Using Muslims as a tolerance test case reinforced their liminal status.

Evidence

Locke and others used fictive Muslims to indicate the extremity of their inclusivity, knowing how acutely their audiences would view any actual Muslim presence as a threat. Each time statesmen took Muslims as an extreme example, they helped reinscribe the liminality of Muslims in the popular imagination. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 122

Categorization

• QUESTION: The chapter argues tolerance discourse itself re-inscribes otherness—is this the core mechanism the reader’s project pivots toward? Worth chasing.
• DEFINE: Introduces the key analytical term ‘liminality’ as the condition of being at the threshold, permanently provisional.
• DEEPTHINKING: A counterintuitive causal claim: the very act of including Muslims as a rhetorical worst case perpetuates their outsider status rather than norming them.