American Islamophobia is more shortsighted, lacking the memory of its European parent. Cultural narratives of Islam as a tyrannical faith were imported into the United States from Europe, but damning tropes about the faith and depictions of the Prophet Muhammad as a “false prophet that could attract enough converts to enslave the nation” do not trickle down and permeate the minds of everyday Americans as potently as they do the French, Spanish, or Belgian people.

XREF: Relates to transnational history of orientalism and anti-Muslim sentiment; connects to broader colonial and postcolonial critique of how negative portrayals of Islam circulated between Europe and America.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 836