Denouncing the crude bigotry of Islamophobes will not produce a political culture of this kind; neither will polite acceptance of Muslims based on the privatization of their religious and cultural differences. Instead, a politics of mutual respect must be anchored in the realization that Muslims and non-Muslims do not live in separate worlds, in self-constituting and clashing civilizations. Increasingly, we all live in overlapping zones of interaction. This overlap will create new identities—secular, religious, national, regional, and ethnoracial—that are endlessly contested, and are worth contesting, because they are shared.

QUESTION: What concrete policies or practices would an 'overlapping zones' politics of mutual respect actually entail, versus mere denunciation or polite acceptance?

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ Th…, loc. 719