Part of the answer to this question lies in the media’s and the political elite’s reinforcement of the association of Islam with violence. However, do these institutions simply reflect the larger society’s understanding of violence in terms of religion, or do they have a stake in promoting the stereotype of Islam as a violent belief system?

QUESTION: The author explicitly poses whether institutions merely reflect society or have a stake in promoting the stereotype — this is a genuinely open question worth pursuing.

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ Th…, loc. 262