
The founding director of the interdisciplinary Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights, Aziz draws on her expertise in national security and civil rights to explore the history and current manifestations of Islamophobia in the U.S. She writes about the mechanisms targeting Muslim Americans, from surveillance to government watch lists to immigration restrictions, that have ramped up since 9/11. Her book also steps back to compare the plight of Muslims to other religious groups that have historically faced discrimination in America, such as Catholics, Mormons and Jews. The lawyer, whose family immigrated to the U.S. from Egypt when she was a child, was inspired by her own experiences to pursue a career confronting civil rights issues in the U.S. “I was indoctrinated by American schools into believing that America was special and these kinds of extreme civil rights violations didn’t happen here,” she says. “But when 9/11 happened, my entire community faced an existential crisis. We had our own human rights and civil rights problems here where we lived.”