Saudi Arabia has been executing dissidents, jailing journalists, and conducting a war in Yemen that has produced one of the worst humanitarian crises on earth.
Britain, France, and America have sold it weapons throughout.
Not reluctantly. Not with conditions. Enthusiastically, with trade delegations and arms fairs and billions in contracts.
The same governments that speak about Muslim extremism as an "existential threat" to "Western values" are the primary suppliers of the regime that funds the specific theological tradition, Wahhabism, most associated with the extremism they claim to be fighting.
This is not a paradox.
It is a policy.
The extremism is useful. The weapons sales are profitable. The humanitarian crisis in Yemen is not a television story in most Western countries.
If you want to understand Islamophobia, not as a cultural accident but as a political function, start here.
Start with who benefits from a population that fears Islam in the abstract and cannot see the arms deal in the specific.