What do you think?
Rate this book
Seasons of Fury: Four Families and the Rise of Islamophobia in America
A sweeping narrative history of the U.S. government’s broken compact with its Muslim citizens, culminating in the post-9/11 era of mass surveillance and increased violence—from an award-winning New York Times Magazine journalist.
In this closely reported and elegantly written book, Rozina Ali shows how the War on Terror, conceived in the wake of the September 11 attacks, only accelerated long-standing conflicts between American law enforcement and Muslim communities around the country. From the surveillance of Arab activists that began in the 1960s and laws in the 90s that broadened the definition of terrorism, to the mass detention of entire Muslim communities in the 2000s and the rise of think tanks and nonprofits that sowed panic about the threat of Islam itself, Seasons of Fury shows that the history of policies that have warped the American perception of Muslim communities reaches deep into our past.
Through the powerful stories of four families across eight decades, Ali narrates a range of Muslim experiences shaped by relentless suspicion and prejudice. Introducing readers to Abdeen Jabara, Mohammad Ali Chaudry, Shahina and Matin Siraj, and the pseudonymous Omar family, she shows how fears about American Muslims have always been inextricable from the Israel–Palestine conflict, stoking the idea of a religious war between Muslims and the West.
Ultimately, the U.S. government’s Islamophobic policies disillusioned generations of Muslims who sought the promise of the American dream only to find their communities torn apart, their relatives imprisoned, and their religion villainized by politicians and media. Ali’s story of how we got to our terrifying present is a magisterial accomplishment and a damning indictment of the United States’ abandonment of its core principles in the face of fear.
In this closely reported and elegantly written book, Rozina Ali shows how the War on Terror, conceived in the wake of the September 11 attacks, only accelerated long-standing conflicts between American law enforcement and Muslim communities around the country. From the surveillance of Arab activists that began in the 1960s and laws in the 90s that broadened the definition of terrorism, to the mass detention of entire Muslim communities in the 2000s and the rise of think tanks and nonprofits that sowed panic about the threat of Islam itself, Seasons of Fury shows that the history of policies that have warped the American perception of Muslim communities reaches deep into our past.
Through the powerful stories of four families across eight decades, Ali narrates a range of Muslim experiences shaped by relentless suspicion and prejudice. Introducing readers to Abdeen Jabara, Mohammad Ali Chaudry, Shahina and Matin Siraj, and the pseudonymous Omar family, she shows how fears about American Muslims have always been inextricable from the Israel–Palestine conflict, stoking the idea of a religious war between Muslims and the West.
Ultimately, the U.S. government’s Islamophobic policies disillusioned generations of Muslims who sought the promise of the American dream only to find their communities torn apart, their relatives imprisoned, and their religion villainized by politicians and media. Ali’s story of how we got to our terrifying present is a magisterial accomplishment and a damning indictment of the United States’ abandonment of its core principles in the face of fear.
464 pages, Hardcover
Published August 25, 2026
About the author
Rozina Ali
3 books6 followersRozina Ali is a journalist and contributing writer at New York Times Magazine, a fellow at Type Media Center, a fellow at New America, and was previously a senior editor at The Cairo Review of Global Affairs. Ali writes primarily about the War on Terror, Islamophobia, the Middle East, and South Asia, and her work has been featured in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Foreign Affairs, The Nation, The American Prospect, and more. Ali is a recipient of the National Magazine Award in Reporting.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
This book wants to be a brave indictment of America. What it actually reads like is a very polished complaint letter written from inside the safest, richest, freest society on earth.
Rozina Ali’s argument is not hard to understand. America feared Muslims, America betrayed its principles, America turned innocent communities into suspects. Fine. There is truth in parts of that. Post-9/11 America did overreach. The surveillance state grew. Politicians exploited fear. Some innocent people were treated unfairly.
But the problem with *Seasons of Fury* is not that it criticizes America. The problem is that it criticizes America with one eye closed.
The book keeps asking why Muslims were treated with suspicion, but seems strangely uninterested in why that suspicion existed in the first place. Apparently, we are supposed to believe that all of this fell out of the sky: no 9/11, no jihadist networks, no honor culture, no religious extremism, no imported tribal politics, no hostility toward Western secular life, no endless global pattern of liberal societies bending over backward while being called oppressive by the very people enjoying their freedoms.
No, no. It is all “Islamophobia.” That magic word does a lot of heavy lifting.
The word itself has become a convenient little trick. Any criticism of a belief system, any concern about integration, any discomfort with religious conservatism, any objection to violence committed in the name of faith — all of it can be waved away as a “phobia.” As if ordinary citizens woke up one morning and randomly decided to fear a religion for no reason. As if history had nothing to do with it.
That is the book’s Bigggggest blind spot. It sees the reaction, but not the provocation. It sees the backlash, but not the pattern. It sees the tears after the alarm goes off, but refuses to ask who kept setting off the alarm.
And this is where the moral performance gets exhausting.
