be recognized as African, or less Muslim to be considered American. Liberation cannot be conditional upon which parts of ourselves others are willing to recognize.
The War on Terror Never Really Ended
The persistence of Islamophobia in contemporary American politics suggests that the War on Terror's influence did not disappear with the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in 2021. Its political vocabulary continues to shape debates surrounding immigration, national security, Palestine, religious freedom, and Muslim political participation. Muslim Americans remain vulnerable to narratives that associate their religious identities with extremism, while political discussions involving Muslim-majority countries frequently reproduce assumptions about violence, instability, and the supposed incompatibility of Islam with democracy. These patterns are not simply remnants of an earlier political era. They reflect the continued influence of a system in which Muslim identity has been constructed as a potential security concern.
The consequences are measurable. In its 2026 civil rights report, the Council on American-Islamic Relations reported receiving 8,683 complaints nationwide in 2025, the highest annual total recorded by the organization since it began collecting such data in 1996. These complaints included allegations involving employment discrimination, immigration, hate incidents, and other forms of unequal treatment. Although reported complaints do not capture every experience of Islamophobia, they reveal the continued concerns of Muslim communities navigating American institutions. They also demonstrate that the political and social consequences of anti-Muslim prejudice extend beyond campaign rhetoric into employment, education, mobility, and everyday life.
The election of Muslim Americans to public office should be understood within this broader historical context. Their participation in government is neither evidence of a religious takeover nor an exception to American democratic principles. It is an exercise of the same political rights guaranteed to citizens of every religious background. Muslim elected officials should be questioned, challenged, and held accountable for their policies and decisions, just as any other public official should be. But when political criticism shifts from an individual's actions to the supposed dangers of their religious identity, it ceases to be a debate about governance and becomes a question of whether Muslims are entitled to equal participation in American public life.
For students within the Atlanta University Center, these conversations should encourage reflection on the limits of our own understanding and solidarity. It is easy to identify prejudice when it comes from institutions or political movements we already oppose. It is considerably more difficult to recognize the assumptions that circulate within our classrooms, organizations, friendships, and communities. Yet confronting those assumptions is essential to any serious commitment to collective liberation. Religious freedom cannot be defended selectively, and solidarity cannot be limited to those whose experiences most closely resemble our own. If we are serious about dismantling systems of racial and political domination, we must also be willing to examine the ways we reproduce them.
Twenty-five years after September 11, the United States continues to grapple with the political consequences of a war that transformed Muslim identity into a subject of national suspicion. From surveillance programs and military interventions to contemporary accusations surrounding Sharia law, the same underlying question continues to emerge: can Muslims be trusted to belong within American society without abandoning the religious identities that distinguish them? The question itself reveals the inequality embedded within the conversation. Muslim Americans have participated in the nation's history for centuries, contributed to its intellectual and political development, served their communities, and exercised the rights guaranteed to them under the Constitution.
The question was never whether Muslims are American enough for America, but whether America has lived up to the freedoms it claims to uphold.
