El. knyga: No God but Man: On Race, Knowledge, and Terrorism

"Atiya Husain's No God but Man explores discourses around Muslims and racialization following the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing War on Terror. Husain uses the FBI's "most wanted" program, specifically the "most wanted terrorist" list, as an organizationalcenterpiece and public archive to understand constructions of race. Unlike other "most wanted" posters, descriptions on the "most wanted terrorist" list noticeably lack race as a category. In this way, Husain argues that the FBI considers these people, the majority whom are Muslim, as "raceless." Throughout the book, Husain utilizes an array of case studies, beginning with the work of Adolphe Quetelet, who was credited by former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover for the FBI's identification practices as well as the case of Assata Shakur, a former colleague of Malcom X and the only woman on the most wanted terrorist list. As a Black woman who was a Sunni Muslim in the 1970s, Shakur's case provides a unique scenario for Husain to explore how the FBI racializes both Muslims and Black Americans; and the creation of the most wanted terrorist list specifically and examines the "raceless" Muslim majority. No God but Man makes a bold intervention in the sociology of race, Black studies, and critical Muslim studies"--

Reconceptualizing the relationship between race and Islam in the United States, No God but Man theorizes race as an epistemology using the FBI’s post-9/11 Most Wanted Terrorist list and its posters as its starting point. Atiya Husain traces the origins of the FBI wanted poster form to the work of nineteenth-century social scientist Adolphe Quetelet, specifically his overvalued type of human called “average man.” Husain argues that this notion of the human continues to structure wanted posters, as well as much contemporary social scientific thinking about race. Focusing on the curious representations on the Most Wanted Terrorist list that range from Muslims who lack a race category on their posters to the 2013 addition of Black revolutionary Assata Shakur, Husain demonstrates the ongoing influence of the average man and its relevance even today, proposing a counterweight to the category by engaging Shakur’s turn to Islam in the 1970s in the legal context. In doing so, Husain shows the limitations of race as an analytical category altogether.

Atiya Husain reconceptualizes the relationship with Islam in the United States by theorizing race as an epistemology using the FBI’s post-9/11 Most Wanted Terrorist list and its posters as its starting point.