For instance, when Florida pastor Terry Jones threatened to burn the Koran on the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Obama administration had to rein him in. This had less to do with Obama’s commitment to fighting Islamophobia and more to do with his administration’s emphasis on winning hearts and minds in the “Muslim world.” After reinforcing the notion that the United States was a nation built on religious tolerance, Obama said of Jones, in a television interview, that “I just want him to understand that this stunt that he is pulling could greatly endanger our young men and women in uniform who are in Iraq, who are in Afghanistan.” The turn to counterinsurgency meant that obvious provocations of this kind had to be managed even while the logic of empire was reinforced.

XREF: Connects to broader critiques of counterinsurgency doctrine and the tension between 'hearts and minds' rhetoric and imperial aims.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 574