Elamin’s story and those of other black Muslims were perpetually eclipsed by coverage of Arab and Iranian Muslims. Even the media’s well-intentioned and spirited efforts to bring to light Muslim victimhood perpetuated the private Islamophobic tenet that conflates Muslim identity with Arab or South Asian identity, evidencing just how entrenched and pervasive this tenet is. As we have seen, this erasure is rooted in American law, starting with enslaved African Muslims who worshipped while in bondage and continuing with the ignored and overlooked experiences of black Muslims detained and handcuffed.

XREF: Connects to broader patterns of how media homogenizes minority groups and erases internal diversity, similar to conflation of Asian American sub-ethnicities.

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Unde…, loc. 458