September 11, however, precipitated unanimous agreement in the foreign policy establishment that the War on Terror would henceforth frame US foreign policy. Barely had the ashes settled from the Twin Towers when loud proclamations that “Islamic terrorists” represented existential threats to the United States began to echo in the public sphere. From then on, US policy was geared toward “keeping Americans safe” from Muslim “evildoers.” These claims fly in the face of reality, as the previous chapter outlined, since Islamist organizations typically emerge from local conditions and are focused on those conditions. What then lies behind this Islamophobic rhetoric? The agenda behind this focus on the “Islamic threat” is the subject of this chapter.

XREF: Connects to broader critiques of security-state agendas and manufactured consent in US foreign policy.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 376