Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire

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...