“Acting Muslim” today in the United States invites suspicion from the state and maximizes the prospect of backlash from hatemongers. For Muslim Americans who confirm their religious identity by wearing headscarves or Islamic dress, fasting on Ramadan and regularly attending the mosque, merely practicing their First Amendment rights is perilous. Muslim Americans like Nora, driven by fear to conform, cover, or conceal their Muslim identity, may diminish the prospect of suspicion from the state or backlash from bigots, but in doing so they are complicit in supporting the very mission Islamophobia aims to advance—eroding and eliminating every manifestation of Islam, until it is gone from America altogether.

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Unde…, loc. 540