By Rachel Gillum, Stanford University | Political Science Quarterly, 133, 3 (Fall 2018)

Islamophobia and Racism in America by Erik Love. New York, New York University Press, 2017. 272 pp. Paper, $28.00.

Islamophobic discrimination against those perceived to be Muslim might be more severe than it has been in years. In the year leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election—during which candidate Donald Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”—the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported the highest number of hate crimes against Muslims since 2001. Yet Islamophobia has affected not only those who follow the Islamic religion but also those who have been mistaken for Muslims because of their appearance. Indeed, the first person killed in a hate crime targeting Muslims shortly after 11 September 2001 was a Sikh American. Erik Love, in his excellent book Islamophobia and Racism in America, argues that in order to fully address the problem of Islamophobia, advocates must expand their understanding of it beyond religious and ethnic frameworks—race must be part of the analysis.

Love explains that race operates at the very core of Islamophobia. He provides a detailed and historically contextualized review of the ways in which Islamophobia has collectively affected Arab, Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian Americans throughout the country’s history. While this socially constructed racial category of people does not have an agreed-upon name (Love settles on “Middle Eastern Americans”), Love suggests that this amalgamation exists in material ways in the imagination of the American public and within U.S. institutions.

Having established that race is a key operational component of Islamophobia, the central question of Islamophobia and Racism in America is addressed in the second half of the book—whether, strategically, Middle Eastern American advocates should use racism to describe Islamophobia. Love’s informative and nuanced profiles of six of the largest Arab, Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian American advocacy organizations explore the calculated choices and challenges that lie between race-conscious and race-neutral strategies to confront Islamophobia. Framing the trajectory of these organizations within the larger American political context, Love explains that this choice is complicated by conservatives who, in the decades since the 1960s civil rights movement, have successfully stigmatized calls for special protections for racialized groups as“reverse racism” (p. 145).

Unfortunately, Love is only able to assess the success of one of the two strategies: he finds that all six of the organizations in his sample ultimately pursued a race-neutral advocacy approach, a choice he indirectly criticizes as having prevented durable coalitions among Arab, Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian American organizations. He says that while these various organizations have been successful in confronting a number of discrete policies and working with government agencies, Islamophobia continues to expand and may be worse today than ever before (p. 198). Love primarily points to 1960s black civil rights organizations as key examples of successful race-conscious advocacy (though, disappointingly, he does not discuss the strategies or contributions of any Black Muslim organizations). However, without a case of a Middle Eastern American group pursuing a race-based strategy, it is difficult to determine whether such a group would be more effective in today’s political context, especially given the low level of self-identification among those assigned to the Middle Eastern American racial category.

Islamophobia and Racism in America importantly and rightly frames Islamophobia in the larger context of race in American society and politics, offering an important foundation for future studies. Love offers a thoughtful and well-written account of the complicated issues facing Middle Eastern American communities and advocacy organizations, taking the time to learn both the official and unofficial narratives of these organizations. Islamophobia and Racism in America makes an important contribution to the fields of race and politics, and it is an essential read for scholars, advocates, and policy-makers alike.