I learned, en route from the East Los Angeles campus to my downtown hotel, that Juan was neither born to a Muslim family nor a convert. He was, rather, a man on the cusp of embracing Islam at a moment of unprecedented Islamophobia and rabid xenophobia, of imminent Muslim bans and Mexican walls.

QUESTION: What draws a Latino man to Islam precisely when anti-Muslim sentiment spikes in America?

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Unde…, loc. 37