Surveillance intersects with and depends on both religious signifiers and gender in this process of racialization. Muslim men’s experiences differed from Muslim women’s, and Muslim women who wore the hijab were treated differently in airports than those who did not. The interviews in this book show how surveillance of Muslim bodies has become institutionalized via the state’s placement of innocent Muslim men on a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) list called the Secondary Security Screening Selection List. Muslim men on this list were informed that their names were similar to those of people on a government security list who posed a threat to national security and that they must go through additional security measures. Muslim women who wore the hijab were more likely to be routinely subjected to “random” stops and searches than Muslim women who did not wear the hijab; this public spectacle of being pulled out of the security line and having one’s body and belongings searched because one wears the hijab is another way that a Muslim identity is racialized as a threat to national security.

Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, loc. 157