The primary profile of the Muslim terrorist was no longer that of the foreign actor who traveled to the United States to carry out an act of terror. The new image was the "homegrown radical," who was (likely) born and bred in the United States, by all measures American but vulnerable to recruitment and ideological conversion by ISIS on the basis of his or her Muslim identity alone. Thus any and every Muslim American (particularly Sunni Muslims, since radicalization is disproportionately linked to Sunni terror networks like ISIS) was presumed to be vulnerable to radicalization, and therefore subject to the suspicion and surveillance of the state.

XREF: This connects to broader discussions of Islamophobia, surveillance states, and post-9/11 security policies.

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Unde…, loc. 372