Western anti-Muslim prejudice is a periodically constructed elite tool, not a constant.

Evidence

Kumar reminds us that, in fact, attitudes to Islam and Muslims in the West have changed across history: from an early, baffled curiosity to the comparative harmony of La Convivencia in Moorish Spain, the hostility of the Crusades, the Romantic-era fascination with the “Gorgeous East,” and the most recent phase in which U.S. policies toward Muslim countries have been pragmatic and varied. Along the way, anti-Muslim prejudice has been constructed and promoted by elites at certain times for political reasons, a process we can still trace today in the fulminations of populist politicians and journalists in search of an enemy to blame or a distraction from other problems. During the war on terror, it was necessary to create a “spectacle of fear” around Muslims and Islam to bolster support for an illegal imperialist foreign policy. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 38

Categorization

• XREF: Distinguishes elite-engineered Islamophobia (Kumar) from the more capillary, everyday version Naqvi renders in Home Boy — useful test for whether novels can contest what is partly top-down.
• DEFINE: Defines the ‘spectacle of fear’ as the operative mechanism of war-on-terror Islamophobia.