“American Jihad:” Representations of Islam
in the United States after 9/11

Mucahit Bilici

Abstract

This paper looks at competing uses of the concept of jihad in
American society in the aftermath of 9/11. It examines three
alternative meanings given to “American Jihad.” Three of the
instances all have “American Jihad” as their title: a book by
Steven Emerson, a commencement speech by a Harvard stu-
dent, and an episode of NBC TV series “Law & Order.” All
three cases are acts of politics and moments of regulation of the
entry of the concept of jihad into cultural circulation.

Introduction
Jihad is one of the few Islamic concepts that the American public happens
to hear or read about on an almost daily basis. It has an obvious privilege
in appearing so frequently in the headlines.1 What makes the American pub-
lic’s encounter with jihad even more interesting is the fact that the relation-
ship between Islam and the United States is no longer one between two dis-
tinct parties, but rather a complex relationship between two partly overlap-
ping identities. The concept of jihad and the debates surrounding it emerge
as key to exploring the representation of Islam in the aftermath of 9/11.
What is jihad? Is it holy war or piety? Who defines jihad in the United
States?

In this paper, I discuss the representation of Islam in the United States
after 9/11. In the first part, I elaborate the process of globalization and the
consequences of 9/11 for Muslims in this country. In the second and main
part, I focus on the competing uses of jihad by highlighting the different

Mucahit Bilici is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.



forms that such popular phrases as “American Jihad” have taken in the pub-
lic discourse. Such forms of representation are not only ideological, but
also are contested by multiple actors of cultural production. My discussion
draws upon three recent claims to this concept, all of which have
“American Jihad” as their titles: a book by Steven Emerson, a 2002 com-
mencement speech made by a Harvard University senior, and an episode of
“Law & Order.” All three cases are political acts and instances of regulat-
ing the entry of jihad, as a concept, into cultural circulation.

Orientalism, Globalization, and Islam
To understand the structural forces that play important roles in the current
shape of (American) Muslims’ lives, it is helpful to recall the historical
background between Islam/Muslims and Europe. What is at stake here,
basically, is European colonialism and the Muslim responses to it. Here, I
make two arguments: First, one of the main Muslim responses to colo-
nialism and Orientalism was Muslim nationalism, which assumed two
forms: secular nationalism and religious nationalism,2 the latter of which
is perceived in the West as fundamentalism.3 Second, westernizing author-
itarian nation-states contained Muslim nationalism for several decades.
However, globalization has made this containment impossible to sustain.
Thus, both globalization and the rise of a Muslim diaspora have altered the
nature of the relationship between Islam and the West, both in Muslim
countries and in the West. Thanks to globalization, specifically media and
immigration, both the West and Islam are “at large.”4 The relationship
between Islam and the West now has an emerging new component:
Islam/Muslims in the West.

Early encounters between the European empires and the cultures of
Islam took myriad forms, among them peaceful cultural exchange, trade,
and military confrontation. This interaction later on assumed the form of
colonial domination. European colonialism and domination over most of the
world, including almost all Muslim societies, produced its ideological justi-
fication in the form of Orientalism.5 Thus, Orientalist scholarship developed
as a product of Europe’s imperial desire to know and dominate “others.” Not
surprisingly, it focused on the differences between Europe and the “others.”
Not only did it owe its emergence to this imperial desire, but it also adopted
the gaze of the imperial power to which it remained attached. 

As a result, the Orientalist way of looking at the Muslim “other” cre-
ated a world of binary oppositions in which the “other” was defined in

Bilici: “American Jihad” 51



terms of lack of or absence of something found in Europe. This dichoto-
mous portrayal of the Christian West and the Muslim East created a
Manichean mental map of civilization versus barbarism, the elements of
which are still being recycled in the populist speeches of such political
leaders as George W. Bush. This is the historical background of President
Bush’s half-conscious use of crusade in one of his early speeches after
9/11, and of the new-found popularity of the word jihad as part of the
media’s vocabulary of terrorism.

Even in the past, the relationship between imperial power and
Orientalist representation was not a matter of one-way representation, for
the very images and arguments it generated were put into practice as
objective/natural descriptions by both the colonial and the post-colonial
nation-states. An ideology of modernization through nation-states was
activated at a time when territorial colonization was dying.6 The overall
outcome of territorial colonialism and cultural modernization was author-
itarian nation-states and nationalism as an ideology. Colonialism,
Orientalism, and authoritarian westernization eventually paved the way
for the rise of indigenous nationalism. The nationalism of the victims, just
like that of the victimizers, could be cultivated and imagined on different
(and almost totally arbitrary) grounds, such as language, ethnicity, and
religion.7 Pre-globalization nation-states in the Muslim world attempted to
create insular national communities on the basis of ethnicity, culture-
language, and religion.

