Securing the Homeland: Toward an Intersectional Socio-Religious Approach to Counterterrorism

• In Event: 2329 - Section on the Sociology of Religion Referred Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 5. Religion and Violence

Abstract

This paper advances what I term an intersectional socio-religious justice approach to counterterrorism. It first analyzes why the current counterterrorism approach of the U.S. federal government is both misguided and inefficient. Building on one of the central premises of this book, which is that militant white nationalism must be regarded as just as much of a threat to national security, it not more so, as militant Islamism, it submits that any effective counterterrorism program must end the disproportionate vilification, ostracization, and alienation of Muslim Americans, and instead focus on threats based on empirical data and investigative police work. This paper argues that if civil liberties, social justice, and national security are all to be strengthened, what is needed is a holistic counterterrorism approach based on religious literacy and interracial engagement—not only between different religious and racial groups, but also within them. Only such an approach can bring awareness to the theological and socio-cultural means by which such militant activists legitimize their political motives as well as how the practices of federal law enforcement agencies support structural racism and act as tools of social control.

Author

• Sara Kamali