While the virus put much of the world on pause and sank everybody into paranoia, it spawned new strands of Islamophobia that kept the War on Terror in motion. From distant corners of the globe, I learned about the horrors of harvested Muslim organs and toddlers seated atop the corpses of their dead grandfathers, how Muslims in New Delhi were scapegoated for the outbreak of the coronavirus, and how French laws banned Islamic head and face coverings but mandated face masks.

XREF: Connects to scholarship on pandemic-heightened scapegoating and how crises revive existing prejudices against minority groups.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 158