The response to colonialism in the Muslim world was, essentially,
nationalism ranging between two poles: secular nationalism, which at
times became self-colonization (e.g., Kemalism in Turkey) and Muslim
nationalism (e.g., contemporary Iran), which is mostly known as political
Islam or fundamentalism. The process of globalization has arguably
undermined self-colonizing nationalism while galvanizing Muslim
nationalism. Globalization and the rise of transnational public spheres
have significantly empowered social movements and ideologies that
bypass the nation-state by facilitating both subnational and supranational
flows.8

Globalization is primarily thought of in terms of economic forces by
both its proponents and opponents. The centrality of the economy in trig-
gering globalization cannot be denied.9 However, globalization has had
unintended cultural consequences, among them undermining authoritarian
nation-states by reducing their ability to control the flow of commodities,
ideas, and peoples across their borders.10 This development enabled

52 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 22:1



Muslims (as people) and Islam (as a cultural repertoire) to become mobile.
It also contributed to the dismantling of the ideology of modernization and
created sizable Muslim communities inside Euro-American societies.
Therefore, “covering Islam”11 is no longer an issue of covering “others” in
the Middle East. The question of representing Islam needs to be rethought
in light of the Muslim presence in American society.

What brought about this new configuration was the process of global-
ization, which arguably has had the following effects on Muslim commu-
nities: the emergence of post-colonial self-confidence for Muslims, which
mostly took the form of Muslim nationalism; de-nationalization (and de-
territorialization) due to increased contact with other Muslims, which
resulted in a post-nationalist religious identification (ummah); and unmedi-
ated, direct interaction with non-Muslim peoples and ideas, which con-
tributed to the democratization and multiculturalizaton of Muslims. 

Globalization not only blurred the distinction between domestic and
international politics, but also made the success or failure of certain domes-
tic (yet transnational) actors (i.e., American Muslims) contingent upon the
outcomes of Washington’s foreign policy choices. Muslim minorities living
in Europe and, more importantly, in the United States were becoming the
first contemporary Muslim groups to be exempt from the power structure
produced by American foreign policy. Although some of them might con-
sider their immigration the result of American foreign policy, once they were
inside the United States they enjoyed more freedoms. Once they were
outside the power structure that significantly inhibited the chances of
democracy in the Middle East, they could challenge existing claims about
the compatibility of Islam and democracy. Unfortunately, 9/11 and subse-
quent governmental arrangements related to homeland security (such as
Patriot Act I and Patriot Act II) have terminated this privileged status of
American Muslims vis-à-vis Muslims living under oppressive nation-states.

The impact of globalization transformed both diasporic and non-
diasporic Muslim communities, as well as the very framework of
Orientalism within which Islam had been perceived in Euro-American
societies. In classical Orientalism, the subject matter (viz., the Orient or
Islam) was geographically and spatially distinct from European geogra-
phies and cultures. But the subject matter and political object of neo-
Orientalism is no longer spatially distinct from Euro-America, for Islam is
no longer external to Europe and North America.12 This new component in
the matrix of relations between western and Muslim societies affects how
the Orientalist discourse operates.

Bilici: “American Jihad” 53



If the language of classical Orientalism was crusade, the language of
neo-Orientalism is one that battles the soul of Islam. Given that it can no
longer exclude and dismiss Islam in order to crush it, it now feels the need
to penetrate and redefine it. In other words, neo-Orientalism makes dis-
tinctions between good and bad Muslims or between Islam as a great reli-
gion and terrorism. More distinctions are made between good and bad
Islams than between the West and Islam.

American Muslims and the Politico-Cultural
Aftershocks of 9/11
In the last few decades, the once invisible and marginal religion of Islam
has emerged as the second largest religion in much of Europe and North
America. Islam and Muslims are no longer foreign to many western soci-
eties. The presence of Islam in the United States is an outcome of several
interacting processes, such as slavery, colonialism, cold war politics, the
economically driven process of globalization, and religious conversion.13

The bulk of Muslim immigration and mainstreamization in the United
States took place at the time of globalization and was partly a result of it.
This temporal location or moment of insertion into American society at
large is very important. Muslim immigrants settled in a de-territorialized 14
(and even an unstable) world in their host country. Therefore, their identity
has still not yet been accommodated fully, for further negotiations on this
identity remain partly suspended. Revolutionary transformations in com-
munication technology, as well as the unprecedented scale of interpenetra-
tion of domestic and international politics, continue to hinder the process of
cultural settlement by those emigrant communities that have left their
homelands. 

In the case of Muslims, the images and politics of their homelands
arrived either simultaneously with them or immediately after their own
arrival in their country of destination (i.e., United States). In other words, the
nature and impact of American foreign policy on the Muslim world and its
consequent coverage in the American media create an atmosphere of other-
ization, in which the Muslim community’s integration into the larger
American society is continuously threatened and undermined. Even when
American Muslims are legal citizens, they continue to be excluded from
“cultural citizenship.”15

The growth of the Muslim minority and its visibility in the religio-
demographic landscape of the United States reached its peak around the

54 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 22:1



2000s.16 Muslim participation in electoral politics became, as some have
argued, important during the 2000 presidential election, when leading
Muslim organizations decided to support George W. Bush’s candidacy. The
processes and tendencies of the American Muslim community’s institution-
alization and mainstreamization were profoundly disrupted as a result of the
9/11 terrorist attack. The combined effect of the ensuing changes in domes-
tic and international politics was the exclusion of Islam from the process of
globalization. 

