Terrified: How Anti-Muslim Fringe Organizations Became Mainstream

In July 2010, Terry Jones, the pastor of a small fundamentalist church in Florida, announced plans to burn two hundred Qur'ans on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Though he ended up canceling the stunt in the face of widespread public backlash, his threat sparked violent protests across the Muslim world that left at least twenty people dead. In Terrified, Christopher Bail demonstrates how the beliefs of fanatics like Jones are inspired by a rapidly expanding network of anti-Muslim organizations that exert profound influence on American understanding of Islam.Bail traces how the anti-Muslim narrative of the political fringe has captivated large segments of the American media, government, and general public, validating the views of extremists who argue that the United States is at war with Islam and marginalizing mainstream Muslim-Americans who are uniquely positioned to discredit such claims. Drawing on cultural sociology, social network theory, and social psychology, he shows how anti-Muslim organizations gained visibility in the public sphere, commandeered a sense of legitimacy, and redefined the contours of contemporary debate, shifting it ever outward toward the fringe. Bail illustrates his pioneering theoretical argument through a big-data analysis of more than one hundred organizations struggling to shape public discourse about Islam, tracing their impact on hundreds of thousands of newspaper articles, television transcripts, legislative debates, and social media messages produced since the September 11 attacks. The book also features in-depth interviews with the leaders of these organizations, providing a rare look at how anti-Muslim organizations entered the American mainstream.

About the Author :
BailChristopher A.: Christopher Bail is assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Review :
"Honorable Mention for the 2016 Charles Tilly Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award, Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section of the American Sociological Association" "Winner of the 2015 ARNOVA Award for Outstanding Book in Nonprofit and Voluntary Action Research" "Winner of the 2016 Distinguished Book Award, Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological Association" "Terrified is a major contribution to the scholarship on the public influence of anti-Muslin organizations and the role of the media in empowering them."---Todd Green, Political Science Quarterly "A fascinating exploration of the rising influence of anti- Muslim fringe organizations in the United States after September 11, 2001. . . . This book represents a veritable methodological primer for researchers interested in measuring collective meaning."---Mary-Hunter McDonnell, Administrative Science Quarterly "Bail quite effectively shows how and why anti-Muslim content and 'experts' worked their way into positions of prominence, even though they were not well funded or well connected in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Terrified is highly recommended for all levels."-- "Choice" "Bail's Terrified offers a fascinating account of how anti-Islam fringe groups construct a cultural environment in which they can propagate negative emotions upon which the media can build. It presents an excellent survey of the activities of such groups and social media networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, to name a few."---Mohd Yaseen Gada, The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences "Bail's account is complex, nuanced, and quite persuasive. In fact, it is an outstanding example of long-form work in the emerging 'big data' genre. The seamless interweaving of qualitative and computational methods often distinguishes the best work in computational sociology. Bail's work is no exception. . . . I expect that Terrified will be an essential guide to many storms brewing on the cultural horizon, and I am glad that Bail has given it to us."---Jacob G. Foster, American Journal of Sociology "The book not only lays bare the behind-the-scenes story of a momentous shift in public opinion, it employs cutting-edge computer analysis techniques applied to large archives of data to develop a new theoretical outlook, capable of making sense of the whole field of competing organizations struggling to shape public opinion, not just studying one or two the most successful ones. The result is not only a detailed account of a specific, significant, and also very pernicious example of cultural evolution, but also a case study in how to more rigorously study cultural evolution more generally in the future."---Paul Rosenberg, Salon