Outsiders at Home: The Politics of American Islamophobia

by Nazita Lajevardi

Discrimination against Muslim Americans has soared over the last two decades with hostility growing especially acute since 2016 - in no small part due to targeted attacks by policymakers and media. Outsiders at Home offers the first systematic, empirically driven examination of status of Muslim Americans in US democracy, evaluating the topic from a variety of perspectives. To what extent do Muslim Americans face discrimination by legislators, the media, and the general public? What trends do we see over time, and how have conditions shifted? What, if anything, can be done to reverse course? How do Muslim Americans view their position, and what are the psychic and sociopolitical tolls? Answering each of these questions, Nazita Lajevardi shows that the rampant, mostly negative discussion of Muslims in media and national discourse has yielded devastating political and social consequences.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Religion

306 pages, Paperback

First published May 28, 2020

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Outsiders at Home” is a research-driven book from Nazita Lajevardi, J.D., PhD., a political scientist, attorney, and professor. She studies race and ethnic politics, political behavior, voting rights, and immigration, particularly as it relates to U.S. Muslims.

From the outset, “Outsiders” explains the factors that make it difficult to analyze Muslim Americans as a group, and why Lajevardi’s is one of the first books of its kind: Muslim Americans’ racial diversity as a collective, aversion to being surveyed due to historic mistreatment and forced surveillance, disappearing into U.S. Census data in some cases due to being told to select “white,” the Census not collecting data on religious affiliation, among others.Through the book, Lajevardi compiles the research to date, including her own, and constructs new studies to learn about discrimination against U.S. Muslims, how attitudes towards the group have changed over time, how those attitudes impact their view of themselves, and how media coverage since 2001 changes perceptions.

This book is so well-researched. Lajevardi is clearly a thought leader in this space. It opened my eyes to questions that I did not even realize we should be asking about how Muslim Americans are perceived in this country and the challenges that they face, as a complex, panethnic group that the mainstream discourse has lumped together. It makes sense in hindsight, but the beauty of this book is how clear Lajevardi makes it.

I will say, though, that from my layperson’s (non-sociologist’s) perspective, it was a bit dry at times. Her research methods were spelled out in great detail in each chapter—critical for validating her work and promoting future research, but maybe not the kind of read I was looking for. I found myself skimming those parts. “Outsiders” has definitely piqued my interest, but it was not as satisfying a read as I’d hoped it would be.

Overall: A first-of-its-kind look into the questions we should be asking about U.S. Muslims and Islamophobia in America. ★★★.

[Keenan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Data-based political science research seems hard. Life seemed easier when Nate Silver gave me the fuzzy wuzzies with a big blue map and everything was going to be all right. Not to mention that studying race and religion is another beast in the U.S.A -- race is a fluid concept even the Census Bureau can't really figure out, statistics on religion are not compiled, and certain minorities, due to a history of malicious government surveillance, aren't exactly coming to the fore to complain about discrimination.

Such challenging research requires tightly controlled experiments, and realistically there's only so much you can infer from surveying a random sample of people every few years with some questions to gauge their resentment or by emailing thousands of government representatives and quantifying the usefulness of their replies. As an academic I appreciate the importance of data in motivating policy decisions, but as a reader it can feel draining to be presented dozens of pages of in-depth unbiased methodology with the final result of the data being pretty much what one may have expected about the treatment of Muslims in America in a post 9/11 climate.

On a side note, there's something grotesquely American in having to control for white supremacy in the data gathering process i.e. how much more do you dislike Muslims relative to other minorities?

Five stars for the importance of the work and two stars for the readability from an outsider's perspective.

[Jen (Remembered Reads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A broad overview of trends in resentment and general attitudes towards Muslim Americans by the general US public, as found across a number of different studies. Some of the findings were completely in-line with what I imagine will be most people's general assumptions, but others were a little surprising, especially with regard to studies that attempted to account for the differences stemming from racial and ethnic elements. Being personally interested in the interaction of Islamophobia, xenophobia, and the racialization factor, I particularly appreciated those elements.

Probably slightly too statistics-heavy to cross-over to a wide popular audience, but still very clearly written so certainly accessible to non-academics.

A few of the tables had formatting issues, but as I read an eARC from NetGalley, I assume that will be remedied for the print run.

[Yu · Rating 4 out of 5]

If one is not Muslim, does one still feel the Islamophobia? Yes of course. This really good book could bring a scientific approach to understanding of these question.Highly recommend to anyone who would like to get a close look at the Muslim population in US and the world, and to understand such a highly diverse-racial population' struggle on discrimination.

The book contains a lot of data, from swing states voters to the Muslim subgroups, however, the style of writing is very scientific, and it could make readers who are searching for a simple read feel boring and too much. [Figures and Charts are hard to read comparing with other books, type face too small].

A wonderful source for research, academia.

[Iman · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5 Very dense and full of statistics that are hard to understand. I appreciate the effort put into the research but I didn't see that same effort into making sure it was readable. Overall, I think it could definitely serve as great background for those writing papers or even full scale books.