The consequences of 9/11 on Muslims in the United States have been
dramatic. First and foremost, the decades-old media habit of associating
Islam with terrorism17 found its justification in the 9/11 attacks. Islam is
perceived to be an inherently violent religion and is approached from
within the reductionist framework of security. According to a Pew Forum
on Religion and Public Life survey, a declining number of Americans say
that their own religion has a lot in common with Islam: 22% now, as com-
pared with 27% in 2002, and 31% shortly after 9/11.18 This survey also
reveals that 44% of Americans now believe that Islam encourages violence
among its followers. Another study that looks at the immediate lexical
company of Islamic in American television discourse also gives interest-
ing results: The top three of the 15 most popularly used noun phrases
from the television transcripts corpus in which Islamic is used as an
adjective are Islamic fundamentalist(s), Islamic jihad, and Islamic world,
respectively.19

Groups and individuals who have a vested interest in demonizing Islam
and Muslims in the United States have also seized the opportunity to attack
Muslims and Islam. A phenomenon reminiscent of anti-Semitism, known
as Islamophobia, is emerging and finds expression in a multitude of ways
without being subjected to anti-discriminatory measures. In addition to a
large-scale loss of legitimacy for Muslims, there has been an erosion of
civil liberties at large.20 New administrative changes affecting the
Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS), as well as the interrogation
of Muslim immigrants by such security agencies as the FBI, undercut the
American Muslim community’s growing numbers and consolidation.

One theoretical aftershock of 9/11 has been the return of Orientalism as
a veteran body of perspectives on Islam and Muslims. Advocates of this
framework, among them Martin Kramer, have sought to popularize their cri-
tique not only of postcolonial theory, but also the entire discipline of Middle
Eastern studies in the country.21 Neo-Orientalism embraces a large spectrum
of participants from academia to the media.22 The neo-Orientalists fighting

Bilici: “American Jihad” 55



back are asking that Middle Eastern scholarship be subordinated to
American foreign policy interests and certain brands of American patrio-
tism.23 Even such veteran Orientalist scholars as Bernard Lewis have made
a return to the popular corners of the American public sphere, where he
explains “the crisis of Islam” or answers “what went wrong” with the
Muslims. According to Danny Fostel of The Chronicle of Higher Education,
the return of Orientalism has already found some echo among the new gen-
eration of academics.24

The return of Orientalism is currently taking place more in popular lit-
erature than in academic works. The shock and impact of 9/11 has created
fertile ground for the proliferation of what can be called “alarmist literature.”
This growing body of popular literature on Islam simply demonizes Islam
and Muslims. A representative sample of titles includes the following:
Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam (Modern Library: 2003) and What Went
Wrong (Perennial: 2003); Steven Emerson, American Jihad: The Terrorists
Living among Us (Free Press: 2003); Daniel Pipes, Militant Islam Reaches
America (W.W. Norton & Company: 2003); Robert Spencer, Islam
Unveiled: Disturbing Questions about the World’s Fastest Growing Religion
(Encounter Books: 2002); Serge Trifkovic, Sword of the Prophet (Regina
Orthodox Press: 2002); and Anonymous, The Terrorist Hunter (Ecco: 2003).
Among the best-known alarmist writers are journalist Steven Emerson and
Middle East analyst Daniel Pipes. There has been a vicious war of images
between such ideologically motivated critics of Muslims and the Muslim
advocacy groups within the United States. Such concepts as jihad are among
the most contested ones, and American Muslims feel a greater need to
reclaim their religion and identity more than ever before.25

In the next section, I show how different actors attempt to shape the
American public’s perception by defining jihad in the aftermath of 9/11. I
discuss three cases in which this concept was assigned meaning through
textual, audio, and visual interventions. 

But before discussing these instances of the use of jihad, I should note
a forth instance. As a matter of fact, this particular use precedes the other
three. The first book to bear the title of American Jihad was, in fact, written
by Steven Barboza,26 an African-American convert via the Nation of Islam.
The Lost and Found Nation of Islam in the Wilderness of America, also
known as the Black Muslims, was led by such African-American Muslim
leaders as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. The original
movement eventually converged with orthodox Sunni Islam under the lead-
ership of Warith Deen Muhammad, Elijah Muhammad’s son. Although the

56 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 22:1



non-orthodox version of the Nation of Islam has been reactivated and con-
tinues under the leadership of Louis Farrakhan, it remains a transit point for
African-Americans on their way to orthodox Sunni Islam. 

After becoming an orthodox Sunni Muslim, Barboza published a col-
lection of interviews with prominent indigenous American Muslims:
American Jihad: Islam after Malcolm X (Image: 1995). The temporal loca-
tion of this attempt to define American Jihad not only registers the subal-
tern and historical roots of jihad in indigenous American culture, but also
posits it within the context of the African-American experience, without
which American identity remains incomplete. The identification of African-
Americans with jihad, as a token of identity, is very interesting. As the fol-
lowing section shows, the contestation over the concept of jihad revolves
more viciously around what can be called immigrant uses of the concept.
In this ongoing struggle, it should be remembered that neither the voices
nor the powers that amplify them are equal.

