While this critique is not designed to detract from the overall contribution of Adida, Laitin, and Valfort’s book, I still am quite uneasy about policy recommendations that have to do with the “concealment” of one’s identity. Hate crimes and discrimination against minority populations need to be addressed by taking a serious and holistic look at the institutions (both formal and informal) within majority populations that help sustain these discriminatory equilibria. Concealment or “passing” strategies might advantage those segments of the Muslim population that have the necessary endowments to “pass” (no accents, males, better education, better resources, etc.). By countering one dominant form of discrimination with the perpetuation of other plausibly inequitable solutions is debatably controversial.

Fifty Muslims were just gunned down in two mosques in New Zealand (March 2019). We don’t know whether many of the Muslim victims had changed their names or not. They were targeted because they were in a Muslim gathering place. If a strategy of “concealment” is pursued, then we would lay blame on the victims for attending an apparently identifiable Muslim institution. Perhaps the mosque should not be openly identifiable? Perhaps Muslims should not gather together as Muslims? And certainly Islamic schools should not exist either? Once we go down the list of concealment strategies to “hide” Muslims, we have in essence capitulated to the extreme tendencies that wish to erase Muslims from the “West.”

To be fair to Adida, Laitin, and Valfort, they would like to see a lessening of the burden of discrimination that Muslims shoulder. I worry, though, that concealment strategies are at best a divergence and at worst an exacerbating factor underlying this very unhealthy equilibrium.