Yet so much of the rhetoric from the Bush administration and other political elites after 9/11 linked, explicitly and implicitly, Islam with violence. Within a week of the attacks, Bush used the extraordinarily problematic language of “crusade” to describe the upcoming War on Terror, though he quickly backed off, likely because of Muslim complaints that such language implied a holy war against all Muslims, reminiscent of the Crusades of the Middle Ages.

XREF: Connects to broader histories of how political rhetoric shapes public perception of religious groups, and to contemporary debates about Islamophobia.

Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Intro…, loc. 279