American Jihad No. 1: “American Jihad:
The Terrorists Living among Us”
Steven Emerson is a well-known contributor to the growing alarmist liter-
ature on Islam and terrorism in the United States. His American Jihad: The
Terrorists Living among Us was published after 9/11, but the author him-
self has a longer history of “educating” the American public about “Islamic
terrorism.”

Emerson is an extremely controversial journalist. His critics include
members of the American Muslim community, which sees itself as the pri-
mary victim of his depiction of Muslims, as well as various independent
critics, civil rights groups, and interfaith organizations. He has been
accused of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias. His credibility has been seri-
ously damaged by his past unsubstantiated claims: that Muslims were
responsible for the bombing of Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building (1995)
and, along with Islamists, for the crash of TWA 800 (1996). In both cases,
he was later proven wrong. Despite his loss of credibility in American
mainstream media for several years, he returned to the public scene
stronger than ever after the 9/11 tragedy. He is the founder and director of
the “Investigative Project” (www.investigativeproject.net), a secret organi-
zation that investigates terrorist networks.

American Jihad is an updated version of the author’s 1994 documen-
tary, “Jihad in America.” Broadcast on PBS, it stirred a great deal of reaction

Bilici: “American Jihad” 57



from American Muslims. Since then, Emerson has become a household
name for many American Muslims and has been a frequent media resource
as a “terrorism expert.”

The introduction of American Jihad starts with horrifying images of a
Hamas commander speaking to an American Muslim crowd in the
American heartland, Kansas City, in 1989. The speaker and his audience cel-
ebrate the stabbing of people and blowing up of buses. Observing this gath-
ering, Emerson argues that Muslims harbor “the dream of a world under
Islam.”27 He enumerates various mostly unrelated Islamic organizations
throughout the world, and claims that terrorist groups are exploiting this
country’s civil liberties for terrorist causes. Discrete political, military, and
civil organizations, which Emerson identifies as Islamist, are collectively
seen as part of a “worldwide network of militant Islamic organizations”28 for,
according to him, “all share the same goal of an Islamic world”29 After crit-
icizing the FBI, the CIA, the INS, and other American security agencies for
not pursuing aggressive policies against Muslims in the United States,
Emerson claims the 9/11 attacks were carried out by this network. He con-
cludes that “it is a certainty that terrorists, already living among us, will con-
tinue to pursue their destructive agenda.”30 His certainty about terrorist
attacks seems to be unchanged both before and after 9/11. For example, in a
1997 interview, Emerson told Daniel Pipes that Americans should “get ready
for twenty World Trade Center bombings.”31

The entire book is an extended version of the ideas laid out in the
introduction. In several chapters, the author uses further illustrations,
expands his arguments, and provides more personal stories and observa-
tions to back up his claims about various individuals and organizations. It
does not even provide a discussion of jihad, a concept central to its argu-
ments. In fact, its prologue provides a caricature meaning of jihad as holy
war:

The jihad, the fighting, is obligatory on you wherever you can perform it.
And just as when you are in America you must fast – unless you are ill or
on a voyage – so, too, must you wage jihad. The word jihad means fight-
ing only, fighting with the sword.32

Quoting Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian fighter in Afghanistan, Emerson
immediately makes his preference about jihad’s potential meanings clear:
holy war against the West and violence against “Jews and infidels.”33

As a consequence of relying on such a simplistic and superficial defin-
ition, he ends up blaming all Muslims for militant Islam. The fact that he

58 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 22:1



makes a few disclaimers here and there, both in his documentary and in
American Jihad, does not salvage the overall picture he depicts. It is not sur-
prising that in one of the appendices, Emerson provides a list of Muslim
organizations that he considers terrorist support networks: CAIR (the
Council on American-Islamic Relations), MPAC (the Muslim Public Affairs
Council), AMC (the American Muslim Council), AMA (the American
Muslim Alliance), ISNA (the Islamic Society of North America), ICNA (the
Islamic Circle of North America), and many other mainstream American
Muslim organizations. Of course, the problem here is that almost no organi-
zations are left off this list, except for a few individuals who the author con-
siders to be non-extremists.

An overall evaluation of Emerson’s American Jihad reveals that the
author tries to set an alarmist mood in order to hide a series of otherwise
questionable claims. Emerson is reluctant to warn Americans that not all
Muslims are terrorists. Rather, he seems to prefer leaving his readers with
the impression that Muslim immigrants are potential terrorists simply
because they are Muslim. He also fails to acknowledge the presence of
approximately 6 million American Muslims, whose religion and identity is
in question in this particular book. By neglecting and hiding this fact,
Emerson presents a picture of Islam as a “foreign” and “terrorist” ideology
that has penetrated American society. He makes no distinction (if not actu-
ally erasing existing ones) between the civil and religious rights of millions
of American Muslims.

Having entered into this discussion by positing Islam as a foreign and
simultaneously terrorist ideology, he provides an exaggerated picture of
claims that might have been made by Muslims (including terrorist
Muslims). Emerson seeks to create an impression in which those militants
who are informed and motivated by Islam want to dominate the entire
world. The book depicts any identification with Islam as a threat to every-
body, non-Muslims and Muslims alike, independent of time and space. In
other words, Islam as a religion cannot coexist with other faiths, for it will
always work to impose itself on them. 

