The 'War on Terror' has been the longest ongoing conflict that the US has been involved in and shows no sign of ending in the near future. The threat of terrorism is something that the US government has continually warned the populace about prior to the start of the 'war on terror.' The the fear that the US places on terrorism focuses on Islamic extremism in particular and can be considered to be unjust. This leads to the understanding that the US takes part in Islamophobia because of its continuation of an unjust fear towards Islam. Islamophobia is an idea that has primarily been associated with individuals instead of the state or media. This thesis utilizes the work of Khaled Beydoun to show how the US has kept the idea of Islamophobia away from the state's sphere of responsibility while also creating policy that takes part in Islamophobia. Beydoun provides this thesis with new definitions for Islamophobia that allow for new conclusions to be made when the state is considered. This is combined with an understanding of how the media covers events and protects the state from the ideas of Islamophobia. The understanding of violence, as shown by Asad, created within the state influences this thesis greatly because of its connection to how the state reacts to attacks. The state has historically targeted minority groups as an "other" that can be targeted with policy and seen as a threat to the populace. This has allowed far-right groups who target minority groups to grow without being targeted by the state, these groups are allowed to continue their violence because it aligns with the states goals. This thesis looks to combine these ideas with case studies of different attacks in order to show how the US utilizes Islamophobia in counterterrorism policy. / Master of Arts / The United States has been involved in the 'war on terror' since the attacks of September 11, 2001. This has led the US to creating policy that has been meant to protect the populace from another attack of this caliber from happening. The policies that have been created have focused on targeting the threat of Islamic extremist violence. This thesis looks to show how the US has unfairly targeted Muslim populations with the policy that it has created, while other threats have grown without being addressed. First, it will be shown how Islamophobia is not something that can only be committed by an individual, as commonly believed. This thesis will utilize new definitions of islamophobia to highlight how the state can take part in islamophobia and how Islamophobia is kept from being associated with the state. This will be combined with a discussion of three different cases, as well as a discussion of how the US creates policies. The US historically created policy based upon the enemy that it had identified at the time, the current case being Islamic extremism. This targeting has generally been focused on minority groups while larger far-right groups have gone about without being targeted. Far-right groups grew in this time period because the state did not label them as a threat and they carried out violence against the targets identified by the state. This thesis will show how the state has allowed far-right violence to grow within the state and allowed it to become a part of the violence within the state while targeting minority groups that have smaller followings and pose less of a direct threat. It will look to show how the state has enabled this growth while continually focusing policy in another direction. Combining these ideas with the cases that are studied allow this thesis to answer, "how does the US utilize Islamophobia in counterterrorism policy?"

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