Islamophobia is manufactured by interlocking professional interests, not spontaneous prejudice

Evidence

We meet members of the 9/11 families group, who feel betrayed that their representative on the memorial selection committee has approved Khan’s design; blue-collar protestor Sean Gallagher, whose firefighter brother was killed in the Twin Towers and who now labors always in that brother’s shadow, unable to bring himself to follow his better instincts and compromise; Debbie Dawson, professional anti-Islam campaigner—a fictional stand-in for Pamela Geller—who throws out menacing references to taqiya and dhimmitude and cherry-picks the most warlike aspects of the religion to hype up the threat to America; Alyssa Spier, ambitious and unscrupulous reporter from the New York Post who sees the story as a career opportunity; and scaremongering politician Governor Geraldine Bitman, on her way to becoming vice president. On the other side, defending Khan, are members of the Muslim American Coordinating Council (MACC) and their opportunistic leader Issam Malik, who prove to be no less adept at marketing and manipulation than their opponents. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 275

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the hinge definition: Islamophobia-as-machinery — each named character (campaigner, reporter, politician, religious leader) occupies a functional slot in producing and circulating fear, which gives the reader a checklist to test whether Hamid’s and Naqvi’s novels show similar interest-group ecology.
• XREF: The 9/11 families member, professional campaigner, careerist reporter, and opportunistic religious leader each map onto real figures (Pamela Geller, the New York Post) — this resonates with how Home Boy’s characters embody archetypes of post-9/11 New York rather than private individuals. — connects to: Ex-Muslim identity functions as a profitable career asset in the Islamophobia industry. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 702; Islamophobia is a graded category with degrees, not an all-or-nothing attribute — Erik Bleich, What Is Islamophobia and How Much Is…, 36
• QUESTION: Does Morey later argue that showing BOTH sides as equally manipulative (MACC and Issam Malik) risks a false equivalency that quietly reinforces the very Islamophobia it contests? Whether both camps marketing against each other drains moral weight from the Muslim side is worth chasing.