Emerson’s account is a deliberate conflation of different social, politi-
cal, and military movements, given that he presents them as one and the
same. Such movements include anti-colonial independence movements,
legitimate resistance against occupation, democratic political movements,
and, finally, “terrorist” groups. He also insists on erasing borders between
different categories. This becomes obvious in his account of Muslims in the
Middle East and those in the United States, as he makes no distinction

Bilici: “American Jihad” 59



between Middle Eastern Muslims and American Muslims who are
American citizens. In addition, he is reluctant to distinguish between legit-
imate civil societal movements and armed groups, as well as between Israel
and the United States.

Emerson’s book proffers simplistic categories, such as “the West” and
“infidels and Jews.” By using such ill-defined, ambiguous categories as
“the West” and “civilization,” the author achieves two goals: classifying
and hiding Israel under the rubric of the West, and presenting all speeches
and activities against Israel as being against the United States as well. Anti-
Israeli speeches by Palestinians, in which the negative connotation of Jews
(which, in the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, is likely to refer to
Israelis) are presented as anti-Semitic statements.34 By simply taking such
words out of their context, Emerson manages to depict anti-Israeli state-
ments as both anti-Semitic and anti-American.35

In a similar vein, Emerson deliberately leaves the Arabic word for God
(Allah) untranslated, so that American audience will consider the Muslims’
concept of God as one that diverges from its Judeo-Christian meanings. The
terror associated with jihad is also further highlighted through such phrases
as holy jihad 36 and militant jihad.37 This usage is awkward for a book that
sees jihad as a holy war. Yet, it reveals the author’s desire to depict jihad in
the worst possible terms.

Emerson’s American Jihad, a polemical book with obscure sources and
unsubstantiated assertions, strives to disseminate alarm and fear. It also,
arguably, smuggles the Israeli agenda into American public opinion by link-
ing al-Qaeda with Palestinian organizations and showing the American
Muslim community as dominantly radical. The book uses Israeli intelli-
gence38 as its main source of information, makes dramatic generalizations,
and gives no room to mainstream American Muslim voices in order to depict
all American Muslims as potential terrorists. His apparent super-patriotism
appears to be a strategic choice concealing a different agenda. 

One of the few individuals who have the lion’s share of shaping
American popular culture’s portrayal of jihad, Emerson has exploited the
fears generated by 9/11 so skillfully that he bas become a main actor in the
cultural production of jihad and in shaping American public perception of
(American) Muslims. Depicting jihad as holy war and terrorism against
Americans by strange, fundamentalist Muslims, however, does not remain
unchallenged. The story of Zayed Yasin, a Muslim student at Harvard, is an
example of a counter-representation. It turns out that jihad means quite dif-
ferent things to both individuals.

60 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 22:1



American Jihad No. 2: “Of Faith and Citizenship:
My American Jihad”
Zayed Yasin, 22, was one of the three students who made commencement
speeches at Harvard on June 6, 2002. When the title of his speech,
“American Jihad,” appeared on the list of speakers in The Harvard
Crimson, a group of students protested and called upon him to make an
explicit condemnation of violent jihad. A petition signed by his fellow
students asked the university administration to withdraw his speech.
Some compared his not-yet-made speech to a KKK speech. He was asked
to condemn suicide bombers. What was interesting, however, was that all
of this occurred before he had even delivered his speech. He received
hundreds of hate e-mails as well as a death threat, was called a terrorist
sympathizer, and was accused of supporting the Holy Land Foundation.
In the meantime, experts and community leaders discussed the meaning
of jihad.

The controversy spread throughout the campus and was soon picked up
by national papers and wire services. Under tremendous pressure from his
critics and part of the university administration, Yasin agreed to change the
title of his speech from “American Jihad” to “Of Faith and Citizenship,”
with the subtitle “My American Jihad.” He also agreed to make references
to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He told a reporter:

I am confronted with the assumption that because of my name I came
from some other country, that I’m a foreign student, that I’m not
American or, if I am American, that I’m not as good an American or as
true an American or as trustworthy an American as someone named Joe
Smith, and that’s something that is ... that I resent very much.39

The Washington Times also published a story about the controversy.40
During graduation day ceremonies, Yasin’s opponents distributed red,
white, and blue ribbons to protest the speech. Yasin, considering this a “dis-
honest abuse of patriotism,”41 responded to the implied statement that he
was un-American and unpatriotic, by pinning one of these ribbons on his
academic gown. Yasin eventually made his speech. He started by dis-
cussing his personal experience as a Muslim and as an American: 

I am one of you, but I am also one of “them.” What do I mean? When I
am told that this is a world at war, a war between the great civilizations
and religions of the earth, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. “What
about me?” I ask. As a practicing Muslim and a registered voter in the

Bilici: “American Jihad” 61



Commonwealth of Massachusetts, am I, through the combination of my
faith and my citizenship, an inherent contradiction? 

