On October 16, WND ran Laura Hollis’s commentary asking whether banning Muslim stores and restaurants is the answer. It names no one who proposed such a ban, and its next-to-last paragraph says a ban “will not” help. The headline is a question with a ban inside it. It names no one who proposed a ban, and neither does the column: its only source is “plenty of social media posts”, unnamed and unlinked. The question does the work a proposal would do. The answer, “will not”, arrives in the 17th of 18 paragraphs, in different words: “Islamic stores and halal restaurants”. A reader of the headline alone leaves with a ban and a faith’s name. A reader of the page leaves with a no. The peg is one store, Modefa, 5,000 square feet in Richardson, Texas, as described by an X account the page does not link. One shop becomes a faith’s stores and restaurants. That is the habit the headline counts on: the other group’s one member stands for all of them. The tell is a faith named where one business opened. The column’s own figure puts Muslims at “no more than 1.6%” of Americans. On this page the move sits between Essentialization and Threat Assessment: the tag reads ‘islam expansionism’. The same day, Ted Cruz told Hannity viewers of a “hostile takeover” by “communists and Islamists”, with “commonsense conservatives” as the answer at the polls. One America News asked why sharia is becoming a campaign issue. Beside them, The Blaze on a Des Plaines case: “Man faces 6 felony hate crime charges” over alleged threats to women in hijabs. There, one man’s alleged act stays one man’s. An Illinois lawmaker’s words to the women: “You belong here.”
