Paper short abstract:

Majoritarian imaginaries criminalize Sri Lankan Muslims within fictive narratives of insecurity informed by the war on terror. They are seen as an economic enemy mobilizing transnational Islamic capital and local criminal/global terror networks to financialize and suborn the cartographic nation.

Paper long abstract:

Majoritarian imaginaries criminalize Sri Lanka's Muslim within fictive narratives of insecurity informed by the war on terror. Protesters against Islamic public building view Muslims as an economic enemy mobilizing transnational Islamic capital, and local criminal and global terror networks to financialize and suborn the cartographic nation. For local Muslims madrasa/mosque building materializes their commitment to, and citizenship within a plural democracy and its neoliberal economy. The disparate theological economies of madrasa/mosque building, "Muslim" criminal underworlds and globalized Islamic capital and terror are singular prospects from which to (1) analyze the linkage between minoritization, criminalization and (para)militarization, and to (2) examine how national discourses on insecurity articulate with the cultural imaginaries of the global war on terror.