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9/11 entrenched Islamophobia in US politics. But it doesn’t work the way you think
Anti-Muslim sentiment is used as a political weapon. Meanwhile, Muslim American leaders are making a difference for all
Moustafa Bayoumi in The Guardian
Fri 11 Sep 2026
It’s been 25 years since the terrorist attacks of September 11, and during this time Muslim Americans have learned how to live in that dangerous space between other Americans’ fears and their ignorance.
The fear was clear from the beginning. Immediately following 9/11, Muslim Americans faced what Human Rights Watch called “a severe wave of backlash violence”. A tide of hate rose up against ordinary Muslims and those who appeared to be Muslim, including at least three murders in the immediate backlash after the attacks. The federal government, for its part, began targeting Muslim immigrants in a massive surge of repression that legal experts soon compared to the Palmer Raids of the 1920s.
The ignorance was just as evident. Even Oprah Winfrey did her part to allay it, dedicating an episode of her show in October 2001 to “Islam 101”. The Qur’an leapt on to the New York Times bestseller list that fall. Yet despite these early efforts at education, most Americans still learned little about Islam and Muslims. One 2006 study found that only a third of those polled realized that Muslims worship the same God as Christians and Jews do. Close to 10% of respondents thought Muslims worship a “moon god”.
Much of this fear and ignorance has continued unevenly over the last quarter century, with negative attitudes towards Muslim Americans softening at times and hardening, sometimes into deadly violence, at other times. What’s interesting is when expressions of these attitudes happen. It turns out that predicting when animosity to Muslims will rise and fall may not be quite what you think.
Researchers who study Islamophobia discovered several years ago that anti-Muslim outbreaks in the United States don’t follow highly publicized acts of terrorism. Rather, Islamophobic incidents tend to cluster more routinely around our election cycles.... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/11/9-11-islamophobia-us-politics