“When you’ve got folks who are looking for the worst in Islam and are promoting that as the entire religion of 1.5 or 1.6 billion people, then you only empower the real extremists,” wrote Brian Fishman of West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center in a New York Times article on the rise of these anti-Muslim fear mongers. With millions of dollars coming from right-wing foundations, these Islamophobic hucksters have succeeded in pushing hatred of Muslims into the Western mainstream. This is directly tied to the numerical growth of anti-Sharia legislative bills proposed across the country in the last few decades.

XREF: Connects to the broader pattern of backlash movements inadvertently strengthening their targets, similar to how anti-terror rhetoric can recruit extremists.

Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Gl…, loc. 626