I think not. Both the Qur’an and the Constitution teach ideals of peace,
justice and compassion, ideals that command my love and my belief.
Each of these texts, one the heart of my religion the other that of my coun-
try, demand a constant struggle to do what is right.42

After affirming the compatibility between an American identity and a
Muslim identity, or, in his own words, between his faith and his citizenship,
Yasin discussed the meaning of jihad in an attempt to draw attention to
what he sees as its primary meaning:

I choose the word “struggle” very deliberately, for its connotations of
turmoil and tribulation, both internal and external. The word for struggle
in Arabic, in the language of my faith, is jihad. It is a word that has been
corrupted and misinterpreted, both by those who do and do not claim to
be Muslims, and we saw last fall, to our great national and personal loss,
the results of this corruption. Jihad, in its truest and purest form, the form
to which all Muslims aspire, is the determination to do right, to do justice
even against your own interests. It is an individual struggle for personal
moral behavior. Especially today, it is a struggle that exists on many lev-
els: self-purification and awareness, public service and social justice. On
a global scale, it is a struggle involving people of all ages, colors, and
creeds, for control of the Big Decisions: not only who controls what piece
of land, but more importantly who gets medicine, who can eat … So
where is our jihad, where is our struggle as we move on from Harvard’s
sheltering walls?43

By raising this alternative meaning, Yasin not only made the concept
familiar for non-Muslims, but also translated it into universal terms. Jihad
as the determination to do right and do justice, and as an individual strug-
gle for personal moral behavior, is something that any American citizen
would support. Starting from his personal experience, he attempted to
establish a link between jihad and the American dream. In the face of oth-
erization and foreignization, he reappropriated the American dream and
reclaimed the concept of jihad.44 He redeployed the concepts of jihad and
the American dream in relation to each other, and, in so doing, contributed
to the cultural reproduction of both concepts. “My opponents tried to sepa-
rate me from America. I wanted to give the opposite message: the har-
mony of values,”45 he says:

62 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 22:1



The true American Dream is a universal dream, and it is more than a set of
materialistic aspirations. It is the power and opportunity to shape one’s
own life: to house and feed a family, with security and dignity, and to prac-
tice your faith in peace. This is our American Struggle, our American
Jihad. 

As a Muslim, and as an American, I am commanded to stand up for the
protection of life and liberty, to serve the poor and the weak, to celebrate
the diversity of humankind. There is no contradiction. Not for me, and not
for anyone, of any combination of faith, culture and nationality, who
believes in a community of the human spirit.46

Ignited by a news story about Yasin’s speech in The Harvard Crimson,
debate over the concept of jihad took on a life of its own. Such critics as
Daniel Pipes and representatives of the Muslim community appeared on
television to discuss exactly what jihad means. Pipes compared “My
American Jihad” to “My American Kampf” in a talk he delivered at
Hamilton College.47 On “Nightline,” he insisted that jihad means holy war
and that it has to be accompanied by an explanation of its bloody history
and condemnation of terrorism. When asked by Maher Hathout, spokesman
of the Islamic Center of Southern California, why his own interpretation
should be used as the only definition, Pipes replied: “Harvard needs to
decide which side it is on in the war on terror.”48

Pipes’ often vulgar criticism of academics of Islamic studies in the
United States is known, thanks to his website www.campus-watch.org,
where he keeps dossiers on professors who are not sympathetic to his
agenda. In an article entitled “Jihad and the Professors,” he criticized the
alternative meaning raised by Yasin and most of the scholars of Islam:

The truth is that anyone seeking guidance on the all-important Islamic
concept of jihad would get almost identical instruction from members of
the professoriate across the United States. As I discovered through an
examination of media statements by such university-based specialists,
they tend to portray the phenomenon of jihad in a remarkably similar
fashion – only, the portrait happens to be false.49

According to Pipes “it is bin Laden, Islamic Jihad, and the jihadists
worldwide who define the term, not a covey of academic apologists. More
importantly, the way the jihadists understand the term is in keeping with its
usage through fourteen centuries of Islamic history.”50 He concluded that,
in jihad “the goal is boldly offensive, and its ultimate intent is nothing less

Bilici: “American Jihad” 63



than to achieve Muslim dominion over the entire world.”51 The result of lis-
tening to other meanings, he argued, was to “becloud reality, obstructing
the possibility of achieving a clear, honest understanding of what and
whom we are fighting, and why.”52

Emerson and Pipes not only describe jihad’s meaning in their own
ways, but are actually trying to define it. As long as jihad remains defined
as holy war, all Muslims will be suspected of terrorism, because jihad is an
undeniable part of their religion. If Emerson and Pipes are providing a par-
ticular content for the concept of jihad to the American public, Yasin is
unmaking that particular meaning. What seems to be taking place is a war
of words. Emerson’s hegemonic definition is resisted by Yasin’s counter-
definition. 

But according to ABC reporter Gillian Findlay, the problem “was not
how Muslims define jihad but how Americans choose to understand it.”53
How do Americans understand jihad? What is the culture and imagination
associated with jihad in the minds of the American public? Of course, we
do not have any surveys specifically designed to elicit answers to such
questions. Nor are Americans constantly airing their understanding of jihad.
However, one way to determine the popular image of jihad is to look at how
it is used in popular culture, especially in film and television. Therefore, in
the next section I look at an episode of popular American television show,
“Law & Order,” which had the same title: “American Jihad.”

American Jihad No. 3: “Law & Order: American Jihad”
In one episode of NBC’s “Law & Order: American Jihad,” viewers
watched a homicide story, according to the commercial, in which the “per-
version of religion and politics results in double homicide.”54 The story
starts with the discovery of the corpses of professors Hugh and Louise
Murdoch, who are shot dead in their apartment. Detectives Briscoe and
Green try to determine if Hugh Murdoch’s controversial work in stem-cell
research could have motivated a religious zealot to commit the murders. 

But it soon becomes apparent that it was Louise Murdoch’s volunteer
work of raising money and awareness for women’s issues in the Middle
East that attracted Greg Landen’s attention. This troubled young man is a
white American Muslim convert who also uses the name Mousah Salim.
District attorneys McCoy and Southerlyn attempt to decipher Landen’s
interpretation of Islam, which they believe might have led him to take
extreme measures to exercise his own personal demons. The typical

64 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 22:1



ambivalence that surrounds the story is not completely resolved. Also, the
show does not clarify what Landen’s real motives were: religious zeal or
personal/sexual problems. 

The possible explanations offered to the episode’s viewers do not help
Islam’s image as a religion. One implication is that Landen converted to
Islam, a religion that allegedly considers men superior to women, but com-
mitted the crime because of his misogyny. The other implication is that he
became Muslim and, because of his extreme Islamic beliefs, committed the
crime. Apparently, both implications are negative for Islam. The show ends
without giving the exact answer. This ambivalence arguably reflects two
conflicting pressures: the political correctness that supposedly regulates the
representation of different religions on the screen, and the popular image of
Islam as a violence-inducing religion. Tied in with this latter element is the
tendency to see converts out of Christianity as having certain pathologies,
as in the case of John Walker Lindh, the media-christened American
Taliban. 

The impact of this episode can be traced in different ways. For one, I
tried to find online comments and reactions to the episode. One viewer, for
example, inquired about the real plot and wondered if it was a gender crisis: 

Okay, I need all of your help ... my sister and I are having this debate
about the newest episode “American Jihad” ... She is convinced that the
Muslim guy was in fact a hermaphrodite ... which was why he turned to
fanatical Islam, why he had the issues with women and his parents, etc. I
am not convinced.55

In response to her inquiry, another viewer wrote that he did not “think
it was anything as exotic as that.” But “I think,” he said, “it was just that the
girl had scorned him (broke up, laughed at his sexual inadequacies what-
ever) and his young male ego collapsed and he turned to Islam for he felt
[that] was the only place he could have power over her.”56 Another viewer’s
comment derived similar conclusions about the American Muslim convert,
“… he’s really just a guy who can’t get it together with women, so he joined
a religion that put him in a superior position to them.”57

The episode’s narrative makes several interventions: Conversion to
Islam by white Americans is associated with certain pathologies, the title
seems to have been given in relation to the murders (in other words, con-
version to Islam and violence intersect in the image of jihad), the Islamic
concept of jihad is violent, and Islam considers women to be inferior to
men. Jihad, a concept expressed by a foreign word and associated with

Bilici: “American Jihad” 65



Islam, enters into American life in the form of deviance/pathology. The
story responds to the dominant image of Islam as a misogynistic religion.
Even when the potential equation between Islam and violence is not fully
acknowledged, Islam’s presumed misogyny finds clear expression.

In that sense, it is interesting that despite the employment of stereo-
typical negative images about Islam, the producers chose not to make a bold
argument about jihad. Jihad, like many other words and more than any other
Islamic word, lends itself to competing interpretations. Islam is acquitted
from the guilt of murder, but suffers from the accusation of misogyny in this
particular episode.

Conclusion
The representations of Islam in the United States after 9/11 tend to be pre-
dominantly negative. There is, however, a more open public discourse
geared toward understanding Islam, for this religion, as well as its related
concepts, are increasingly becoming everyday themes and terms. The
encounter between American society and Islam as a global religion creates
both tensions and promises. This unprecedented encounter places a tremen-
dous burden on the shoulders of the American Muslim community. In
response to this historical challenge, American Muslims are increasingly
engaged in communicating what they believe to be Islam’s peaceful face to
the larger American public. The work that such a challenge produces is the
subject of another study. Nevertheless, it is clear that Muslims must become
far more engaged in representing themselves through advocacy work as well
as various counter-hegemonic practices.

This account of the concept of jihad is symptomatic of the challenges
that American Muslims face. The Americanization of Muslims living in the
United States can derive lessons from the trajectory of jihad. Jihad can be
a foreign word associated with terrorism, or it can become a familiar word/
phrase like freedom and struggle for justice. It also can take its part in the
make-up of the American dream. Negotiation and contestation over this
concept highlights the ongoing process of establishing American Muslims
as a mainstream community. The three case studies presented above illus-
trate the contestation over defining Islam and the varying levels of inte-
grating Muslims into American society. 

The ultimate meaning that jihad will take in the minds of the American
public is something that will be decided by the cultural politics of this coun-
try, which feature such actors as the Muslim activist Zayed Yasin as well as

66 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 22:1



such neo-Orientalists as Daniel Pipes. This interplay is implicated by the
domestic politics of integrating a contested immigrant community as well
as American foreign policy. The interaction between the two not only
brings to the table more complexity, but also subjects the fate of American
Muslims to developments beyond their immediate environment.