America, for all its flaws, gave these communities what most Muslim-majority countries do not give their own dissenters: freedom of religion, freedom of speech, legal protection, universities, media platforms, book deals, civil rights lawsuits, and the right to denounce the country in hardcover from a major publisher. That is not nothing. In fact, that is the whole point.
Try publishing this kind of book in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, or North Korea — only with the roles reversed. Try writing a sweeping indictment of the ruling ideology there and see how far your “brave voice” carries you before the state reminds you what real repression looks like.
That is what makes books like this so irritating. They often confuse the discomfort of living in a free society with oppression. They mistake criticism for persecution. They enjoy the protections of liberal civilization while lecturing that civilization as if it were uniquely evil.
Of course America deserves criticism. But criticism without gratitude becomes childish. Criticism without comparison becomes propaganda. Criticism without self-awareness becomes comedy.
Ali wants us to believe that American suspicion toward Muslim communities was mainly a story of prejudice. But serious readers should ask a less fashionable question: what responsibilities do immigrant and religious communities have toward the societies that receive them? Is integration only a demand placed on the host country? Are liberal democracies expected to absorb every cultural conflict, every imported grievance, every religious sensitivity, and then apologize for noticing the tension?
The book does not seem very interested in that question.
Instead, it gives us the familiar script: the state is guilty, the minority is wounded, the media is hysterical, the public is ignorant, and the author is here to reveal the hidden moral crime. It is clean, dramatic, emotionally satisfying — and far too convenient.
What is missing is the harder truth: fear is not always irrational. Sometimes fear is memory. Sometimes suspicion is not hatred but experience. Sometimes a society becomes defensive because it has learned, painfully, that openness can be exploited by people who do not actually believe in openness.
That does not justify every policy. It does not excuse every abuse. But it does complicate the story. And complication is exactly what this book seems determined to avoid.
*Seasons of Fury* may be well written. It may be moving. It may contain real stories of real injustice. But as a work of political interpretation, it feels trapped inside its own sermon. It is less interested in understanding America than in prosecuting it.
In the end, he biggest problem with this book and its author is the author's lack of self-awareness regarding their own culture. and the book’s great irony is that it could only exist in the kind of society it spends hundreds of pages condemning. it does make the author’s posture a little too comfortable, a little too rehearsed, and a little too blind to the civilization that made her complaint possible.
Rozina Ali’s argument is not hard to understand. America feared Muslims, America betrayed its principles, America turned innocent communities into suspects. Fine. There is truth in parts of that. Post-9/11 America did overreach. The surveillance state grew. Politicians exploited fear. Some innocent people were treated unfairly.
But the problem with *Seasons of Fury* is not that it criticizes America. The problem is that it criticizes America with one eye closed.
The book keeps asking why Muslims were treated with suspicion, but seems strangely uninterested in why that suspicion existed in the first place. Apparently, we are supposed to believe that all of this fell out of the sky: no 9/11, no jihadist networks, no honor culture, no religious extremism, no imported tribal politics, no hostility toward Western secular life, no endless global pattern of liberal societies bending over backward while being called oppressive by the very people enjoying their freedoms.
No, no. It is all “Islamophobia.” That magic word does a lot of heavy lifting.
The word itself has become a convenient little trick. Any criticism of a belief system, any concern about integration, any discomfort with religious conservatism, any objection to violence committed in the name of faith — all of it can be waved away as a “phobia.” As if ordinary citizens woke up one morning and randomly decided to fear a religion for no reason. As if history had nothing to do with it.
That is the book’s Bigggggest blind spot. It sees the reaction, but not the provocation. It sees the backlash, but not the pattern. It sees the tears after the alarm goes off, but refuses to ask who kept setting off the alarm.
And this is where the moral performance gets exhausting.
America, for all its flaws, gave these communities what most Muslim-majority countries do not give their own dissenters: freedom of religion, freedom of speech, legal protection, universities, media platforms, book deals, civil rights lawsuits, and the right to denounce the country in hardcover from a major publisher. That is not nothing. In fact, that is the whole point.
Try publishing this kind of book in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, or North Korea — only with the roles reversed. Try writing a sweeping indictment of the ruling ideology there and see how far your “brave voice” carries you before the state reminds you what real repression looks like.
That is what makes books like this so irritating. They often confuse the discomfort of living in a free society with oppression. They mistake criticism for persecution. They enjoy the protections of liberal civilization while lecturing that civilization as if it were uniquely evil.
Of course America deserves criticism. But criticism without gratitude becomes childish. Criticism without comparison becomes propaganda. Criticism without self-awareness becomes comedy.
Ali wants us to believe that American suspicion toward Muslim communities was mainly a story of prejudice. But serious readers should ask a less fashionable question: what responsibilities do immigrant and religious communities have toward the societies that receive them? Is integration only a demand placed on the host country? Are liberal democracies expected to absorb every cultural conflict, every imported grievance, every religious sensitivity, and then apologize for noticing the tension?
