Extensively researched and grounded in abolitionist politics, Terrorism on Trial: Political Violence and Abolitionist Futures by Nicole Nguyen illuminates how domestic US courts support and contest the global war on terror. By centering the figure of the terrorist, Nguyen outlines the discursive and juridical processes by which concepts such as terrorism pathologize Muslims as exceptionally and inherently prone to violence while simultaneously occluding the material conditions engendering violent resistance (21–23, 26–28, 35–36). Rather than locate the emergence of Muslims in US political imaginaries and legal discourses in moments such as 9/11, this study places terrorism trials in the longue durée of legal race-making such as the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century naturalization/citizenship trials (145–153, 326–328). Likewise, Nguyen incorporates Black and Indigenous perspectives to decenter “the Muslim” as the essential terrorist, recognizing that anti-Black and anti-Indigenous suppression mutually constitute structural Islamophobia (27–33, 56–57). This conceptual framing indexes the relational yet incommensurate ties...
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Spring 2024
Book Review|
April 01 2024
Review: Terrorism on Trial: Political Violence and Abolitionist Futures, by Nicole Nguyen
Nicole Nguyen.
Terrorism on Trial: Political Violence and Abolitionist Futures
. Minneapolis
: University of Minnesota Press
, 2023
, 424 pp. Paperback $30.00. ISBN: 978-1-5179-1439-4.
Muhammad Yousuf
Muhammad Yousuf
University of California, San Diego
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Ethnic Studies Review (2024) 47 (1): 147–150.
Citation
Muhammad Yousuf; Review: Terrorism on Trial: Political Violence and Abolitionist Futures, by Nicole Nguyen. Ethnic Studies Review 1 April 2024; 47 (1): 147–150. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/esr.2024.47.1.147
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