It should not need to be said, but most Muslims in Britain and America are no more involved in any conspiracy than Jews ever have been. The problem we all have worldwide — Muslims first — is that extremist groups exist which have power, influence and in some cases dominance and whose aims are expansionist, extremist and violent. If the spotlight is taken off them for a second they get off the hook. By taking it off them for years we not only focus on the wrong things, we actually encourage what we are trying to avoid. Suspicion and even hatred of Muslims could well rise. But it could only be successfully stopped — as we must hope it could be — by stopping radical Islam. The greatest fuel any such general movement could get, by comparison, would be to ignore the thing which sparks the suspicion — radical Islam — and attempt to cover for it.

The immediate aftermath of the Boston bombings brought some striking examples of this. In the days before the identities of the culprits were known several prominent left-wing journalists wrote that they were hoping the perpetrators would turn out to be "white" non-Muslim Americans. Once it was clear that the bombers were Muslims, opinion divided between those who said that the religion of the perpetrators was of no consequence and those who said they now feared that Muslims as a whole would be demonised as a result. This has been a staple of terrorist attacks since 9/11: the "anti-Muslim backlash" meme.

No "anti-Muslim" backlash has ever occurred. Americans, like the British, are infinitely more tolerant and opposed to bigotry than our politicians and media seem to realise. But the warning of such a backlash always serves the same end — to confuse public opinion over who is the perpetrator and who is the victim. Warnings of "backlash" — as in Boston — take attention away from the actual, specific victims (such as the eight-year-old Bostonian Martin Richard and his family) and towards a generalised sense of potential guilt.

The "Islamophobia" industry can find meaning only in such moments. It responds not to the terrorism but to the perceived "response" to it. Take Dr Hatem Bazian, Director of the "Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project" at UC Berkeley Center for Race and Gender. In the wake of Boston he condemned the "horrific crimes" of the Tsarnaev brothers which "left the City of Boston in fear." And then he went on: "But the Islamophobic machine committed crimes against our collective consciousness by exploiting the suffering and pain of our fellow citizens."

Here is one of the core reasons why "Islamophobia" or even fear of "Islamophobia" is such a destructive thing. For in the wake of an attack by any other group the pools in which they swim are gone over relentlessly; undercover exposés are carried out, names named and connections made. Were the Boston bombing to have been carried out by some Tea Party activist, for instance, every single politician, pundit and grouping that had ever inspired, influenced or engaged the perpetrator would have been crawled over and blamed. Even after all these years, our societal willingness to do this to radical Islamists remains too weak.