The vilification of Muslims grows

“I think Islam hates us,” said Donald Trump, several months before the candidate became the Republican presidential nominee. Trump’s declaration was a continuation of his string of campaign slanders against Islam. It was rooted in the very ignorance and hate that produced Trump’s proposed “Muslim ban” in December of last year, which he later revised to “extreme vetting” of Muslims seeking to enter the United States.

But more deeply, Trump’s declaration is a strategic appeal to the “Clash of Civilizations” rhetoric that re-emerged after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. This is a worldview that pits Islam against the United States, as both a geopolitical nemesis and domestic rival that threatens to overtake the nation. It is what drives a still expanding surveillance state and exposes 8 million Muslim Americans to the dragnet of antiterror policing and rising hate violence.

While Islam was associated with terror and national security threat long before 9/11, the events of that day, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and passage of the U.S. Patriot Act after it, bolstered that nexus. This is exposing Muslim Americans — and groups wrongly stereotyped as Muslims — to the immediate hostility of hate mongers, and 15 years later, to an expanding surveillance state that links Muslim identity to homegrown “radicalization.” Now, an American presidential candidate — Trump — has built a campaign on the back of this apocalyptic rhetoric.

Trump isn’t just the head orchestrator of Islamophobia. Trump and his campaign might also be seen as a delayed post-9/ 11 backlash. Trump’s very rise is rooted in the anti-Muslim hate mongering seeded by the media vilification of Muslims that saturated television, radio and newsprint for 15 years, and the robust antiterror state that sprouted in the wake of 9/11. This repeated vilification of Muslims primed Trump’s supporters and, in turn, made his anti-Muslim messaging a resounding success. Some 76 percent of Republicans think Muslims do not belong in the United States and support a ban on Muslims entering the United States.

During the previous decade, dubbed by some as the “9/11 Decade,” Muslim Americans could not imagine a more nefarious figure than George W. Bush. However, we now have a protracting surveillance state, rising hate violence toward Muslims, and a Republican nominee whose with blatant hatred and strident policy proposals make Bush look tame. While Bush singled out Muslim terrorists by broadly claiming that “Islam is peace,” Trump finds nothing endearing about the faith and its followers, categorically branding it evil and irredeemable. This makes Trump’s Islamophobia a far more dangerous one for Muslim Americans than the 9/11 Decade.

If his campaign has been this threatening, just imagine what a Trump presidency would spell for Muslim Americans.

Khaled A. Beydoun is an associate law professor at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law. He is affiliated with the UC Berkeley Islamophobia & Research Documentation Project.