This experience highlights the contradiction in the dominant notion that Muslim men force their wives or kids to wear the hijab. In this example, Reema's husband desperately wanted to avoid any surveillance or negative interactions, so he tried to persuade his wife to remove her hijab. The fear that Muslim men felt from the state was real, and the attempt to control Reema's dress reflected the stark difference in how men responded to their surveillance compared to women. Muslim men did not express the desire to transform the narrative of Muslims through their actions. Instead, they wanted to make invisible their religious identity. Their participation in self-surveillance reveals how citizenship is racialized in America.

QUESTION: Why do Muslim men opt for invisibility while women bear the visible marker of faith? This gendered asymmetry in surveillance response deserves deeper exploration.

Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, loc. 438