Islamophobia in the US rose sharply after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Anti-Muslim hate crime incidents reported to the FBI jumped from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001. Sikh, Arab and South Asian people were also attacked by assailants who assumed they were Muslim.
Government policy reinforced the pattern. A 2011 Associated Press investigation revealed that the New York Police Department had been secretly mapping and monitoring Muslim neighborhoods, mosques and student groups. The unit was disbanded in 2014. In January 2017, President Trump signed an executive order barring travel from several Muslim-majority countries. The Supreme Court upheld a later version in Trump v. Hawaii in 2018.
Islamophobia is often treated as only a religious issue, but it works through race. Muslims are frequently cast as foreign, even though many are US-born. Black Americans make up about one-fifth of US Muslims, according to a 2017 Pew Research Center survey, and Black Muslims face both anti-Black racism and anti-Muslim bias.