First, while I argue that Islamophobia is a mass ideological formation within American political culture, I examine Bernard Lewis and Fareed Zakaria as archetypes of two competing but dove-tailing versions of Islamophobia. The tropes they deploy can be found in the works of rightist nut-jobs like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer who motivated a mass-murder in Norway, pseudo-academics like Daniel Pipes, “liberal” pundits like Thomas Friedman, or “native informants” such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji.
Second, after mapping how these tropes are used to justify American Empire, I examine Islamophobia’s very real effects “on the ground” in the United States. In particularly, I examine how Islamophobia is used by the federal, state, and local governments, as well as law enforcement, universities, the print, cable and electronic media, the blogosphere, interest groups, PACS, and lobbies to establish an atmosphere of fear that manages dissent and erodes civil liberties, against the backdrop of a quiescent if not enthusiastic mainstream.
Finally, I demonstrate how President Barack Obama and his administration are Islamophobes, proactively deploying Islamophobic tropes and rhetoric to further US Empire abroad and systematize and institutionalize the abuses of civil liberties introduced by Presidents Clinton and Bush Jr.
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I hope that the book will begin to aid the Muslim American community to understand Islamophobia in terms of the racial history of the United States and its history of imperialism. Understanding Islamophobia within these contexts, the contexts of control, capitalism, state power, global interests, and global hegemony, Muslim Americans will be able to assert their own struggle within the context of the struggle of people of color in the United States and globally. Such a conversation is already happening on the margins of the Arab and Muslim American communities.
Finally, I’d love the book to be read by people of color. The state of Muslims in the US is only a shadow of the economic, social, and cultural oppression suffered by Black, Latino, Asian, and Native Americans.
Humbly, I can only hope that my book helps to expand and further, even if in a minuscule way, the conversation between economic and racial “minorities” as to allow us to draw together the constellation of the similarities and particularities of our historical experience in order to compel us to collective solidarity and action.
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More here.