The Routledge International Handbook of Islamophobia

Irene Zempi, Imran Awan, Irene Zempi, Imran Awan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351135535
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología islámica

Islamophobic hate crimes have increased significantly following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and 7/7. More recently, the rhetoric surrounding Trump's election and presidency, Brexit, the rise of far-right groups and ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks worldwide have promoted a climate where Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiments have become 'legitimised'.

The Routledge International Handbook of Islamophobia provides a comprehensive single-volume collection of key readings in Islamophobia. Consisting of 32 chapters accessibly written by scholars, policy makers and practitioners, it seeks to examine the nature, extent, implications of, and responses to Islamophobic hate crime both nationally and internationally.

This volume will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Criminology, Victimology, Sociology, Social Policy, Religious Studies, Law and related Social Sciences subjects. It will also appeal to scholars, policy makers and practitioners working in and around the areas of Islamophobic hate crimes.

Part I

Conceptualising Islamophobia

1

The debate over the utility and precision of the term “Islamophobia”

Nathan C. Lean

Introduction

Within the academic disciplines that have come to study the phenomenon of Islamophobia in recent years, a trend has emerged: the laborious and ceaseless pursuit of defining the word. In conference talks and in the pages of various journal articles alike, scholars parse its etymological components, problematize its etymological deficiencies, and propose either their own definitions or coin entirely new terms that they believe capture more fully the reality of widespread prejudice that targets Muslims. In a way, much of this is to be expected. The fact remains that Islamophobia is a relatively new form of prejudice, at least in the eyes of the general public. Its drivers are not always easy to pin down. In some instances, it may appear that racism is an underlying motivator for Islamophobic rhetoric or actions, while in other instances, political factors, social dynamics, or actual biases about the religion of Islam itself may be at work. All of this is to say that the complexity of this form of societal prejudice lends itself to scholarly probing and to a natural desire to create clarity regarding the term.

Anticipated as such an academic exercise may be, the resulting flow of writing and scholarship over the past two decades has muddled more than it has clarified. Scholars and on-the-ground activists have butted heads over what to call prejudice that targets Muslims. Despite a plethora of new information, it is not clear at all that the debate is having any effect. This is compounded by an undeniable fact about language that those who have a stake in defining Islamophobia seem to miss: society, not scholars, usually decide what words they will use to identify and describe such prejudices, and usually the matter is simply one of what sticks. In this case, much to the chagrin of those that would argue that there is a better term that must be adopted, “Islamophobia” is the clear victor, and its definition does not matter—the word and its meaning have become clear to the general public and whatever slight variances in understandings of it exist, they do not undercut the basic spirit of the word as it is most commonly deployed. Thus, it is time to move past the hackneyed deliberations about the possibility of alternative words.

In what follows, I will argue precisely that point. To do so, I will invoke to a few different examples—some historical, others contemporary—that show the futility of debates over the definitions of this word. I will also attempt to highlight what I see as some of the blind spots that plague those scholars and activists who insist that the term “Islamophobia” is flawed and must be reconsidered. Admittedly, this argument is not pillared on an extensive data set or other irrefutable statistics that “prove” that one word is better than others, or one definition better than another. Rather it is driven by a common-sense-based approach that takes into consideration the multiple perspectives that have animated this discourse and juxtaposes them alongside observable realities and trends among the general public’s use and understanding of the word “Islamophobia.” To begin, we might consider some of the term’s descriptions and definitions that exist within the academy and non-governmental think tanks.

Identifying issues of clarity and content

At their core, virtually all of the extant definitions of Islamophobia point to some negative sentiment (usually on the part of non-Muslims, though this not explained) towards Muslims or Islam. That seems obvious enough, though when one looks closely at various descriptions of the word more complexities emerge than one might expect. Beyond spelling out the simple etymology of the term itself—an “irrational fear” (phobia) of Islam—other factors have been introduced that aim to qualify exactly what is happening when “Islamophobia” is present.

For the Runnymede Trust, who popularized the term in the late 1990s, “dread,” “hatred,” “fear,” and “dislike” are at play (Runnymede Trust 1997). The Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism (2018), a London-based Muslim advocacy group, used identical terms but added “hostility” to the mix. The European Muslim Initiative for Social Cohesion (2010) included buzzwords like “fear” and “hatred” in its 2010 definition of the word, but added that Islamophobia constituted “a form of intolerance and discrimination.” Scholars Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg (2008) make a similar move when they front their definition of term with an explanation of Islamophobia as a form of “social anxiety” that is “largely unexamined, yet deeply engrained” in Americans.

Elsewhere, the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) introduces the notion of “close-mindedness,” while Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative emphasizes that Islamophobia affects not only Muslims, but also those with a “perceived religious, national, or ethnic identity associated with Islam.”¹ Still, other scholars have chosen to situate Islamophobia in different ways, including: a “fear laden discourse;” a “single unified and negative conception of an essentialized Islam;” “a rejection of Islam, Muslim groups and Muslim individuals on the basis of prejudice and stereotypes;” or simply “indiscriminate negative attitudes or emotions directed at Islam or Muslims” (Zúquete 2008). One scholar, Chris Allen, who is among the most respected European academics when it comes to the issue of Islamophobia, has defined the phenomenon in a staggering 223 words, characterizing it as an “ideology” not unlike racism that sustains and perpetuates “negatively evaluated meaning” about Muslims and Islam, which has historical roots and which must also be understood in terms of “social action,” “power and domination,” “exclusionary practices,” and the presence of such constructions as “Muslim” or “Islam” to begin with (Allen 2010).

