I can't say the scare is that bad even in the US.
We've all heard the stories against Muslims on the news, certainly, but what we haven't heard are the stories of the peaceful Muslims, which constitute perhaps more than 99% of the Muslim population in America. Now, I live in NYC, and we had one of these issues pop up recently with a mosque being built near the former WTC site, which a lot of outside conservatives came up and protested the building of - desecration of the site or some other BS like that, completely ignoring there was already a mosque there and they just wanted to renovate it as they turned the rest of the building into a community centre, not unlike a Jewish community centre also in NY. Had the building been stopped over that, that would lead me to believe in a wide spread "Islamophobia". But it's still a go-ahead on the project.
Another example I can think of was this one town in Minnesota or Michigan, I forgot which one - a primarily Islamic town, and the high school football team's practice coincided with Ramadan, a fasting month. 95% of the players were Muslim and therefore had to abstain from water during the day, which is suicide during football practice, dehydration galore. With the approval of the non-Muslim members of the team, their parents, and the general community, this high school decided to have their practice sessions in the early morning instead of after school, which meant players getting to the field around 4 am. Again, almost everybody you can think of who would be against this on the outside started complaining, while almost nobody who actually lived in this town did - they knew the circumstances and the general situation much better than anyone on the outside could. Humorous complaints too, stuff like the players "would have their school days wrecked" or "would miss out socially" or "would have less time to do their homework", as if they cared about it beforehand, or if those complaints even made sense. Nothing changed as a result of their complaints, only that football practice was moved back to after-school during the non-fasting periods.
I guess my point is that such a scare exists, obviously, and it is an irrational one, but it's a largely contained thing, and the media / political movements only make the scare look stronger than it is. In the US, this is a scare that's limited to a number of people who seek to make up for it by stirring up conflicts which they are not personally involved in. In the case of the "ground zero mosque", it was conservative political figures, a pastor from Florida, and 9/11 families who provided the bulk of the outrage against it. In the case of the morning football practice, it was state political figures who made it news in the first place. I don't see a problem with Islam, and I'm sure a lot of Americans don't. But we have a media that loves to stir shit up and make a big fuss over nothing, and an even bigger fuss out of something, and we're at war. So we're bound to see some hatred on our own soil.
I don't know enough about the situation in Europe ATM, all I know is that France is beating us at our own game. (The Ivory Coast AND Libya? 2 wars in 2 months?)
