The rise of Islamophobia in Western nations particularly the United States has become quite
troublesome over the past five years (Ott 2018). Assaults hate crimes and discrimination
have always been a difficult reality for many Muslims in Western nations. Still it has sharply
risen in the past half a decade especially in the United States. Unfortunately the increase
in Islamophobia parallels the rise of nationalist political parties with authoritarian
sympathies (Bieber 2018). Trends have been similar in most industrialized Western nations
intertwined with rising wealth inequality political disenfranchisement and the erosion of
trust in social institutions all of which have made the opportunity for authoritarian
governments who explicitly target Middle Eastern and Muslim peoples
