Public anti-Muslim opinion legitimizes state racial projects against a religious minority

Evidence

Some degree of public approval is required for the government to engage in these racial projects against a religious minority. Otherwise, the government would be accused of eroding American religious freedom rights. Due in large part to a well-financed Islamophobia industry and negative media portrayals of Muslims, as described in chapters 7 and 8, public opinion of Muslims has remained low for nearly two decades. This trend will continue so long as a critical mass of Americans views Islam as a violent political ideology and Muslims as a collective security threat. With each passing year since 2001, polls have shown public opinion turning against Muslims. In stark contrast, pre-9/11 polls found that 64 percent of Americans were unable or unwilling to describe their view of Islam as favorable or unfavorable because they knew too little about the religion. While consumers of the Islamophobia industry’s propaganda were initially limited to right-wing White Christian nationalist and right-wing Zionist circles, as the demand for information about Islam and Muslims grew after 9/11, anti-Muslim narratives went mainstream. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 880

Categorization

• SEED: Reader is writing about small acts of decorum toward corpses; but more relevantly, the pre-9/11 64-percent ‘know too little’ stat is a striking measure of manufactured public opinion — an essay could trace how demand for information is converted into an industry-supplied narrative rather than knowledge.
• QUESTION: What would the pre-9/11 baseline imply about whether the Islamophobia industry created rather than merely channeled anti-Muslim sentiment?
• CANDY: The 64-percent ‘knew too little to have an opinion’ stat is a great elevator-conversation fact about how manufactured change in public opinion can be.
• XREF: connects to: Court legitimation converts false anti-Muslim claims into citable authority; Racially coded threat claims justify exempting Muslims from ordinary zoning procedure. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 350