Complex Inequalities

Abstract

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have redefined the meaning of religious minority identity for Muslim Americans. When religious identities are central to U.S. political conflicts, they shift from supporting adaptation to American society to facilitating inequality. Using newspaper articles published in the northeastern region of the United States and The Washington Post between May 2002 and May 2003, the following analysis investigates how Muslim religious identity comes to mimic the inequality of race identity via essentialist images of Islam, government policies, and experiences of discrimination. Benign markers of difference no longer exist in American society; instead, any identity that designates a group boundary can be used to organize social inequality. The religious minority identity of Muslim Americans following 9/11 signals the complexity of social inequality and, therefore, the difficulty of achieving social justice.