Islamophobia
Islamophobia is the irrational fear of, hostility towards, or hatred of the religion of Islam or Muslims in general. Islamophobia is characterised as a form of religious or cultural bigotry in which Muslims are stereotyped as a geopolitical threat or a source of terrorism. Muslims, with diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds on a worldwide scale, are often inaccurately portrayed by Islamophobes as a single homogeneous racial group.
The causes of increased Islamophobia across the world since the end of the Cold War are many. These include the quasi-racialist stereotypes against Muslims that proliferated through the Western media since the 1990s, the "war on terror" campaign launched by the United States after the September 11 attacks, the rise of the Islamic State in the aftermath of the Iraq War, terrorist attacks carried out by Islamist militants in the United States and Europe, anti-Muslim rhetoric disseminated by white nationalist organizations through the internet, and the radicalisation of Christian nationalist and far-right groups with growing hostility towards Muslims in the United States and the European Union.
A study conducted in 2013 revealed that Muslim women, especially those wearing headscarves or face veils, are more vulnerable to suffer from Islamophobic attacks than Muslim men. Due to the racialised nature of Islamophobic discrimination and attacks suffered by numerous Muslims in their daily lives, several scholars have asserted that Islamophobia has explicit racist dimensions. On 15 March 2022, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution by consensus which was introduced by Pakistan on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation that proclaimed March 15 as 'International Day To Combat Islamophobia'.
The exact definition of the term "Islamophobia" has been a subject of debate amongst Western analysts. Detractors of the term have proposed alternative terms, such as "anti-Muslim", to denote prejudice or discrimination against Muslims. It has been alleged, often by right-wing commentators, that the term is sometimes used to avoid criticism of Islam, by removing the distinction between racism and criticism of religious doctrine or practice. However, academics, activists and experts who support the terminology have denounced such characterisations as attempts to deny the existence of Islamophobia.
Terms
There are a number of other possible terms which are also used in order to refer to negative feelings and attitudes towards Islam and Muslims, such as anti-Muslimism, intolerance against Muslims, anti-Muslim prejudice, anti-Muslim bigotry, hatred of Muslims, anti-Islamism, Muslimophobia, demonisation of Islam, or demonisation of Muslims. In German, Islamophobie and Islamfeindlichkeit are used. The Scandinavian term Muslimhat literally means "hatred of Muslims".When discrimination towards Muslims has placed an emphasis on their religious affiliation and adherence, it has been termed Muslimphobia, the alternative form of Muslimophobia, Islamophobism, antimuslimness and antimuslimism. Individuals who discriminate against Muslims in general have been termed Islamophobes, Islamophobists, anti-Muslimists, antimuslimists, islamophobiacs, anti-Muhammadan, Muslimphobes or its alternative spelling of Muslimophobes, while religiously intolerant individuals motivated by a specific anti-Muslim agenda or bigotry have been described as being anti-mosque, anti-Shiites, anti-Sufism and anti-Sunni.
Etymology and definitions
The term Islamophobia came into widespread use in the 1990s after it was defined by the Runnymede Foundation. While earlier uses of the term have been found, they did not have the current meaning.Islamophobia has been described as a "copycat neologism," a neologism that copies an earlier neologism without regard to how that neologism was formed. Hence, it copies terms such as homophobia, which is prejudice against homosexuals. These earlier terms may have been copycat neologisms of hydrophobia, which is an historical term for rabies, a lethal illness that causes insanity.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word means "Intense dislike or fear of Islam, esp. as a political force; hostility or prejudice towards Muslims". It is attested in English as early as 1923 to quote the French word islamophobie, found in a thesis published by Alain Quellien in 1910 to describe "a prejudice against Islam that is widespread among the peoples of Western and Christian civilization". The expression did not immediately turn into the vocabulary of the English-speaking world though, which preferred the expression "feelings inimical to Islam", until its re-appearance in an article by Georges Chahati Anawati in 1976. The term did not exist in the Muslim world, and was later translated in the 1990s as ruhāb al-islām in Arabic, literally "phobia of Islam".
The University of California at Berkeley's Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project suggested this working definition: "Islamophobia is a contrived fear or prejudice fomented by the existing Eurocentric and Orientalist global power structure. It is directed at a perceived or real Muslim threat through the maintenance and extension of existing disparities in economic, political, social and cultural relations, while rationalizing the necessity to deploy violence as a tool to achieve 'civilizational rehab' of the target communities. Islamophobia reintroduces and reaffirms a global racial structure through which resource distribution disparities are maintained and extended."
