"International Islamic 'fundamentalism'

 has, following the collapse of the USSR and the end of the cold war, come to be perceived as a major threat to the West. The Western military-industrial complex, it has been argued, structurally requires an external enemy and where one does not exist in the shape of communism, a replacement has to be found or invented [1]. Political analysis that interprets Islamic fundamentalism at the international level as a powerful but secretive global network, within which funds, arms, personnel, and ideologies circulate, is a key component of Islamophobic constructions. The myth of an Islamic "International" in many ways reproduce the classic antisemitic belief in a "cosmopolitan" Jewish conspiracy to gain global power through a centralized and unified network. [2] If Islamic fundamentalism is viewed as a coherent and interlocking phenomenon, this carries an attendant danger that Islamophobia may become essentialized rather than comprehended as a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that can vary considerably from one specific sociopolitical and historical formation to another. At the level of the nation-state it might make sense to speak of Islamphobia in the plural, rather than in the singular. Public and governmental perceptions of Muslims are not the same in France as they are in Britain or the U.S. and elsewhere. [3]

-"Islamphobia in France and the 'Algerian Problem'" by Neil MacMaster in The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy, pg. 288