Anti-Muslim racism is a global system used to normalise mass killing

Hospitals, schools and residential buildings have been bombed. Water and sanitation infrastructure have been destroyed, amid warnings of mass malnutrition and starvation. No, these are not headlines from Gaza - although they could be. They are from Iran and Lebanon, two countries that have been systematically targeted by the Israeli military over the past three years. Yet the destruction of civilian life in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran is not an isolated phenomenon. Across different political contexts, Muslim and Muslim-adjacent populations have long been subjected to violence, abandonment and containment. Well before 2023, hundreds of civilians were killed by US drone warfare in Yemen; refugees attempting to reach Europe were abandoned to death in the Mediterranean by the EU; and millions of displaced Syrians were warehoused in camps enclosed with barbed wire. What connects these, and countless other cases, is the discourse of terrorism. It does not simply identify populations as security threats; it justifies managing those threats through lethal means. Death is administered immediately or slowly, by creating conditions that expose people to premature death. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters These interconnected practices of death-dealing across multiple geographical sites reveal the global operations of anti-Muslim racism. November is Islamophobia Awareness Month. During this period, we will hear different understandings of Islamophobia: as a problem of individual prejudice, as discrimination and exclusion, or as a form of racism. This article argues that Islamophobia is a global system of racism, built in part through the governance and control of Palestinian bodies, that makes mass Muslim death politically intelligible and permissible. Racist discourse Islamophobia is much more than personal bias, fear or hatred of Islam and Muslims. It is a system of racism that constructs Muslim populations - and those identified as Muslim - as security threats, and legitimises their exposure to premature and various forms of death. Central to this process is terrorism discourse: an assemblage of images, policies, legislation, agreements, initiatives, popular representations and academic knowledge through which Muslim people become knowable as potential terrorists. The terrorist is understood as someone who deploys violence to achieve a political objective. The Muslim cast as a terrorist is therefore constructed as someone whose political agency is destabilising, and who must be subjected to surveillance, discipline and violence. The occupation of Palestine has helped to consolidate a global anti-Muslim necro-structure: an architecture of racial governance through which Muslim populations can be rendered disposable The terrorist is not simply a political figure, but a racial one, imagined as possessing an inherent, even biological, propensity towards violence. In this way, the terrorist is designated as a different type of human. Race and religion intersect in the figure of the “Muslim terrorist”. Islam is imagined as inducing this Muslim nature to commit acts of barbarity and savagery. Within this logic, there are “good Muslims” and “bad Muslims”. The distinction depends on their perceived relationship to Islam: the former are “modern, secular and liberal”, while the latter are doctrinal, guided by scripture, and willing to make its teachings the basis of everyday and political action. Importantly, one need not be Muslim to be racialised through the figure of the terrorist. Those associated with markers of Muslimness - including particular political causes, cultural practices and racialised bodily features - may be subjected to the same designation. They, too, are racialised as Muslim. Anti-Muslim racism, however, is not merely representational. It is implicated in the management of Muslim life and death. It operates through the misdistribution of life chances, including the withholding of access to healthcare, education, employment and dignified housing. It also operates through death-dealing practices, such as political abandonment, encampment, torture, detention without charge, and targeted drone killings. Together, these practices constitute a global necro-structure: an interconnected system of racial governance through which Muslim life is differentially valued, abandoned and exposed to premature death. Necropolitical logic The figure of the terrorist operates through both racial and necropolitical logics. It legitimises the use of death to contain, discipline and manage the threat that Muslim and Muslim-adjacent populations are imagined to pose. The ongoing elimination of the Palestinian population is one of the most devastating expressions of this logic. Crucially, this racial and necropolitical logic is not confined to a single national project. It is embedded in a transnational security architecture, including the Countering Violent Extremism agenda, through which anti-Muslim racism becomes a planetary phenomenon. What confronts us is a global system that renders the mass death of Muslim populations politically permissible - a system that can be activated wherever and whenever it becomes politically expedient. Contrary to the common assumption that it emerged with the post-9/11 “war on terror”, global anti-Muslim racism has a much longer history. Some trace its origins to medieval Christendom and the Crusades; others locate them in the structures of power, knowledge and racial hierarchy produced through European colonial expansion. Alongside this longer history, we must look to a more recent one to understand the contemporary formation of its racial logics: the occupation of Palestine. Palestine is more than a territory of profound religious significance to the world’s monotheistic traditions. It is a colonial territory whose indigenous population has been subjected to occupation, dispossession and displacement. Palestine is a colonial frontier through which the enduring logics and techniques of colonial domination are reproduced. It is a site where racial hierarchies are enforced through territorial dispossession, population management and the differential valuation of human life. But this is only part of the story. Palestine is also a site from which the imperial boomerang travels across geographical and political contexts. Through this process, the racial logics, technologies of control, and modalities of violence developed through the governance of Palestinian bodies circulate beyond the boundaries of the occupation, where they are adapted and reproduced. It is this Palestine boomerang that beckons us to examine the relationship between the occupation and global anti-Muslim racism. Gauntlet thrown One important connection is the racial figure of the terrorist. Although rooted in a longer colonial history, its contemporary political articulation is closely connected to the Zionist project in Palestine. The 1979 Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism was an important moment in the international consolidation of this discourse. It helped advance an understanding of terrorism as a civilisational threat to democracy and the West. Global anti-Muslim racism, then, is rooted in the longer history of European colonialism, but has also been shaped by the more recent history of the Zionist project to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This insight allows us to reassess the Palestine boomerang. It transports more than the techniques of colonial control: it circulates the rationale for putting Muslim populations, and those racialised as Muslim, to death. It carries the figure of the Muslim terrorist, the security logics that render Muslim political agency threatening, and the practices through which populations can be contained, abandoned or destroyed. How Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism were born together Read More » The Palestine boomerang is a necro-boomerang. We see related logics in Iran and Lebanon, as we have seen in Kashmir, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan. These are different political contexts with distinct histories. Yet across them, the racial figure of the terrorist has helped to render Muslim populations legible as security threats - and, in turn, as populations whose lives can be sacrificed in the name of security. The occupation of Palestine has helped to consolidate a global anti-Muslim necro-structure: an architecture of racial governance through which Muslim populations, and those racialised as Muslim, can be rendered disposable and exposed to premature death when politically necessary. This grim reality tells us what is at stake in the struggle against anti-Muslim racism: life itself. Our fight, in and beyond this month, is about securing the political, social and economic conditions in which life can flourish and be lived with dignity, and about resisting the conditions that expose populations to premature and mass death. It joins other struggles for the flourishing of communities similarly racialised and subjected to slow and immediate forms of death. The task ahead is not easy. It demands sustained, strategic and committed attention and action, particularly when our efforts appear futile, or when the struggle exacts personal, physical, financial or social costs. But our responsibility has never been to guarantee an outcome we may not live to see. It is to persist in the daily work of seeking justice. History is longer than the years of our lives. It will tell the story of this movement better than we can: with all its successes and failures, its advances and retreats, its wins and losses. The gauntlet is thrown. Who will take it up? The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.