It had been a lengthy and productive meeting with the chief of staff to a Republican member of Congress. We had discussed United States policy towards Israel, and the scepticism of many of the Grand Old Party members towards the relationship and the challenge they face in saying anything about it given President Donald Trump’s iron grip on it. But there was one final agenda item I needed to raise: the member’s participation in the newly created “Sharia-Free America Caucus”, a group of US representatives standing against what one founding member described as “a religion of violence, abuse of women, and ruthless political conquest. Its laws and practices have no place in American society.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” the staffer said, with a wave of his hand. “Muslims are just the low-hanging fruit. Really it is about Indians. And brown people in general. And the Jews, too. It won’t get in the way of putting America first. Really the only Member [of the Caucus] who believes all the bullshit about Israel is Randy Fine.”

The whipping up of Islamophobia in the US has become visible and visceral, to the extent that many in the Muslim community now look back almost wistfully to the days of George W Bush, who made a point, in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, of visiting a mosque and declaring that “Islam is peace”. Such efforts at inclusivity have almost vanished entirely from the Republican Party, replaced by an outright bigotry that has inspired a spike in anti-Muslim attacks, such as the shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego in May that killed two worshippers and a security guard. A recent proposal by Dallas Fort Worth international........

© Al Jazeera