Introduction

[My friends and I were] all sitting down on the computer, and we’re munching on a couple of snacks. The teacher never ever told us put away the snacks. And we’re sitting down on the computer and we were talking, I think.

Samira Khateeb, Palestinian American high school student. (Abu El-Haj 2015)

How can we understand the ways that a fairly routine conflict between US high school students and their teacher turned into a debate about national belonging? To what country did this teacher imagine these young women belonged, and what fantasies did he hold about the reigning “cultural” practices in that place? What does Samira’s response that “this is our country” tells us about young people’s bids for citizenship within the United States today? What does this interaction have to do with war?

Samira Khateeb’s story highlights the way that she and her peers were positioned as belonging to the “imaginative geographies” (Said 1978, p. 49) of the “Muslim world” - an indeterminate place putatively characterized by women’s oppression and men’s violence. Despite her claims to the United States as “our country,” this teacher refused to accept these young women as insiders who belong to the nation.

as members of “Other” places. These “Other” places have been painted in mono­chrome, rendering invisible the diverse and complex cultural, linguistic, ethnic, social, and historical contexts of the “Muslim world.” Moreover, these “Other” places have been imagined as geographies of enmity ruled by and breeding hostility to and aggression against the United States and other “Western” nations (Gregory

2004). Most important, framing its foreign policy around a “war on terror,” the United States imagined a diffuse enemy that could be lurking anywhere that Muslim people lived. The consequence for young people from Muslim-majority countries living in the United States (and other “Western” countries) has been that these geographies of enmity frame them as suspect members of these states. Within this post-9/11 context, young people from Muslim-majority countries and commu­nities have had to figure out how to position themselves in relation to these dominant American political discourses that see them as threatening outsiders to the national community.

Carving out a place for themselves as members of US society has been rendered particularly difficult by the black and white thinking that has characterized political discourse since 9/11. Immediately following September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush (2001) admonished the nation, “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”; this signaled the political climate within which many young people from Muslim-majority countries and communities have wrestled to give voice to the complex sense of belonging and citizenship developed within their (for many, transnational) communities. They have had to engage in a complex dance as they make bids for citizenship and belonging in the United States in the context of the “war on terror.” As this chapter shows, at some moments, such as the one described above by Samira, youth choose to call upon their status as insiders - as Americans - to demand fair treatment.

This chapter examines two key questions: How are children and youth posi­tioned in the US national imaginary by these imaginative geographies of war? In turn, how do they develop a sense of belonging and citizenship in this context of exclusion and war? An exploration of these questions illustrates the ways that violence, conflict, and war shape the lives of these young people from transnational Muslim communities both in active conflict zones but also in contexts of relative peace such as the United States. Many youth from Muslim transnational commu­nities living in the United States migrated in order to get away from violence and wars - violence and wars that have often been an outcome of US imperial policies. These experiences with war and violence shape young people's political perspec­tives, sense of belonging, and citizenship practices in ways that make them critical of the unfulfilled promises of US democratic ideals - ideals that are rarely realized at home or abroad. At the same time, within the US context, cultural and political discourses engendered by the “war on terror” frame everyday interactions that youth from Muslim-majority communities have in their schools and other public spaces - interactions that often position these young people as suspect or dangerous members of the nation. These exclusions represent the local fallout of a violent, imperial policy the United States is fighting far from its shores.

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