Islamophobia in America

The attack on world trade center in 2001 popularly known as 9/11 was the moment that disturbed the relationship between America and the Arab world.

With the rise of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), also known as ISIS, and the way the mainstream US media reports on it, fear of Islam further increased, tending to demonise Muslims and portray them and their faith as dangerous and violent.
The investigation uncovers a network of Islamophobic writers, campaigners, funders and politicians who combined to bring about the conditions in which Donald Trump would be elected president in November 2016.

Trump openly campaigned for a total ban on all Muslims entering the US and has since issued executive orders aimed at limiting the movement of nationals of certain majority-Muslim countries to the US.
Islamophobia as a whole, its growth and the threat it poses to the Muslim community in the US.

"If I was not a Muslim and all I know about Islam is what I saw in the evening news, I might be afraid of Muslims too," says Mitchell.

The Georgia Security Force
"So it's one thing to read anti-Muslim rhetoric on the internet or to see it on Fox News. It's another thing to hear it from the president of the United States and so normal mainstream Muslims are being squeezed between these two opposing forces ... We are essentially defending ourselves in a two-front information war," says Mitchell.

Leading Islamophobic figures like Pamela Geller, lawyer David Yerushalmi, Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum, commentator Steven Emerson, Robert Spencer and Frank Gaffney play a major role in the anti-Islamic lobby - which under Trump has translated into White House policy.

Daniel Pipes admits that he "will have a larger role in the Trump administration than we did in the Obama administration … we are more connected to it, we know more people, have better relations with them."

Hank Johnson is pessimistic: "I fear that a lot of the gains that we have fought for will be lost and I fear for the people who will suffer as a result of those losses. Donald Trump is a textbook fascist and we will see whether or not that translates into fascist policies. Our fight efforts to, try to in any way harass or treat people who practise the religion of Islam differently than you treat Americans or other people who are coming to America."