A discredited academic thesis can still mainstream state Islamophobia.

Evidence

Although Huntington’s schema has drawn widespread criticism for its reductive simplifications, which, among other things, do not sufficiently acknowledge the mutual interpenetration central to the development of all cultures, the clash of civilizations thesis has gained popularity in many quarters as a means to understand extremism and to justify the aggressive advancement of Western interests, especially against Muslim peoples. … More recently in the election campaign and then presidency of Donald Trump, Islamophobia has been mainstreamed in what at times almost seems like a direct effort to bring about a clash of civilizations in reality. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 44

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s reading of Hamid and Naqvi’s novels describing the post-9/11 US security climate; the clash of civilizations frame is the ambient discourse those novels respond to.