Islamophobia’s salience stems from state control efforts, not just culture.

Evidence

Scholars have documented the consequences of such fears, images, and appropriations in US politics and society before, but they have not yet paid ample attention to the role of the state and particularly the FBI in producing such irruptions and iterations of Islamophobia. This chapter explores the reasons for and forms of government surveillance, media manipulation, and finally counterintelligence behind the making of Islamophobia in the twentieth century. It argues that though Islamophobia may be a social anxiety, its salience in US society is not exclusively the reflection of certain cultural and political interests, including those of some evangelical Christians, pro-Israeli activists, academic orientalists, and mass media; Islamophobia is also the product of the state’s legal and extralegal attempts to control, discipline, and punish Muslim American individuals and organizations. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 347

Categorization

• SEED: The corrective move — attributing a social anxiety to state production rather than populist culture — rehearses how moral panics are commonly manufactured top-down; angle: ‘who profits from the state’s fear-industry?’
• QUESTION: Does the author adequately weigh state production of Islamophobia against grassroots sources he lists (evangelicals, neocons, media), or does the corrective risk overcorrecting?
• XREF: connects to: States across the power spectrum weaponize Islamophobia for national and imperial projects — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 79