Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire Twenty years after 9/11

A critically acclaimed analysis of anti-Muslim racism from the Crusades to 9/11, in a fully revised second edition

In this incisive account, acclaimed scholar Deepa Kumar sketches the rise of "the Muslim enemy" in the western mind, from the Crusades of the eleventh century to the Islamophobia of the "War on Terror" in the twentieth and twenty-first. A pioneering analysis of anti-Muslim racism in the United States, this book outlines how contemporary Islamophobia emerges from various institutions--the media, think tanks, the foreign policy establishment, the university, the domestic security apparatus and the legal sphere.

Importantly, Kumar argues that anti-Muslim racism has historically been tied to empire-building, and rulers have used the specter of a "Muslim enemy" to further European and American projects of colonization and war in the Middle East and North Africa. The rise of Islamophobia, she notes, not only has horrific consequences for Muslims living in the West, but has become central to the United States's "never-ending War on Terror.

Every chapter has been revised to help strengthen the core arguments of the book; to include more scholarship by Arab and Muslim scholars; and with a new chapter on feminism, empire, and race.

Deepa Kumar is an award-winning scholar and activist, and Professor of Media Studies at Rutgers University. Her writing and scholarship on Islamophobia and empire has been featured in numerous media outlets, including the BBC, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, the New York Times, NPR, and Al Jazeera.

TOC:
Foreword, by Nadine Naber
Preface to the Revised Second Edition
Introduction: Islamophobia Is Anti-Muslim Racism 
1. Empire, Race, Orientalism: The Case of Spain, Britain, and France 
2. The United States, Orientalism, and Modernization
3. The Ideology of Islamophobia
4. “Good” and “Bad” Muslims: The Foreign Policy Establishment and the “Islamic Threat” 
5. Empire’s Changing Clothes: Bush, Obama, Trump
6. Terrorizing Muslims: Domestic Security and the Racialized Threat 
7. The New McCarthyites: The Right-wing Islamophobia Network and Their Liberal Enablers
Conclusion: Empire and the Matrix of Anti-Muslim Racism
Acknowledgments 
Notes 
Index