The book does not seem very interested in that question.
Instead, it gives us the familiar script: the state is guilty, the minority is wounded, the media is hysterical, the public is ignorant, and the author is here to reveal the hidden moral crime. It is clean, dramatic, emotionally satisfying — and far too convenient.
What is missing is the harder truth: fear is not always irrational. Sometimes fear is memory. Sometimes suspicion is not hatred but experience. Sometimes a society becomes defensive because it has learned, painfully, that openness can be exploited by people who do not actually believe in openness.
That does not justify every policy. It does not excuse every abuse. But it does complicate the story. And complication is exactly what this book seems determined to avoid.
*Seasons of Fury* may be well written. It may be moving. It may contain real stories of real injustice. But as a work of political interpretation, it feels trapped inside its own sermon. It is less interested in understanding America than in prosecuting it.
In the end, he biggest problem with this book and its author is the author's lack of self-awareness regarding their own culture. and the book’s great irony is that it could only exist in the kind of society it spends hundreds of pages condemning. it does make the author’s posture a little too comfortable, a little too rehearsed, and a little too blind to the civilization that made her complaint possible.
Review of advance copy received from Goodreads Giveaways
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thank you to Crown Publishing for the ARC!
Seasons of Fury is a powerful, deeply researched examination of the rise of Islamophobia in America and the policies, fears, and political decisions that helped shape it over the course of decades.
Rather than focusing solely on the years following 9/11, Rozina Ali traces a much longer history, showing how suspicion and surveillance of Muslim communities developed over generations. Through the stories of four families, she transforms what could have been an abstract political history into something intensely personal and human.
What struck me most was the way Ali balances large-scale historical events with individual experiences. The stories of families navigating discrimination, government scrutiny, detention, and public suspicion put real faces to policies that are often discussed only in political terms. The result is a book that feels both informative and emotionally impactful.
Ali's writing is accessible while still being thoroughly researched. She tackles complex subjects including surveillance programs, immigration policies, civil liberties, media narratives, and the intersections of American foreign policy with domestic attitudes toward Muslim communities. I appreciated how carefully she connected these issues across decades rather than treating them as isolated events.
One of the book's greatest strengths is its nuance. While it is certainly critical of policies and institutions that contributed to discrimination, it also explores the hopes, aspirations, and resilience of the individuals and families at the center of the story. The human element never gets lost beneath the historical analysis.
📚 What I loved:
🕌 Thorough and well-researched history
📖 Compelling family narratives
🕌 Accessible writing style
📖 Important examination of civil liberties and surveillance
🕌 Thought-provoking historical context
At times, the amount of historical and political detail can feel dense, particularly when discussing legal frameworks and government programs. However, the personal stories help keep the narrative engaging and grounded throughout.
Overall, Seasons of Fury is an important and timely work that sheds light on a part of American history that many readers may know only in fragments. It challenges assumptions, provides valuable context, and offers a deeper understanding of how fear and policy can shape the lives of entire communities.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A compelling and illuminating read for anyone interested in American history, civil rights, politics, and the lived experiences behind the headlines.
Thank you to Crown Publishing for the ARC!
Seasons of Fury is a powerful, deeply researched examination of the rise of Islamophobia in America and the policies, fears, and political decisions that helped shape it over the course of decades.
Rather than focusing solely on the years following 9/11, Rozina Ali traces a much longer history, showing how suspicion and surveillance of Muslim communities developed over generations. Through the stories of four families, she transforms what could have been an abstract political history into something intensely personal and human.
What struck me most was the way Ali balances large-scale historical events with individual experiences. The stories of families navigating discrimination, government scrutiny, detention, and public suspicion put real faces to policies that are often discussed only in political terms. The result is a book that feels both informative and emotionally impactful.
Ali's writing is accessible while still being thoroughly researched. She tackles complex subjects including surveillance programs, immigration policies, civil liberties, media narratives, and the intersections of American foreign policy with domestic attitudes toward Muslim communities. I appreciated how carefully she connected these issues across decades rather than treating them as isolated events.
One of the book's greatest strengths is its nuance. While it is certainly critical of policies and institutions that contributed to discrimination, it also explores the hopes, aspirations, and resilience of the individuals and families at the center of the story. The human element never gets lost beneath the historical analysis.
📚 What I loved:
🕌 Thorough and well-researched history
📖 Compelling family narratives
🕌 Accessible writing style
📖 Important examination of civil liberties and surveillance
🕌 Thought-provoking historical context
At times, the amount of historical and political detail can feel dense, particularly when discussing legal frameworks and government programs. However, the personal stories help keep the narrative engaging and grounded throughout.
Overall, Seasons of Fury is an important and timely work that sheds light on a part of American history that many readers may know only in fragments. It challenges assumptions, provides valuable context, and offers a deeper understanding of how fear and policy can shape the lives of entire communities.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A compelling and illuminating read for anyone interested in American history, civil rights, politics, and the lived experiences behind the headlines.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews