Sahar Aziz - Author, Professor, and Advocate

What Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Nomination Means for Higher Ed [Diverse]

If Jackson becomes a Supreme Court Justice, the ideological balance of the Court would not change. The current 6-3 conservative-majority would still be in place. However, there would be other firsts. Jackson would be one of four female Justices, three of whom would have been nominated by Democratic presidents. Sahar Aziz, who is also the author of The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom, noted that a Black woman joining the Supreme Court is of particular consequence. “While all judges commit to and should perform their roles in an… Continue reading

The U.S. census sees Middle Eastern and North African people as white. Many don’t [NPR]

The complicated relationship many people with MENA origins have with whiteness is entangled with a naturalization system in the U.S. that, until 1952, imposed racial restrictions on which immigrants could become citizens. First arriving in large numbers in the late 1800s, the earliest generations of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa saw whiteness as the path towards claiming full rights in their new country. There were several court cases where Syrian immigrants emphasized their Christianity because it was considered a European religion and, therefore, a marker of whiteness,… Continue reading

US Muslims react to Biden’s nomination of first Muslim woman to be federal judge [Middle East Eye]

“Nusrat Choudhury is representative of plaintiffs who bring civil rights cases. She tends to sue the government, advocating against national security policies and practices. And that is quite different in terms of how she has worked with the law and has worked to ensure that the law provides equal protection to everyone.” One-sided view Government lawyers and former lawyers for large companies are highly overrepresented in the judiciary, she explained, which has caused significant concern within the legal profession that the judiciary has a one-sided view of the efficacy of… Continue reading

The Hypocrisy of American Islamophobia [The Nation]

Consider now the treatment that the very same agencies offered distinctly inoffensive Muslim Americans. Rutgers law professor Sahar Aziz has argued that many white Americans see Muslims not merely as a religious group but as a racial one and have placed them on the nethermost rung of this country’s ethnic hierarchy. Muslim Americans are regularly, for instance, profiled at airports and subjected to long interrogations. Over many years, the New York City Police Department gathered intelligence on more than 250 mosques and student groups. The FBI even put field officers in mosques… Continue reading

The Troubling Consequences of Seeing Muslims as a Racial Group [TIME Magazine]

Sahar Aziz spoke with TIME Magazine about the historical roots of Islamophobia in the U.S., the effects of viewing Muslims as a “suspect race” and the significance of the hateful comments recently made by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota). TIME: There’s an interesting dichotomy you repeatedly describe in the book—that the same people defending religious freedoms for Christians also support violating the civil rights of Muslims through policies that discriminate against them, like intrusive surveillance measures and the ‘Muslim ban.’ You also write about how the… Continue reading

‘The Longest Shadow’: 9/11 Leads to the Militarization of US Police Departments [ABCNews]

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, a wariness of Muslims swept the country. Hate crimes against Muslims skyrocketed. Mosques became inundated with threats. “Anything that showed that you were an Arab or a Muslim caused everyone to be suspicious of you,” said Sahar Aziz, director of the Center for Security, Race and Rights at Rutgers University Law School. In response to the terror attacks, police departments in some major cities compiled vast databases of alleged potential terrorists and undertook ambitious surveillance missions targeting Muslim communities. “You had massive surveillance programs… Continue reading

How 9/11 Changed American Muslims’ Relationship with Religious Freedom [Deseret News]

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, changed the course of Sahar Aziz’s career. Before the planes crashed and the buildings collapsed, she’d planned to finish law school and move to the Middle East to do pro-democracy work. After, she still wanted to be a lawyer, but she set her sights on civil rights work much closer to home. For Aziz and many other Muslims, 9/11 was a wake-up call about not just the fragility of life, but also the fragility of America’s constitutional protections. In the months and years… Continue reading

They Got Away With a Gang Rape They Captured on Video. Then Came Instagram. [VICE]

Over the last two months, there’s been a seismic shift in the way Egyptians talk about sex, namely how it’s weaponized against women. In the past, incidents of sexual violence in Egypt would go unreported; the victims who did come forward were typically blamed or encouraged to let it go because of the humiliation its disclosure would cause the accused’s family or their own. But that started to shift abruptly this summer. In late June, an anonymous Instagram account called @assaultpolice began collecting testimonies about and screenshots of conversations with… Continue reading

Trump has threatened to declare a national emergency to build a wall. Is that legal? [PBS Newshour]

Emergency powers are usually used to address political crises in other nations such as the systemic violation of human rights, war, or a serious threat of abuse of weapons of mass destruction or nuclear weapons, said Sahar F. Aziz, director of the Center for Security, Race and Rights at Rutgers Law School in an email to PBS NewsHour. For example, Aziz said, emergency powers were invoked in response to opposition to stabilization efforts in the Balkans in 1997 and the wars in Syria and Yemen in 2012. The president doesn’t… Continue reading

The Entrenched Effects of Misconduct in the Restaurant Industry [The Atlantic]

Tip-based wages leave employees—especially women, who report the majority of incidents—vulnerable to the whims of both management and customers alike. Pushing back against harassment, even by simply reporting it, often means risking retaliation that can include lower tips or industry-wide blackballing. “And those who do the harassment know that,” Sahar Aziz, a Rutgers University law professor who took part in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace, told BuzzFeed News. Many restaurant employees lack the status, prestige, and financial safety… Continue reading

Author | Professor | Advocate

Category: Press Mentions