Colonial conspiracy fears intensify whenever anti-colonial resistance grows

Evidence

Yet, despite the concerted effort of Indian Muslims to disassociate calls for religious reform from the taint of political sedition, the spectre of a Wahhabi conspiracy continued to haunt the British imagination well into the twentieth century, resurfacing with renewed vigour as anti-colonial and nationalist resistance to British rule mounted. — Julia Stephens, The Phantom Wahhabi, 184

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Hamid) and its parsing of how Western suspicion shadows Muslim subjects regardless of their actual politics.
• DEEPTHINKING: Frames a durable mechanism — the phantom menace that gains energy precisely as the threat it names is dissolved — worth sitting with against later moral panics.