Along with this emerging Muslim political identity, the argument goes, there has been a recalibration of racism around matters of culture rather than ethnicity. What is known as "cultural racism" emphasizes languages, beliefs, and traditions over biology and makes them the focus of fear and hostility. Anti-Muslim cultural racism takes on board some of the psychological coordinates of phenotype racism but redirects them to aspects of life and behavior instead of to the body. Michel Wieviorka describes this shift as depending on the construction of Muslims "as a natural category, and [where] their behaviour, real or imagined, is informed in some way or another by an essence, by innate attributions or an almost genetic cultural heritage."

DEFINE: Defines 'cultural racism' as a recalibration of racism toward culture—languages, beliefs, traditions—rather than phenotype or ethnicity.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 156