By Stephen Sheehi. Islamophobia examines the rise of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiments in the West following the end of the Cold War through former President Bush's War on Terror to the Age of Obama. Using "Operation Desert Storm" as a watershed moment, Stephen Sheehi examines the increased mainstreaming of Muslim-bating rhetoric and explicitly racist legislation, police surveillance, witch-trials and discriminatory policies towards Muslims in North America and abroad. The book focuses on the various genres and modalities of Islamophobia from the works of rogue academics to the commentary by mainstream journalists, to campaigns by political hacks and special interest groups. Clarity Press (2011), English, Paperback: 272 pages.

Sheehi believes Islamophobes operate on an assumption that Muslims, particularly Arab Muslims, suffer from particular cultural lacuna that prevent their cultures from progress, democracy and human rights. While the assertion originated in the colonial era, Sheehi demonstrates that it was refurbished as a viable explanation for Muslim resistance to economic and cultural globalization during the Clinton era. Moreover, the theory was honed into the empirical basis for an interventionist foreign policy and propaganda campaign during the Bush regime, which Sheehi argues even continues under Barack Obama's new internationalism.

About the Author

is Associate Professor of Arabic and Arab Culture and Director of the Arabic Program at the University of South Carolina. He is author of Foundations of Modern Arab Identity and The Arab Imago: A Social History of Indigenous Photography forthcoming from Princeton University Press,. He has published in journals such as International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, The British Journal of Middle East Studies, Discourse, Critique, The Journal of Arabic Literature, and The Journal of Comparative South Asian, African, and Middle Eastern Studies.