Post-Cold War American identity depends on having a Muslim enemy

Evidence

The assumption that Muslims are either foreign-born or African American means that Muslim Americans must be new, alien, and from somewhere else—not fully American, in other words. This exclusion buys into the Orientalist banishment of Islam from the West, and the assimilationist model of American citizenship that calls for the abandonment of all foreign ways. … Continuing ties to Arab homelands may have generated advocacy for Palestine or opposition to US-supported dictators, but such moves have frequently collided with American public culture and US foreign policy; in the post–Cold War era, having a Muslim enemy has become a key part of American national identity. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 54

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that a Muslim enemy is constitutive of American national identity is provocative — worth examining how Shryock supports it beyond Detroit examples.
• XREF: connects to: Neocons needed Islam as a unifying substitute for the USSR enemy; National and religious identity can conflict when war pits same-faith enemies — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 56; the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: How Ourselves, the True, and Every Other Are Built from War” (+1 more)