Islam is presumed the culprit in disasters even when no Muslim link exists

Evidence

Before friends and families began to pick up the pieces of shattered glass and debris in Beirut on Tuesday, rumors about the possible culprits circulated. These rumors, particularly for those wed to the War on Terror, were refracted through an Islamophobic prism. Was it Hezbollah or a transnational Islamist terror group tied to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), as some suggested? Or were the explosions the work of Israel or a diabolical conspiracy staged by Iran to push the embattled nation of my father toward war with Israel, as others speculated? Islam was, then and always, a central character in the theater of terror, even when it was not Islam or Muslims at fault, or an act of terrorism at all. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 47

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• QUESTION: Worth tracing this presumption cycle across the country case studies later in the book — does Beydoun identify specific state actors who feed this reflex?

Related

• Non-Muslim disasters still get read through Islamophobic suspicion (similarity 0.94)
• The Beirut port explosion was blamed on Muslims though caused by negligence. (similarity 0.84)
• Terrorism is not uniquely Islamic but often stems from state negligence and empire. (similarity 0.83)
• The War on Terror created a global shared Muslim anticipatory trauma. (similarity 0.83)
• The Beirut explosion stemmed from kleptocracy and neglect, not Islamist terror. (similarity 0.82)
• State corruption inflicts terror comparable to acts blamed on Muslims (similarity 0.81)
• War on Terror discourse makes suspecting Muslims feel rationally normal (similarity 0.81)
• The War on Terror trained people to see extremism as exclusive to Islam (similarity 0.81)
• Revenge, not facts, redirected the War on Terror toward all of Islam (similarity 0.81)
• The 2015 attacks made looking Muslim presume banlieue origin and suspicion. (similarity 0.80)
• Popular conflation of Arabs, Muslims, and terrorism enabled the Iraq war. (similarity 0.80)
• The presumption of Muslim terrorism shapes both state discrimination and Muslim response (similarity 0.79)
• Living under the War on Terror permanently rewired Muslim-American identity. (similarity 0.79)
• Islamophobia functions as an existential threat that forces Muslims to conceal faith (similarity 0.79)
• The War on Terror exported Muslim-suspicion doctrine that nations adapted locally (similarity 0.79)