The contemporary Muslim-American experience of freedom, surveillance, and suspicion reflects much of the long history of race, religion, and “difference” in American history. The fears harken back to nativist movements familiar in American history, most especially to the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s, which tried to ban Catholic immigration and perceived Catholics as a dire threat to the American Republic, just as some Americans perceive Muslims in the 2016 electoral cycle. Perhaps most importantly, it suggests the ways in which, for some Americans, “Muslim” elides categories of both race and religion, and stirs up deep-rooted American tropes of the bounds of racial and religious habitation.
The passing of Muhammad Ali calls to mind a period both of that surveillance and suspicion, but also a different era between Muslim-Americans and the evangelical establishment that seems to be waning. In 1979, Ali visited Billy Graham in Montreat, North Carolina, after which Graham declared that “Ali’s primary beliefs are something we could all believe.”
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