An important and moving investigation of the costs of the ‘war on terror’ for those who have been its targets, including the thousands of innocent Muslims who have been infiltrated, entrapped, and surveilled in the search for the radicalized terrorist among us. Kundnani gives eloquent voice to the communities that have been regulated, watched, and silenced by the national security state.”
—David Cole, author of Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism
“A bold new look at the much discussed issue of surveillance, documenting how it impacts the communities most affected—American and British Muslims. With incisive reporting from across the US and the UK, combined with trenchant analysis, Arun Kundnani captures what it feels like to be a ‘suspect population.’”
—Deepa Kumar, author of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire
“Arun Kundnani is one of Britain’s best political writers, neither hectoring nor drily academic but compelling and sharply intelligent. The Muslims Are Coming should be widely read, particularly by liberals who consider their own positions unassailable.”
—Robin Yassin-Kassab, Guardian
“Kundnani’s argument is compelling in its dissection of governments’ disproportional responses.”
—Tanjil Rashid, Financial Times
“Kundnani’s book is a fact-rich call for vigilance and clear thinking about the erosion of civil liberties and attitudes.”
—New Statesman
“A gripping exposition of how the west has made a post-communist enemy and, in some ways, ignited Islamicist terrorism.”
—Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Independent
“An incisive, scholarly, bold, and convincing critique of the never-ending ‘War on Terror,’ whose roots extend far beyond the tragedy of 9/11. An important work.”
—Wajahat Ali, cohost of Al Jazeera America’s The Stream and author of The Domestic Crusaders
“Arun Kundnani, a British-born scholar who is now an adjunct professor at New York University, is a different sort of leftist. He is not Muslim, either by background or conviction, but he maintains that ‘Islamophobia’ is a thinly disguised form of racial prejudice, and that on both sides of the Atlantic, the war on terror has been an excuse for governments to ratchet up surveillance and harassment of people who are ‘guilty’ of nothing worse than critical thought about their countries’ domestic or foreign policies.”
—Economist
“Excellent and timely … a compelling guide to the debate over the nature of British Islam.”
—Telegraph
“This timely and urgent analysis carefully examines the ideologies and law enforcement strategies that undergird the domestic War on Terror. What Kundnani finds is disturbing: sweeping, specious radicalization theory and racialized assumptions about the nature of Islam drive domestic counterterrorism practices. This has had devastating consequences for the rights and liberties of Muslims and the state of constitutional protections in the US and UK.”
—Jeanne Theoharis, author of The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks
“Indispensable and powerful … Essential reading for government officials engaged in designing our counterterrorism policies, as well as readers trying to make sense of them.”
—Faiza Patel, Co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program, Brennan Center, NYU School of Law
“A must-read guide to the second decade of war waged on the home front.”
—John Feffer, author of Crusade 2.0: The West’s Resurgent War on Islam
“Measuring his ideas against global terror experts, Kundnani offers hard alternatives to international security agencies, policing trends, and options for reasonable dissent in his thoughtful, rational plea to curb the War on Terror.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Kundnani frankly and refreshingly moves away from ideological symptoms and toward political causes in tackling extremism.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Aptly reveals the West’s anti-Islam and anti-Muslim prejudice in the form of ‘war on terror.’ It unravels and critiques their reified anti-Muslim policies persuasively. It is a groundbreaking, balanced, simple to read, and timely contribution to the existing literature that vividly highlights the true face of the West’s perception of Muslims—as an alien race.”
—Muhammad Yassen Gada, Arab Studies Quarterly
“Based on several years of research and reportage, The Muslims are Coming! is an incisive critique of the repressive and surveillance-heavy methods of combatting homegrown terrorism utilized in both the US and UK.”
—LitHub
04/01/2014
Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF), which has served as the linchpin for an open-ended and continuing war on terror. Unlike traditional wars, the enemy in this battle is not a country or organization but a set of ideas that have been labeled as "radical Islam." As a result, vast networks of organizations and individuals in the West have become obsessed with preventing the spread of this ideology by all means necessary. In this well-researched and crisply written book, Kundnani (terrormism studies, John Jay Coll. of Criminal Justice, City Univ. of New York; The End of Tolerance) explores the genesis and development of the domestic fronts of the war on terror in the United States and the UK. The author explains how the ideology of the war on terror has distorted these two countries' approach to their Muslim populations and has contributed to both counterproductive counterterrorism advances and the concomitant intensification of Islamophobia in the West. He describes how both the conservative and liberal modes of thinking about radical Islam have failed to account for or address underlying social and political circumstances. VERDICT An immensely useful book for academics, policymakers, and all those interested in understanding and reshaping the war on terror.—Nader Entessar, Univ. of South Alabama, Mobile
2014-01-05
A widely researched argument about why the war on terror will have no success unless the West stops blaming Islam and starts locating the roots of political dissent. In fighting the war on terror, Kundnani (Terrorism Studies/John Jay Coll.; The End of Tolerance: Racism in 21st Century Britain, 2007) sees the governments of the U.S. and Britain as employing the same wrongheaded surveillance tactics that were created by the Russians and sharpened by the CIA, then the FBI, in cracking down on dissidents during the Cold War and the civil rights era. The problem, writes the author, is that Muslims have become an "ideal enemy," perceived by mainstream American and British societies as unable to assimilate properly due to the essential flaw in their religion: the inability to separate church and state. Policymakers view extremism as a "perversion of Islam's message," the twisting of what is essentially a benign religion into "an antimodern, totalitarian, political ideology." The truth is that most people are peace-loving and assimilationist, and Muslim communities have become a kind of "Asian model minority." Yet some of the youth, thwarted in their political expression, lash out in extremism—e.g., in the reaction to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the plight of the Palestinians against Israeli aggression. In the crackdown on anti-extremism, scholars of "radicalization"—i.e., the process by which Muslims move toward terrorism—zero in on a spurious "cultural-psychological predisposition" toward violence and disaffection that offers intelligence and law enforcement agencies a framework to work with but does not address what Kundnani believes is at the root of the unrest: poverty and oppression. His examples of the pernicious reach of many policing tools are useful, such as the Prevent model launched in Britain in 2004, provoking questions about privacy and discrimination. Kundnani frankly and refreshingly moves away from ideological symptoms and toward political causes in tackling extremism.
