perspective its goal for one where the soviet union had pretty much disintegrated and united states had come to the forefront the war had become in other words a universal a power you know it was no longer two superpowers it was one and so it's within the one nine hundred ninety s after the sort of shift the fall of the soviet union the end of the cold war the united states started to articulate a new discourses of islamophobia a new rhetoric so as a phobia to justify their presence now militarily and economically muslims and it's there to justify the united states interests in the middle east in north africa even in sub saharan africa and in south asian century and then when you talk about islamophobia what exactly are you seeing is it is it people going out on the streets and you know painting signs on mosques or is it something different than it is often means a lot and not necessarily lot of different things but a lot and definitely the differences between osama a hate or a fear of muslims and understanding that muslims are fundamentally different than other people than white america and westerners are so is that a phobia  mild to extremely violent hate acts whether their speech acts being called names whether they're it's job discrimination whether there are issues about you know whether a muslim girl can play soccer or be a waitress of dress codes these sorts of things bullying in schools harassment you know being called racist names and those are sort of unpleasant daily you know manifestations of as a phobia that most muslims would come across know simple violent acts that people are subjected to being beat up a lot of this i think more on a more dangerous level islamophobia is is manifested policies that would otherwise be unacceptable policies that violate people's civil rights in this case they're targeted at most americans talk about some of those polls one of the ones that stand out for all of them were the one that stands out the most and that's most example he signed on to that and endorsed it and what that bill does for example is it says that the united states government can arrest anyone in the world whether an american citizen or not american citizen if they are suspect of being a terrorist and have an intent to harm the united states or and this is more i think the that defendant who is arrested and accused of that can be put in jail without any charges indefinitely forever the state does not have to produce evidence evidence can be secret evidence in the united states it's a very you and in fact has to charge you for a crime and this doesn't makes it so you only have been charged with a crime but also you're remanded to the military so if a civilian police force for example picks you up suspects of terrorism they hand you to the military in the united states and then you're detained indefinitely and can be there until iraq so that's i mean and that is that law is predicated on the fact that there's something called a muslim threat a threat from islamic terrorists so i mean they're not talking about you know k k k threats you know they're not talking they specifically this is specifically intended to fight the war on terror and what would you say to people who would argue look we're focused on muslims because we were attacked of them that's a common argument you hear how would you how do you respond to it's a very prevalent article argument and i think one thing we have to say is that there's no reason for reengineering civil liberties in this country number two is that any act any violent act committed against united states or against americans is a criminal act and therefore it should be subject to criminal prosecution in the due process by which the constitution affords  off muslims so what happens is that to equate acts political acts done by muslims happen to be muslims in the name of their religion to muslims in general is a racist act it's a race it's a jump right so i mean obviously we don't hate white people because jeffrey dahmer was white and that's what the or you know if you look at the terrorist acts before nine eleven one of the biggest one was oklahoma bombing so timothy mcveigh now all white people have to be investigated because timothy mcveigh was a white supremac so that's the thing i mean whether or not the perpetrators of nine eleven were muslim is almost irrelevant that they use religion in a politicized manner is relevant but that doesn't  should not be a pretense for profiling a whole religion now you focus a lot of your research on bernard lewis and read to courier can you why do you pick bernard lewis and later freezer korea would serve to give a language to a lot of scattered islamophobia tenants ok bad and they're islam is a religion of the devil you know all this sort of nonsense and then there is the soft core islamophobia which i think most of the true america suffers from which is just prejudice against muslims the idea that somehow muslims are different from us freezer korea for example even though he's a muslim perpetuates that he predicate his analysis on the fact that muslim communities of muslim countries in the middle east didn't modernize in certain ways so he sort of regularize a certain sort of rhetoric of what i call soft islamophobia as opposed to bernard lewis who's a much more gives language and a narrative to the neo cons sort of vulcan language of war against you know the muslim world in the war on terror you an example from things they've written or said that sort of exemplify of what you're talking about yeah i mean the the locates arab discontent and lust and this discontent in their culture right he look instead of saying these are the political reasons why the middle east  is a mess and why people the middle east are angry rather saying this is the historical conditions well say is muslims are sexually frustrated you know they repress