The plan affirms Manichaean dualisms which polarize Muslims and reinforce the colonial ‘war on terror’. Counterhegemonic projects are key to resisting Islamophobia.

The ‘war on terror’ dispositif () gains its State-centric legitimacy in the politico-media complex via a specific costly association (to adapt Freud), the metonymic displacement: terrorists → Muslims (Beshara, 2018a). This dangerous displacement functions like an unconscious mantra, or a “point de capiton” (, p. 681, Italics in original), in the symbolic field. The mantra’s racist logic is best captured in the following falsism espoused by many conservatives in the United States: Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims. The displacement (terrorists → Muslims), and accompanying conflation (Muslims = Arabs), is foundational to the binarism of the ‘war on terror’ discourse, which in turn positions postcolonial subjects in a manifest way as either ‘counterterrorists’ (us) or ‘terrorists’ (them). In Bush II’s () infamous words, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” The rhetoric of ‘us vs. them’ is not a logical paradox, according to , since for him colonialism “is precisely the organization of a Manichaean world, of a compartmentalized world” (p. 43). Even though the Manichean logic of “just war theory” can be easily deconstructed using Greimas and Rastier’s (1968) semiotic square, the painful truth is that binarism, in general is a foundational structure in any symbolic universe. Therefore, a substantial segment of the Euro-American public accepts the implicit Manichaeism of the ‘war on terror’ discourse as a commonsensical support for the “clash of civilizations” () myth or grand narrative. When  writes, “The colonial world is a Manichaean world” (p. 6), he means that even (and especially) scholar–activists who are occupying the ivory towers of academia are not living in a safe postcolonial space, but rather they, too, occupy a position in a neocolonial world. Given the objective reality of coloniality, it is our moral task as radical humanists to decolonize both latent and manifest Islamophobic knowledge (Bazian, 2014) by deconstructing the binarist, orientalist archive at its foundation (). The aim of our decolonization is the transformation of IICT into a counterhegemonic project: a transmodern/decolonial alternative. The logic of Manichaeism is not the logic of différance. Beyond a “play of difference” (, p. 133) between signs, the logic of Manichaenism is the logic of racism—“a global hierarchy of human superiority and inferiority” (Grosfoguel, Oso, & Christou, 2015, p. 636). That is why  argues that its logical conclusion is the dehumanization of the colonized subject (p. 7)—and by extension, the dehumanization of oppressors, too (). Having said that, let us keep in mind not only the West–East dialectic of knowledge (i.e., Orientalism) but also the North–South dialectic of power (i.e., Capitalism). Since Orientalism is a critical facilitator of a dehumanizing colonial discourse, the explosion of the binarist rhetoric/logic of the ‘war on terror’ discourse (e.g., the metonymic displacement: terrorists → Muslims) is the key to resisting everyday Islamophobia. I must add, however, that resistance to everyday Islamophobia must come from Muslims first and their allies second because “the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed [is] to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well” (, p. 44). Furthermore, there are at least two latent subject-positions that are not accounted for, but which are surprisingly afforded by the ‘war on terror’ discourse: namely, ‘not-counterterrorist’ and ‘not-terrorist.’ These two latent subject-positions are antiterrorist because they question and challenge the State-centric definition of ‘terrorism’ as political violence by nonstate actors against civilians. Antiterrorism expands the definition of terrorism to political violence by nonstate actors or the State against civilians (), which by implication allows for the possibility of viewing ‘counterterrorism’ as state terrorism—as  has been arguing for years regarding ‘humanitarian’ interventionism. Similarly,  distinguishes between humanitarianism and humanism when he writes: “The pedagogy of the oppressed, animated by authentic, humanist (not humanitarian) generosity, presents itself as a pedagogy of humankind” (p. 54, Italics added).