The mayor’s rhetoric frames Muslims as insiders while excusing their protest as universal passion.

Evidence

We’re an easy target because people who hate others, in this case anyone who hates Islam and who hates Muslims, they’re going to come here because they figure that this is the place to carry out their hate. It’s sad because in this community, we get along. In this community, we’re working it out really well, and we’re all Americans. But, you know, people from other places who have strange ideas and who have limited information and don’t care, they act out, and he’s acting out … We had great leadership here, people from our Arab community who communicated and got the situation in hand, along with our police, we got the tempers down, and we got them back where they belonged. This was a very volatile situation. I’m asking everybody to think about things they deeply hold in their heart, things that are so important, vital to their way of life, and having them challenged by an ignorant person. And how do you react? Everybody reacts with passion. Everybody gets upset when someone challenges the most deep held feelings we have, and that’s what happened here today, and I think, given the circumstance, people behaved very well. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 681

Categorization

• DEFINE: A primary source exemplar of how the ‘good Muslim/decent citizen’ framing both includes and implicitly warns — the discourse the author is anatomizing.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s own project on the frightened subject — the mayor universalizes Muslim anger as ‘everybody reacts with passion,’ defusing the threat by denying its specificity.