their what's wrong with islam inside muslims themselves right he makes it a cultural issue so he does that in this in this this origins of arjun's of muslim rage which is a which is  a big hit with cheney you know it's always quoting it so are there ways that it sounds like there are ways that regular americans could be islamophobia in a way they might not realize it you know right can you can you talk about some something you know where someone might have a certain view that they think is just based on you know  values and you know them but really has a subtle islamophobia behind it well that's i mean this is the problem with racism in the united states it's so ingrained and it's so hard for us to see beyond our own blinders so in regards to a phobia and most of america and most americans of the mainstream is just that for example that that precept right that that equation right there we call them muslim americans as if somehow that differentiates them from other americans the concept of for example tolerance where you have a lot of good americans who say well i like them they're good people and you know we have muslim  friends so there's always a sense of they are good they or like us or they're they're fine even they're not like us i mean that right there is it's a clue to somehow how we how we black people it's offensive about latinos it's offensive and maybe it took the civil rights movement whatever but i mean to sort of get us to that point but we should we should know by now that we shouldn't predicate the difference of other people just on their religion or skin color or you know where they're from what effect do you think that sort of way of thinking has effect like when you factors that have upon muslims themselves like an individual i mean i think this country over the past ten years has largely they have a long track record of cooperating with authorities but still being targeted right so for example in orange county you know there's a famous story about from this case about f putting in spies and agents to provoke people in this mosque what he this guy ends up talking a lot of crazy stuff about you know bombing and threaten them to see if they will become informants and if they don't want to become informants they say they're going to deport them or process or charge them with terrorism or the support of terrorist organization in the case i'm talking about the guys like unfortunate truth you know so you know it doesn't make that person a racist right it does i live in south carolina doesn't make those people race it's just happens you know just like the guy in afghanistan brother might have been late and that's might and so he thankfully that guy ended up ok but what happened was is that you have someone who's cooperate you have a mosque who's cooperating they're doing they're supposed to do and the f b i then comes around and still not only spies on you also try to coerce so where do you turn if you're most american what do you do you live in a culture of fear who do you trust you know who you trust n y p d is spying on you at school  america american it's pretty pretty tough because you really don't know what you can say to whom you can say it without being suspect what sort of the take home message for for americans what do you want it you know what if they read this book what do you want them to take away from this book i want to start having talks interrogate their own their own prejudices their own what we call subject position people ask me well you know you're saying that you're upset if people hate m is to stop asking questions about us and them is to start to understand phenomena politically why do things happen politically why do things happen economically what are the relationships between our prejudices and our privileges what is what is the relationship between our prejudices and legislation that we would not have accepted twenty years ago you know  why is it that i understand someone as different from us where i really know that if they had different skin color they were to be that i wouldn't be asking that question and because i see them as different it allows me to buy into so much other stuff buy into the fact that well maybe you know we need to be careful because you know you don't want to bring it down or we need support israel because they are against our same enemy or because we need to you know have nuclear energy because we need to get independent from middle east oil so we can see how ingrained those notions are those racist notions so when we stop seeing the world and them and us and start to understand things politically and economically then we can i think get answers better so  t you know so i think it's really important for example to recognize the islamophobia how it parallels other forms of racism right it parallels black people it's certainly parallels racism against latinos especially in this day of at the immigrant sentiment you know and quite frankly islamophobia is a terrible thing but it can tell us about something that's far more dangerous and far more widespread which is you know racism against you know a community and this or vilification of this this community united states so i mean those mechanisms are very similar future it is convenient for oil for lazy political operatives to to deploy whenever they need it  based on the fact that i don't think islamophobia is going anywhere i fear that it will be further used to erode civil liberties in the united states and will be further used to justify used to stay in afghanistan it will be used to continue intervention in african countries which we have many pieces that we and operations that we talk about so i'm afraid that islamophobia is not going anywhere but if we stop if we if we don't start to again question afraid it's just going to be more of the same and which is going to result in more and tag