While much has been written about post-9/11 anti-Muslim racism, insufficient attention has been given to how anti-Muslim racism operates through law and is a vital part of law’s protection of whiteness. We may think of law as logical, but, argues Razack, its logic breaks down when the subject is Muslim.

Tracing how white subjects and majority-white nations in the post-9/11 era have consolidated their whiteness through the figure of the Muslim, Razack examines sites of anti-Muslim racism. Arguing that nothing has to make sense when the subject is Muslim, she maintains that these legal and cultural sites reveal the dread, phobia, hysteria, and desire that mark the encounter between Muslims and the West. Emerging from critical race theory and bridging Islamophobia/critical religious studies, the book demonstrates that anti-Muslim racism is a revelatory window into the operation of white supremacy as a global force.