Threatening movements
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What stood out to me the most in Heems' video was when the clips of Muslims praying appeared, at (2:12) and specifically men prostrating in prayer around (3:40) because it got me thinking about my own experiences of praying. It was contrasted with violent scenes of destruction. To prostrate in worship feels like one of the most vulnerable positions my body can be in, but to someone who has the power over a drone, a machine of harm and death, this very movement can appear as threatening. Though racism is often understood as discrimination by people due to skin color, a Muslim engaging in a foreign prayer movement from the perspective of a non-Muslim, the movement becomes a visible property to categorize all Muslims in the world. Praying, a fundamental act of worship in Islam becomes racialized because it is a visible marker of Muslim identity. This act of worship, when criminalized or deemed suspicious, reinforces the notion that Muslims as a group are threatening or deviant from Canadian/American/British society. It is important to note, that people who are engaging in a similar movement, without them being Muslim or praying, they too can be a target of an attack. As Junaid Ranada explains, the category of Muslims encompasses many nationalities, social, and cultural practices, and religious affiliations. This kind of grouping of minority groups into one single image of a people can be related to black people in the states who got killed by police forces when they were seen as a threat by a simple movement. Example: Officers say they mistook Stephon Clark’s cellphone for a gun when he showed his hands. https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/3/21/17149092/stephon-clark-police-shooting-sacramento
When Rana speaks of a Muslim being developed as geographically external, he means that prominent and visible cultural features are imposed on Muslims and non-Muslims even if it has nothing to do with what they practice and their culture. It is used to racialize and create a distinction between people who appear as different or strange, and those who follow a normative culture. Thus, Muslims are symbolically and politically positioned as outsiders, not just in a literal geographic sense, but in a more fragmented conceptual sense within Western discourse. It is also something that does not blend well with the Western world, even if someone is born in a Western region, because the way they act and dress remains connected to negative stereotypes such as terrorism, vulgarity, gender oppression, and as people who are unprogressive.