Punishing Violent Thoughts: Islamic Dissent and Thoreauvian Disobedience in Post-9/11 America

Gould, Rebecca Ruth

Abstract

American Muslims increasingly negotiate their relation to a government that is suspicious of Islam, yet which recognizes them as rights-bearing citizens, within a culture they claim as their own. To better understand how the post-9/11 state is reshaping American Islam, I examine the case of Muslim American dissident Tarek Mehanna, sentenced to seventeen years in prison in 2012 for providing material support for terrorism. I read Mehanna's verbal and visual depictions of his persecution in relation to the American dissidents Mehanna claims as intellectual predecessors, above all Henry David Thoreau and John Brown, while situating this dissent within a long history of American activism.

Citation

Gould, R. R. (2019). Punishing Violent Thoughts: Islamic Dissent and Thoreauvian Disobedience in Post-9/11 America. Journal of American Studies, 53(1), 146-171. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875817001426

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Dec 1, 2017
• Publication Date: Feb 1, 2019
• Deposit Date: Oct 11, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 17, 2023
• Journal: Journal of American Studies
• Print ISSN: 0021-8758
• Electronic ISSN: 1469-5154
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 53
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 146-171
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875817001426