Debate on the term and its limitations
In 1996, the Runnymede Trust established the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, chaired by Gordon Conway, the vice-chancellor of the University of Sussex. The Commission's report, Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, was published in November 1997 by the Home Secretary, Jack Straw. In the Runnymede report, Islamophobia was defined as "an outlook or world-view involving an unfounded dread and dislike of Muslims, which results in practices of exclusion and discrimination." The introduction of the term was justified by the report's assessment that "anti-Muslim prejudice has grown so considerably and so rapidly in recent years that a new item in the vocabulary is needed".In 2008, a workshop on 'Thinking Through Islamophobia' proposed a definition of Islamophobia which rejected the idea of Islamophobia as being the product of closed and open views of Islam and focused on Islamophobia as performative which problematised Muslim agency and identity. The symposium was an early attempt to bring insights from critical race theory, postcolonial and decolonial thought to bear on the question of Islamophobia.
At a 2009 symposium on "Islamophobia and Religious Discrimination", Robin Richardson, a former director of the Runnymede Trust and the editor of Islamophobia: a challenge for us all, said that "the disadvantages of the term Islamophobia are significant" on seven different grounds, including that it implies it is merely a "severe mental illness" affecting "only a tiny minority of people"; that use of the term makes those to whom it is applied "defensive and defiant" and absolves the user of "the responsibility of trying to understand them" or trying to change their views; that it implies that hostility to Muslims is divorced from factors such as skin color, immigrant status, fear of fundamentalism, or political or economic conflicts; that it conflates prejudice against Muslims in one's own country with dislike of Muslims in countries with which the West is in conflict; that it fails to distinguish between people who are against all religion from people who dislike Islam specifically; and that the actual issue being described is hostility to Muslims, "an ethno-religious identity within European countries", rather than hostility to Islam. Nonetheless, he argued that the term is here to stay, and that it is important to define it precisely.
The exact definition of Islamophobia continues to be discussed, with academics such as Chris Allen saying that it lacks a clear definition. According to Erik Bleich, in his article "Defining and Researching Islamophobia", even when definitions are more specific, there is still significant variation in the precise formulations of Islamophobia. As with parallel concepts like homophobia or xenophobia, Islamophobia connotes a broader set of negative attitudes or emotions directed at individuals of groups because of perceived membership in a defined category. Mattias Gardell defined Islamophobia as "socially reproduced prejudices and aversion to Islam and Muslims, as well as actions and practices that attack, exclude or discriminate against persons on the basis that they are or perceived to be Muslim and be associated with Islam".
Irrational fear
As opposed to being a psychological or individualistic phobia, according to professors of religion Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, "Islamophobia" connotes a social anxiety about Islam and Muslims. Some social scientists have adopted this definition and developed instruments to measure Islamophobia in form of fearful attitudes towards, and avoidance of, Muslims and Islam, arguing that Islamophobia should "essentially be understood as an affective part of social stigma towards Islam and Muslims, namely fear".Relation to racism
Several scholars consider Islamophobia to be a form of racism. A 2007 article in Journal of Sociology defines Islamophobia as anti-Muslim racism and a continuation of anti-Asian, anti-Turkic and anti-Arab racism. In their books, Deepa Kumar and Junaid Rana have argued that formation of Islamophobic discourses has paralleled the development of other forms of racial bigotry. Similarly, John Denham has drawn parallels between modern Islamophobia and the antisemitism of the 1930s, as have Maud Olofsson and Jan Hjärpe, among others.Others have questioned the relationship between Islamophobia and racism. Jocelyne Cesari writes that "academics are still debating the legitimacy of the term and questioning how it differs from other terms such as racism, anti-Islamism, anti-Muslimness, and anti-Semitism." Erdenir finds that "there is no consensus on the scope and content of the term and its relationship with concepts such as racism..." and Shryock, reviewing the use of the term across national boundaries, comes to the same conclusion.
Some scholars view Islamophobia and racism as partially overlapping phenomena. Diane Frost defines Islamophobia as anti-Muslim feeling and violence based on "race" or religion. Islamophobia may also target people who have Muslim names, or have a look that is associated with Muslims. According to Alan Johnson, Islamophobia sometimes can be nothing more than xenophobia or racism "wrapped in religious terms". Sociologists Yasmin Hussain and Paul Bagguley stated that racism and Islamophobia are "analytically distinct", but "empirically inter-related".
The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance defines Islamophobia as "the fear of or prejudiced viewpoint towards Islam, Muslims and matters pertaining to them", adding that whether "it takes the shape of daily forms of racism and discrimination or more violent forms, Islamophobia is a violation of human rights and a threat to social cohesion".