The racist institution is Charlie Hebdo. The article is suggesting vigilance against the use of this attack to advance the dangerous Islamophobia that has plagued the European ideological landscape for a couple years now.

This is exactly what my final paragraphs were targeted at. It is simplistic to reduce Charlie Hebdo and similar publications (I'm not sure how generous to be — you've used "Charlie Hebdo" and "racist publications" interchangeably; I've said Hebdo is fairly representative of satirical comics) to a racist institution or, to inverse the words, racism at an institutional level. As a low-ground thought, Charlie Hebdo has put its sights to more than just religion. It had a freedom to say what it wanted, and sometimes targeted race. Also, I find it difficult to believe Charlie Hebdo has greatly propagated racism. In my eyes, it and similar publications are an aggravator rather than an instigator. I don't know if you find this point worth debating. According to the article, at least, I'm woefully under-qualified:

If you need to be convinced of this, then I suggest you do your research, beginning with reading Edward Said’s Orientalism, as well as some basic introductory texts on Islamophobia, and then come back to the conversation.

So although you've said "this isn't a discussion of institutionalised racism [necessarily]", I think it's important to establish whether or not it is actually the case. Which the author has avoided. Are you any more familiar with his reasoning here than I am?

Oh look, the response this article preempted totally happened

I'm not sure to what extent your Washington Post article evidences something that is not "backlash implemented by the state". You've corrected my interpretation of statist backlash by saying that it is anything by anyone that sides with the state intervening against Islam. I'm not going to claim any particular knowledge of the countries outside of the UK and France, but neither of those two subsections involve people or statistics since the event that are not intimately involved with the state. I would therefore maintain that we should wait longer before deciding that this is indeed a pre-emptive response to a backlash which, by your definition, involves anyone who desires statist measures against Islam.

I mainly want to get across that I feel this article is as knee-jerk and awkward as some of the statements that it plans to denigrate. Would you be more inclined to agree with my view if I said:

If deeming "the killers... possibly linked to Islamic State... exacting political retribution for the publication’s regular satirical attacks on Islam by executing its journalists" terrorism is a narrative assumption then surely so is the idea that the "use of this tragedy to justify Islamophobic ideologies which call for state response to some sort of "Muslim problem" will happen?