When contemporary anti-Muslim bigotry is viewed in the larger context of the history of religious and racial prejudice in American politics, instructive patterns emerge that have gone unnoticed in the public square because most Americans have sought to understand the violent events like 9/11 and the bigotry against Muslims in terms of religion. The lesson in this history is that bigotry and prejudice have played a central role in US history as a means of controlling racial and religious diversity and building national unity. Today, Muslims may be targets of this pattern of democratic governance, but with tomorrow's crisis, it may be another group. Some American Muslim organizations are even keen to discover this other group, to push it on the national stage, and to shift the target away from American Muslims; they routinely make a point of publicizing and condemning acts of violence committed by fundamentalist Christians as acts of terrorism.

XREF: Connects to broader discussions of scapegoating and how in-groups are defined by out-groups in political science and sociology.

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ Th…, loc. 300