American Islamophobia

The phrase Islamophobia is all the rage right now, even gracing a recent cover of Time magazine, with erudite scholars disdaining the uneducated, irrational fear of Islam which is apparently permeating American society.  They bemoan the undercurrent of the ordinary American’s suspicion of Islam, yet the Muslim community itself does nothing at all to combat those suspicions. The dictionary defines “phobia” as “a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it.”  Thus, if I saw a single picture [...]