Statistics show that Muslim Americans as a standalone faith group are comparatively poorer than the broader American polity, and according to a number of studies, poorer than any other faith group. This doesn’t just challenge the myth that Muslim Americans are overwhelmingly wealthy and upwardly mobile; it shatters it to pieces. And poverty for Muslim Americans comes with a range of other concerns and dangers, including those linked to how poverty enhances vulnerability to private backlash and state surveillance. The reality of pervasive poverty among Muslim Americans, particularly in immigrant-heavy communities, leads to their disproportionate targeting and victimization by war-on-terror policies, and, most frequently and furiously, CVE policing. It is trying to be poor in the United States, but exponentially more trying to be poor and victimized by the war on terror.

XREF: Connects to broader literature on how poverty compounds surveillance and policing vulnerability for marginalized communities.

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Unde…, loc. 389