Black Muslim Refugee

Militarism, Policing, and Somali American Resistance to State Violence

Mohamed Abumaye, Maxamed Abumaye

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2025
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520976085
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology
• Index: Social Sciences

This multisited project, the first of its kind, exposes the links between US military violence abroad and police brutality at home through a profound exploration of Somali refugee lives. Black Muslim Refugee traces the globe-spanning journeys of these refugees, from civil war–era Somalia to the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya to their eventual arrival in San Diego, and Maxamed Abumaye analyzes their experiences through the dual lenses of anti-Blackness and Islamophobia. He situates their displacement within the larger context of East Africa's colonial history, as well as the policy consequences of the American-backed war on terror and war on drugs. Throughout, Abumaye's centering of Somali subjectivity underlines this community's critical and creative capacity to defy the mechanisms that seek to "manage" and ultimately control them.

Table of contents

• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. US Imperialism and Somali Refugees
• 2. The Carceral Refugee Camp
• 3. Confronting Anti-Black Racism: Militarized Policing in San Diego
• 4. Somali Refugees and the War on Terror
• Conclusion: Somali Refugee Youths and Black Freedom, Summer 2020
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index