Phobic portrayals cause harm through categorical stigmatization, not factual counting.

Evidence

The same is true of Islamophobic discourses. There are Muslims who advocate and practice violence, oppress women, hate Jews, would like to see the universal establishment of shari`ah law, and so on. Counting them and calling them out is not as important, or as dangerous, as the categorical stigmatization that occurs when phobic portrayals of Muslims come to dominate a political field, thus setting the terms on which Islam is deemed pre/modern, un/ safe, and un/acceptable. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 704

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that some traits are ‘empirically present’ in real Muslims and that this matters less than stigmatization deserves scrutiny — when does empirical presence legitimately anchor critique?