Historians have not resolved whether anti-Muslim ideology causes or legitimizes persecution

Evidence

It is not always clear what the relationship is between the ideological or textual denigration of Muslims, Jews, and others and the legal and social restrictions and violence imposed on them. Does an increasingly intolerant ideology cause increasing persecution? Or does the reality of social subjugation call for an ideology to justify it? Or are the two independent phenomena with little direct connection? From a perusal of work by modern historians, one could suppose that the latter was the case: social historians, legal historians, and historians of religious polemic have for the most part avoided the thorny problem of the connection between ideology and social practice. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1367

Categorization

• QUESTION: The ideology-vs-social-practice causal problem recurs in modern Islamophobia studies; worth chasing which direction newer work favors.