Islam functioned as a US political smear symbol since 1800.

Evidence

From the election of 1800, when John Adams and Thomas Jefferson referred to each other as oriental despots and Mahometans to the evocation of Muslims in the repression of Mormons, Islam was already a potent symbol in US electoral politics in the nineteenth century. … Islam’s symbolic power was resurrected in the twentieth century when the Nation of Islam (NOI), Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ali came to represent, respectively, the greatest threat to the liberal promise of civil rights, a strong domestic voice for the rising tide of color and pan-Africanism, and perhaps the most prominent symbol of domestic resistance to the Vietnam War. … With the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, the labeling of Islam as a form of anti-Americanism only rose. … By the time of the 9/11 attacks, the association of all Muslims and Islamic religion with violence, misogyny, and general backwardness had already become an entrenched form of conventional wisdom in some policy circles, especially among neoconservatives. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 346

Categorization

• CANDY: Adams and Jefferson calling each other ‘Mahometans’ in the 1800 election is a great light opener for any conversation about political smears.