25 Years After 9/11: How Islamophobia Became an American Industry

Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, American Muslims are still living with consequences that extend far beyond that horrific morning.

For many Muslim communities, 9/11 did not simply produce a period of suspicion that eventually disappeared. It helped create a political, media and security infrastructure in which Islam and Muslims could repeatedly be framed as objects of suspicion.

The contrast is striking.

Six days after the attacks, President George W. Bush visited the Islamic Center of Washington and declared that “Islam is peace,” warning Americans against targeting Muslim women and families.

Yet the years that followed told a more complicated story.

Wars launched in Afghanistan and Iraq brought catastrophic consequences across Muslim-majority countries, while Muslim charities, mosques, organisations and community leaders in the United States faced unprecedented scrutiny.

Government surveillance and counterterrorism programs increasingly intersected with Muslim religious and community life.

And rather than disappearing with time, public suspicion hardened.

According to Pew Research Center, only 25% of Americans surveyed in March 2002 believed Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence.

By 2026, that figure had risen to 51%.

Another Pew survey found that 43% of Americans considered Muslims less patriotic than other citizens, while 42% believed Muslim Americans had a negative impact on the country.

After a quarter-century of Muslim Americans living, working and raising families alongside their neighbours, the numbers reveal something uncomfortable: familiarity alone did not dismantle the narrative.

From prejudice to an industry

The post-9/11 story cannot be understood purely as spontaneous public fear.

An entire ecosystem developed around promoting hostility toward Islam.

In its influential 2011 investigation Fear, Inc., the Center for American Progress documented what it described as an “Islamophobia network” linking wealthy donors, think tanks, political activists, media personalities and advocacy organisations.

The investigation traced $42.6 million from seven foundations and charitable organisations to groups associated with that network between 2001 and 2009.

Organisations such as Campus Watch, Jihad Watch and ACT for America emerged or expanded during this period, helping push narratives portraying Islamic belief and Muslim political participation as threats to Western society.

A later report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the University of California, Berkeley identified dozens of organisations it associated with the broader Islamophobia industry.

The significance is not merely that anti-Muslim opinions existed.

It is that those opinions could be funded, professionalised, packaged and repeatedly distributed through political and media channels.

The security state that followed 9/11

At the same time, Washington was transforming its national-security infrastructure.

The Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not exist when the September 11 attacks occurred.

The Homeland Security Act was signed in November 2002, bringing 22 federal agencies and components under a massive new security bureaucracy. ICE followed in 2003.

Another program, the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, required certain male non-citizens from 25 designated countries to register with authorities, submit fingerprints and photographs and undergo questioning.

Almost all of the countries targeted were Muslim-majority states.

The program did not formally identify people by religion, but its impact overwhelmingly fell on Muslim and Middle Eastern communities.

This matters because the post-9/11 era did not simply change public attitudes. It reshaped the machinery through which immigration, surveillance and national security were administered.

Those institutions later expanded well beyond their original focus, demonstrating how emergency powers and structures created during one political moment can survive long after that moment has passed.

Islam becomes an open political target

By Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, rhetoric that had previously circulated on the political margins was being voiced openly by a presidential candidate.

“I think Islam hates us,” Trump told CNN.

In 2017, his administration implemented the travel restrictions that became widely known as the “Muslim ban.”

The rhetoric has continued.

In 2026, Republican lawmakers Keith Self and Chip Roy launched what they called the “Sharia Free America Caucus,” arguing that Islamic law poses a threat to American institutions.

When Muslims entered politics themselves, their religion frequently became part of the attack.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed have both faced hostility centred explicitly on their Muslim identity.

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace went even further in August, declaring that “every single Muslim holding public office in America” represented a threat to the republic.

Such language would have once been considered politically extraordinary.

Today, it can be presented as mainstream political commentary.

When rhetoric leaves the screen

The danger is not limited to elections or television debates.

Muslim communities continue to experience mosque protests, harassment and threats.

The 2019 Christchurch massacre demonstrated in the most horrific way what ideological dehumanisation can produce when translated into violence. Worshippers were murdered while attending Friday prayer.

The attacker’s manifesto referenced political narratives circulating far beyond New Zealand, including admiration for Trump as a symbol of renewed white identity.

Years later, extremists continue to cite previous attackers as inspiration.

Meanwhile, CAIR recorded 8,683 civil-rights complaints in 2025, the highest annual total in the organisation’s history.

These figures are not equivalent to a national database of verified hate crimes, but they provide another indication of how frequently Muslim Americans continue to seek assistance over discrimination, harassment and civil-rights concerns.

Twenty-five years later

The most important lesson of the last quarter-century may be that Islamophobia cannot be understood simply as people disliking Muslims.

It became something larger.

Political organisations could campaign on it.

Media personalities could monetise it.

Advocacy groups could fund it.

Governments could construct policies around suspicions associated with it.

And politicians could increasingly speak about Muslim citizens in language that would be considered unacceptable if directed at many other religious communities.

On September 11, Americans rightly remember the innocent people murdered in those attacks.

Muslims remember them too.

But remembering 9/11 should not require ignoring what followed: wars that devastated entire countries, security policies that disproportionately affected Muslim communities, and an anti-Muslim political industry that grew enormously during the following decades.

Twenty-five years later, Muslim families walking into a mosque on Friday are not asking for special treatment.

They are asking for something considerably simpler:

To enter their place of worship, pray in peace and return home without being treated as suspects in their own country.