Their Muslim identity set them apart from the nation's overwhelmingly Buddhist (90 percent) majority, and the Citizenship Law converted them into stateless beings at home. A small but visible minority comprising 4 percent of Myanmar's population before the violent crackdown of 2017 sliced those figures to even paltrier numbers, Rohingya have been called "illegitimate citizens" and "Bangladeshis" by the government, and after the War on Terror crept in, "terrorists"—that familiar indictment that Muslims all over the world have come to know.

DEFINE: Illuminates how the 'illegitimate citizens' and 'terrorists' labels function as mechanisms of legal identity stripping.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 660