How the War on Terror Was Fought at Home w/ Rozina Ali

Welcome back to None of the Above.

I'm your host, Jonathan Geyer.

It's been 25 years since the September 11th attacks, and the United States remains mired in the Middle East.

But the story of how the war on terrorism was fought at home is far less told, and it's the topic of Rosina Ali's deeply reported new book, Seasons of Fury, Four Families, and the Rise of Islamophobia in America.

She looks at the domestic history of anti-Muslim sentiment, how the United States expanded mass surveillance and counterterrorism programs to target Muslims, and how media narratives led Americans to view their Muslim neighbors with extreme suspicion.

It's an important conversation and an important book, and I'm thrilled to have Rosina with us.

Thank you for listening to None of the Above.

We hope you enjoy the conversation.

Rosina Ali, welcome to None of the Above.

Thank you so much for having me, Jonathan.

You say the war on terrorism never ended.

It's still happening.

And your new book, Seasons of Fury, really explores that through four families.

Can you give us a sense of who are these four families that you're bringing to the table here?

Yeah.

So there are four Muslim families in the United States.

And what I wanted to show through each of them is that Muslims in the U.S. are pretty diverse.

Yes.

They

are diverse ethnically and racially, but also in terms of income and their levels of faith and their relationships.

with the U.S. government.

And just to tell you a bit about each family, so one of the families is the Jabaras, and specifically Abedin Jabara, who was born in the United States in 1940 in a small town in Michigan.

And he became a political activist.

A

really well-known one.