Is Islamophobia on the rise, and if so, is this a long-term trend, or a passing scapegoating focus on a particular religious minority community in the United States? Are there broader global connections—Islamophobes certainly have them—between developments in the United States, in Europe, and elsewhere, as suggested in much of the literature on Islamophobia? If it is a passing trend, should scholars and activists just wait for the wave to pass and for hatemongers to move on? The answer is clearly no, regardless of how short or long lived the current trends might be. Islamophobia is much more than a discourse, a set of ideas circulated on the Internet and in print. It is an ideological construct that has real impact on real peoples' lives, and thus, cannot and should not be ignored.

DEFINE: Frames Islamophobia as an ideological construct with material consequences, not just rhetoric or online discourse.

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ Th…, loc. 582