Even on the level of daily life, a few Muslim extremists have transformed the experience for Americans (and not only Americans) of travelling, of trying to have what used to be known as a good time. Flying, we submit to the Richard Reid Memorial Shoe Scanner and cram our 100ml toiletries into humiliating one-litre Ziplock bags; most of us can't even remember the halcyon days when you could actually pack a corkscrew in hand luggage. Thanks to Underpants Man, all-body scanners will increasingly slow security from a crawl to a baby wiggle. 

Even a jaunt to watch tennis at the US Open involves long queues to have your tuna sandwiches rifled. Reading the exacting details of which bags are admitted into stadium grounds — never backpacks, and only single-compartment holdalls no larger than 12"x12"x16" — you can't help but recall of whom security is most afraid: Muslims. Indeed, even the political logic that pressured Terry Jones to abandon his Koran burning exuded a familiar whiff of blackmail: if you rile those Muslim guys, they will blow us all up.

The point is not that, as Pastor Jones once posted outside his dishevelled little church in Gainesville, "Islam is of the devil." And unquestionably, many Muslims construct a completely different "narrative", as we're all supposed to say now: Americans are killing innocents with drone strikes, Americans are occupying Muslim countries, Americans are supporting Israeli settlements... Still, as New York Times columnist David Brooks astutely observed in September, America is at war with two Muslim insurgencies. Compared to bigotry towards Germans in the First World War and towards the Japanese in the Second, so far America's attitudes towards its Muslim citizens have proved mercifully temperate.