Donald Trump has violated almost every rule of political and social decorum in recent months. His inflammatory rhetoric now resonates across the world, finding echoes among Hindu supremacists in India and far-right politicians in Europe. Trump and his vociferous supporters seem to be setting up rancorous conflicts within and between societies.
In the process, however, Trump has made a little-acknowledged, and even vigorously denied, phenomenon seem incontrovertible: Islamophobia, the prejudice that blames an ancient religion for the crimes of some present-day murderers and fanatics, and makes a diverse population of 1.5 billion people look suspect in the eyes of the rest.
This bigotry has flourished, largely unchecked, for some years now. It raised its grisly head in even proudly liberal New York during the controversy over the "Ground Zero Mosque" before running into some principled political opposition. The occasional resistance to it in the mainstream media — such as Ben Affleck's exasperated response to Bill Maher, or Reza Aslan's brisk education of a befuddled Fox News presenter — goes viral simply because it is so rare.