ABSTRACT
The 9/11 terrorist attack on the symbols of US economic and military power at the beginning of the twenty-first century was a hell-sent gift to professional Islamophobes. They proclaimed that the much-vaunted clash of civilisations had now begun and that the only real civilisation, America, must win it decisively by any and every means. These Islamophobes, who fear Islam and regard it as a threat, range from the scholarly Bernard Lewis, who claims that Islam is simply a failed religion, to the think-tanker Daniel Pipes, who says that all Muslims are inherently violent, to the populist Franklin Graham, who says that the Prophet Muhammad, salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, was a paedophile and that Islam is the incarnation of evil.
