Internal colonialism and social control in the Age of Terror: the FBI's war on Islamic charities following the September 11th Attacks of 2001

Abstract

Shortly after the September 11th attacks of 2001, the United States Government launched an effort to fight terrorism at home and abroad. In their domestic efforts they depended heavily upon the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to carry out their mission of shutting down potential terrorist supporters in the United States. The FBI especially targeted Islamic charities suspected of funding terrorism. I explore the efficacy of that strategy at both the level of law enforcement as initiated by the Treasury Department, the Justice Department and the FBI, and at the level of the courtroom where the prosecution attempts to complete the state's efforts by securing criminal convictions. While the stated goal of the U.S. government is to curtail funding for global terror, this thesis questions whether that manifest function is being accomplished by contemporary policy. Instead I argue that the present targeting of Islamic charities does little to reduce the threat of terrorism, but instead serves to provide therapeutic symbolic victories that also serve the latent functions of quelling political dissent with U.S. policy, maintaining a racial state, and preserving the primacy of U.S based global capital in the world economy. In addition, the thesis looks at how the prosecution of the nation's largest Islamic charity, The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, followed these themes, but unexpectedly ended in failure for the U.S. government's case which ended in mistrial.