ABSTRACT
There is little doubt that headlines of recent news articles such as “Nearly 1 in 4 People Worldwide Is Muslim” (Greene 2009) and “Let's Admit It: Honor Killing in the West Is by Muslims” (Chesler 2012) can raise the public's anxiety about the global Muslim population. Further uneasiness about this burgeoning population comes about in the opening sentence of the first article published on the CNN website, “Nearly one in four people worldwide is Muslim—and they are not necessarily where you might think” (Greene 2009). This opening statement suggests that the Muslim population is not confined to the “heartland of Islam,” (Eickelman 2002) the Middle East. After the tragic events of September 11, 2001, migration of Muslims raises concern about the potential for terrorist acts by Muslim fundamentalist groups who have settled in the West, in places like the United States, Canada, or Europe. Jennifer Johnson-Hanks writes, “From scholarly books to newspaper articles to mass culture sources, it seems fair to surmise that Muslim fertility has come to matter politically in the United States. People write about it, believe it to be excessive, and fear it” (2006a, 13). These types of news headlines reiterate Johnson-Hanks's point about the political nature of Muslim fertility. Muslims' reproduction and, more importantly, their bodies have become the subjects of political and popular scrutiny in part to prevent the international threat of violence by future generations.
