My family and I live right outside Queens, some 20 miles from where the World Trade Center once stood. On Sept. 11, 2001, I could see the smoke from the towers and later, as the day progressed, could smell it. The thick smoke that traveled those 20 miles to my home was a dangerous reminder of what can happen if radical ideology is left unchecked.

Over six years later, this isn’t my only memory of that day. I remember staring at my lunch when a classmate of mine proudly announced that everyone except for the Muslims is equal in the eyes of the Constitution. Later in the halls I heard “We need to kill them all, wherever they are.”

I was one of a handful of American Muslims at a public high school of about 1,500 students. As a 10th-grader I didn’t really have much facial hair to speak of, and I obviously didn’t wear the hijab, the traditional Islamic headscarf, so there wasn’t any overt expression of my Islam. The only reason many knew I was Muslim was because I didn’t drink alcohol.

I went home that day in tears. I didn’t cry just because I had encountered bigotry; in fact, I felt that somehow I had deserved it since I was of the same faith as the hijackers. My father assured me that such bigotry is always disgusting, irrespective of context, but in typical Atticus Finchian form, he insisted that I try to recognize where my classmates were coming from when they made such comments. I remember thinking that I understood where they were coming from. After all, I was coming from the same place: Just like my classmates, I was a target of the hijackers.

For most Americans, 9/11 was an unfortunate introduction to Islam. In many ways it was my own introduction to a faith that I had previously only nominally observed. And therein lay the problem: In my simplistic thinking, I had equated the actions of that day with an entire faith, and not simply with a group of people who have a dangerously divisive ideology.

But an equally dangerous and divisive ideology exists in the form of Islamophobia.

It is no secret that Islamophobia exists in many places, especially in America. Worse yet, there is a deliberate campaign that takes advantage of that wound felt by most Americans on 9/11. David Horowitz has become a leader of this campaign. Horowitz is an opportunistic champion of the fight against what he calls “Islamofascism.”

Any reasonable reader should be able to recognize the term “Islamofascism” as a deliberate attempt to conflate Islam and fascism. Horowitz’s campaign equates organized Muslim groups in America — even those as benign as the Muslim Students Association of which I am a former president — with fascism. In doing so, he is nothing more than a modern-day Joe McCarthy, instigating a paranoia that targets American Muslims like me.

Islam and Muslims have been conveniently placed in the void left by the Soviet Union and communism in the post-Cold War era. The widespread usage of the term “Islamofascism” ignores the important historical context of fascism itself: Not only were such totalitarian movements of the early 20th century nationalist, they were also secular. Al-Qaeda is neither nationalist nor secular. Islam rejects both the fascist's worship of the state and the terrorist's use of indiscriminate violence against civilians. The threat of radical Islam is very real, but “Islamofascism” is an oxymoron that confuses the real issues.

The same way Muslim extremists seek to gain legitimacy by picking on the wounds sustained by the greater Muslim community, there are extremists here at home who use the same politics of fear to build a following of their own. It is in their opportunistic political tactics and espousal of hate that these two groups are similar, not in the manner in which they seek to carry out their ambitions. The hard truth of the matter is that those who create fear of Islam and its one billion or more followers by demanding a war against “Islamofascism” create that fear in the same manner as do those who desire war against America. Both these groups stand together promoting hate.

This week, Horowitz and the likes of conservative pundit Ann Coulter and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) have embarked on a campaign they call “Islamofascism Awareness Week.” It is taking place at almost 100 college campuses across the country. Horowitz had originally placed Georgetown on his list of campuses that would play host to his prejudice, but, to the credit of our university, he didn’t find a group here that would allow themselves to be used by his campaign. While groups on our campus recognized the bigotry in his campaign, some student groups at Yale, Columbia and George Washington, among other universities, apparently did not.

These student groups fail to recognize that Horowitz hates me for a part of my identity the same way that Osama bin Laden hates me with equal rigor for another part of my identity.

There is nothing Islamic about fascism, and there is certainly nothing fascist about Islam. To assert otherwise is not only grossly misleading but also serves to perpetuate the worst kind of hatred.

Abed Bhuyan is a senior in the School of Foreign Service and the co-chair of the Muslim Student Association Public Affairs Committee.