Endnotes

1. For a recent example, see “Va. ‘Jihad’ Suspects: 11 Men, Two Views,” The
Washington Post, 8 August 2003.

2. Mark Juergensmeyer has a new take on the concept. See his The New Cold
War? Religious Nationalism Confronts Secular State (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1993).

3. Bruce Lawrence provides an eloquent discussion of religious fundamen-
talism and various postcolonial Muslim reactions in his Shattering the
Myth: Islam beyond Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1998). 

4. For a discussion of globalization in relation to culture and modernity, see
Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).

5. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Penguin Books, 1978).
6. Among other theorists of modernization, see Daniel Lerner, The Passing of

Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (New York: Free Press,
1964) and W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Development (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1960).

7. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).

8. John Guidry, Michael D. Kennedy, and Mayer Zald (eds.), Globalizations
and Social Movements: Culture, Power, and the Transnational Public Sphere
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 1-32.

9. James Mittelman, The Globalization Syndrome: Transformation and
Resistance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 15.

10. Mike Featherstone, Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism, and
Identity (London: Sage, 1995); John Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

11. Edward Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine
How We See the Rest of the World (New York: Vintage, 1981). 

12. For the emergence of European Islam, see Nezar AlSayyad and Manuel
Castells, Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam: Politics, Culture, and Citizenship in
the Age of Globalization (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002).

13. Sulayman Nyang, Islam in the United States of America (Chicago: ABC
International Group Inc., 1999).

Bilici: “American Jihad” 67



14. Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press,
1990) and Tomlinson, Globalization and Cuture, 106.

15. For the concept of “cultural citizenship,” see Aihwa Ong, “Cultural
Citizenship as Subject-Making: Immigrants Negotiate the Cultural Boundaries
in the United States,” Current Anthropology 37, no. 5 (1996): 737.

16. Yvonne Y. Haddad (ed.), Muslims in the West: From Sojourners to Citizens
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

17. See, for example, Jack G. Shahen, Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American
Popular Culture (Washington, DC: Center for Muslim-Christian Under-
standing, Georgetown University, 1997).

18. Religion and Politics: Contention and Consensus, The Pew Research Center
for The People & The Press, Washington DC, July 24, 2003.

19. Patrick Martin and Sean Phelan, “Representing Islam in the Wake of
September 11: A Comparison of US Television and CNN Online Message-
board Discourses,” Prometheus 20, no. 3 (2002).

20. For more information, see CAIR’s annual report, Guilt by Association, Civil
Rights Report 2003 Council on American-Islamic Relations, Washington,
DC, July 2003.

21. Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies
in America (Washington DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy,
2001).

22. Kristine McNeil, “The War on Academic Freedom,” The Nation, 25
November 2002.

23. Daniel Pipes’ CampusWatch.org is also part of this campaign. 
24. Danny Fostel, “Islamic Studies’ Young Turks,” The Chronicle of Higher

Education, 13 September 2002.
25. See, for example, Michael Wolfe, Taking Back Islam: American Muslims

Reclaim Their Faith (Rodale & Beliefnet Inc., 2002)
26. Steven Barboza, American Jihad: Islam after Malcolm X (New York:

Doubleday, 1993).
27. Steven Emerson, American Jihad: The Terrorists Living among Us (New

York: Free Press: 2003), 2.
28. Ibid., 3.
29. Ibid., 2.
30. Ibid., 3.
31. Daniel Pipes, “Steven Emerson: Get Ready for Twenty World Trade Center

Bombings,” Middle East Quarterly, June 1997.
32. Emerson, American Jihad, iii.
33. Ibid., 6.
34. Ibid., 190.
35. Ibid., 200.
36. Ibid., 48.
37. Ibid., 186.

68 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 22:1



38. Ibid., 80, 85, 89, 93, and 115.
39. Dave Marash, “War of Words: Harvard Senior Wants to Reclaim the Word

Jihad,” ABC News, June 5, 2002.
40. Pamela Ferdinand, “At Harvard, Jousting Over ‘Jihad,’” The Washington

Post, 31 May 2002.
41. Author’s interview with Zayed Yasin, August 22, 2003.
42. The entire speech is available online as of August 2003 at www.people.fas.

harvard.edu/~yasin/speech.html.
43. For a similar invocation of the American Dream by young American Muslims,

see Suhail Khan “Defending the American Dream,” The Washington Post, 26
February 2003.

44. Author’s interview with Zayed Yasin.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
47. Jonathan Rick, “Daniel Pipes Visits Hamilton College,” Capitalism Magazine,

31 March 2003.
48. Nightline, June 4, 2002.
49. Daniel Pipes, “Jihad and the Professors,” Commentary, November 2002.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.
53. Gillian Findlay, “Loaded Word,” ABC News, June 5, 2002.
54. Law & Order: “American Jihad,” Season 13, Episode 278, NBC, October

2002.
55. www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/RawServlet/showid-180/epid-178750/mod-

uleid-34 (August 2003).
56. Ibid.
57. www.entertainment-geekly.com/web/general/oct2002/LawOrder_Oct3

(August 2003).

Bilici: “American Jihad” 69