US media and academia collapsed diverse groups into a single Arab-looking category

Evidence

Predominantly White male academics and journalists reinforced European Orientalist tropes of Arabs and Muslims as irrational, despotic, and uncivilized. They erroneously used “Arab” to refer to Persians, South Asians, Sikhs, Sephardic Jews, and anyone whose physical appearance was stereotypically Arab-looking. No longer were Muslims a distant threat for European colonialists to manage. They were now America’s problem, as it sought to commandeer Muslim-majority lands as client states in the Cold War. The Racial Muslim construct was emerging. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 615

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the racial lumping of South Asians, Sikhs, and others post-9/11 documented in anti-Muslim discrimination studies.