Blind Submission

Abstract

Muslims in the West are under pressure to perform nationalism and hegemonic gender ideology to neutralize themselves as threats. This has triggered a series of “blindfolded hug” viral videos that show individual Muslim males standing blindfolded in a busy street asking for hugs from passersby who “agree” that they are not a danger to society. In this article, I examine 51 such videos and argue that the visual of a minority male made abject reifies state might while building an aesthetic of peacefulness that Western Muslims are compelled to demonstrate. Such an aesthetic relies on the rhetorics of disability, the affective circulation of hate, and the stripping off of oppositional gazing to be read legibly by White audiences.