Fear and threat dominated publications despite some positive American views of Islam

Evidence

Some positively valued the religion and the cultures associated with it. Some converted, as perhaps had the New Yorker Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb. However, the preponderance of publications from the late eighteenth to the middle of the twentieth century demonstrates recurring themes of fear and threat beyond the sentiments of disapproval and loathing also present. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 172