RT Article T1 Introduction: On Police Violence and Systemic Islamophobia JF Political theology VO 22 IS 2 SP 125 OP 129 A1 Meziane, Mohamad Amer LA English YR 2021 UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1752293800 AB This short essay examines the interdependence between the secular policing of Muslims and the policing of the entire population, between the policing of a racialized religion and the kind of bio-politics that control and surveil the entire population. During the pandemic, the former legitimizes the power and intensifies the arbitrariness of the latter. There is little doubt that this interdependence between policing Muslims – as well as brown and black bodies – and policing per se is at stake in the emergence of what might be seen as a new form of authoritarian police state in Europe and elsewhere. Through the French concept of separatism, race and political theology are thus entwined in such a way that their very distinction seems to vanish as an arbitrary convention that stems from the limitations of analytical thought. K1 Separatism K1 Islam K1 Algeria K1 France K1 Police violence K1 Islamophobia K1 Race K1 Secularism DO 10.1080/1462317X.2021.1885830