Failing to frame Islamophobia as a system of bigotry not only endorsed and emboldened by law, but also carried out by government actors, severely underestimates the scale of its menace and the process by which it inflicts injury and authorizes popular behavior. Failing to account for the law’s role in authorizing and executing Islamophobia overlooks the relationship state actors have to the hateful violence of individual bigots, and it ignores the reality that the state enlists private citizens to partake in the national project of identifying and punishing individuals stereotyped as presumptive terrorists.

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Unde…, loc. 82