I began this essay with the claim that Islamophobia does not spring directly from a fear of Islam, or a hatred of Muslims, but from ambiguities rooted in our dominant models of citizenship and national belonging. The battles being fought in Dearborn by Islamophobes, Arab and Muslim Americans, and their allies and opponents in local government, the media, and the courts are generating new, hotly contested versions of Americanism.

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ Th…, loc. 716