In many ways, the modern-day birth of political Islamophobia started with the 2008 election of a black man named Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency of the United States. Simply because he was African American with an unusual name, the election of the forty-fourth president allowed the forces of hate—as well as many amoral opportunists—to coalesce around a new kind of target. A new kind of “other.”

XREF: Connects to discussions of how racialized 'othering' gets redirected toward new demographic targets, similar to patterns of scapegoating in other political movements.

Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Gl…, loc. 235