The US needed Islam as a foil to define itself as Western

Evidence

Orientalism informed not only how race was understood during the formative stages of American history, but also how it was constructed. Orientalism helped guide, and fluidly tweak, the parameters of whiteness. And in the same way that blackness stood as the racial antithesis of whiteness, the necessary other without which whiteness would not exist, the Orientalist construction of Islam marked the faith as the civilizational foil of the West, a contrast that was necessary for the emerging United States to envision itself as an extension of Western civilization. In order to solidify itself as part of the West, and an extension of Europe in the Western Hemisphere, the United States had to follow in the footsteps of Europe and establish itself as the mirror opposite of the Muslim world. — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 154

Categorization

• XREF: Strong contrast/echo for Rana’s apparatus argument — Islam as the constitutive outside against which American national identity was built. — connects to: The Swiss minaret ban rested on framing Islam as foreign to Western values — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 57; The Bush administration’s Iraq war justifications rested on three anti-Muslim stereotypes — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 276; The West’s question should be why it fears Muslims, not why they hate us (+16 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 154

Broader Connections

• US hostility to Islamism depended on whether it served US interests #corroborates (0.60) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 233
• Islam in America operates as a political identity of otherness beyond religion #corroborates (0.55) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 69
• Clash of civilizations framing located terrorism’s cause within Islam itself #exemplifies (0.50) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 266