Needless to say, variety abounds and it is difficult to imagine how the differentiating components of each of these definitions would ever come together in any coherent or meaningful way. In several cases this has led some to suggest an abandonment of the term “Islamophobia” altogether. In its place, various alternatives have been proposed: “anti-Muslim prejudice,” “anti-Islam prejudice,” “anti-Muslim bigotry,” “anti-Islamism,” “anti-Muslim hate,” and even, oddly enough, “anti-Muslimism” (Halliday 2010). As one might expect, however, each of these iterations have their own respective definitions.

Importantly, the lack of clarity and agreement is not simply a matter that academics hash out in journal articles or conferences, either. Mainstream Muslim organizations are at odds over the term, too. Representatives from groups like Emgage USA (formerly Emerge USA) and Muslim Advocates have made the case that the term “Islamophobia” is less-than-ideal when it comes to meeting the needs of Muslims who are targeted with prejudice, while organizations like the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) have embraced the word institutionally, but have privately encouraged alternatives. In the years that I have spent advocating for programs and policies that combat Islamophobia, I have encountered innumerable instances where conversations with such groups bleed into the late afternoon without ever having moved beyond disagreements over the terminology.

All of this reinforces my point, which is that these debates are mere noise in a world where most people seem to know precisely what they are talking about when they use the word “Islamophobia.” To put a finer point on it, we may think momentarily about the scholarship of Fernando Bravo Lopez, who is widely credited with having unearthed the origins and lineage of the word. Lopez discovered that its first uses in print came more than a century ago when, in 1910, two French writers described the experiences of African Muslims under colonial rule using the variation “Islamophobie” (Lopez 2011). These usages were iterations of judeophobie (which later became “anti-Semitism”) and xenophobie, or xenophobia. The authors did not labor to explain what they meant by the term Islamophobie, or why its usage should be justified. Rather, in describing the circumstances of West African Muslims whose lives were governed by an overbearing French mission, they briefly interjected the words “prejudice,” “fear,” and “dislike,” to communicate the simple idea that Muslims perceived themselves being targeted and judged on the basis of their religious identity (ibid.). Additionally, just as there was no effort to explain what judeophobie or xenophobie meant, it appeared that these authors seemed to think that the term was clear enough, or at the very least that its presence within a family of other similar words that described various prejudices would give obvious clues.

A public problem with an academic solution?

Debates over the term “Islamophobia” may actually be a symptom of a larger problem: the inability of academia to relate to the concerns of people beyond its walls. While I maintain that there is great value in situating Islamophobia as a field of study within various academic disciplines, the fact remains that however the phenomenon is defined, it is affecting ordinary people in the streets of various cities across the globe every day. Thus, to a significant extent, conversations that would explain the case of a Muslim woman whose hijab was ripped off as “anti-Muslim hate” instead of “Islamophobia” are fraught with disconnectedness. We must ask: would she really care what language was used to define the animus directed at her, or would the more important point be that it was animus to begin with and we ought not furrow our brows over terminologies but rather use our creativity and energy to propose solutions?

Admittedly, this may sound a bit rich within a scholarly volume such as this. Yet I would urge my colleagues and readers alike to think carefully about the implications of scholarly debates on topics that are as urgent as Islamophobia, and which are not merely theoretical subjects to be explored but actual manifestations of prejudice that have, in some cases, led to severe destruction and death. The bottom-up direction of information flow is critical here. In this case, I would argue that the general public has established a discourse for identifying, speaking about, and combatting Islamophobia, and it is the responsibility of academics to immerse themselves in that discourse rather than dictate, in top-down fashion, its acceptable parameters.

As we have established, the word “Islamophobia” has been operational for well over a decade. As scholars Saher Selod and Steve Garner have tracked, between 1980 and 2014, the term appeared in the titles of more than 1,212 books, magazines, and newspaper articles. It was newspaper articles that comprised the overwhelming majority of such uses—1,121 (Garner and Selod 2014). In a similar vein, Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative has noted that since 2003, nearly 40 books have been written that feature the term “Islamophobia” as a part of their title. That uptick coincides with public paroxysms over Islam, with respect to the 2005 release of the film Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West, the lead-up to the 2006 midterm elections, and the controversy over the Park51 Islamic Cultural Center in New York City, for example.² This is an especially salient point, for it suggests that the increase in usages of the word is the result of an increasingly shared recognition about what constitutes Islamophobia.

Even beyond print materials, though, there is good reason to believe that, to state it plainly, “the ship has sailed” regarding the term “Islamophobia.” A simple Google search of the term yields immediate results on social media and mainstream news websites that utilize it in a way that indicates “prejudice” without explaining it beyond a mere clause or two that employs some synonym. Increasingly, television and radio outlets have also discussed prejudice that targets Muslims using the term, whether National Public Radio, Meet the Press, NBC Evenings News, or others. What is so striking about this is the economy of language. Just as the early French writers who first deployed the term did not overly emphasize its particularities, one gets the sense that a certain normalization has come into effect and that word is now so widely used and understood that there is no need to qualify it with excessive descriptions or caveats.

This understanding, I believe, is most often premised on the idea of “prejudice,” and indeed in my own writing I have often used “Islamophobia” and “anti-Muslim prejudice” interchangeably. Without risking an overly psychological explanation, this is an intentional move on my part, and it is based on a cue that popular discourses on the topic have given those of us who write about it: simplicity is unavoidable. To put it differently, it is unreasonable to expect that the general public will grasp long words or expressions to describe behaviors for which they have a pre-existing category. Nor is it reasonable to expect that the general public will conjure up a particularly convoluted and complex definition each time they utter the word “Islamophobia.” Rather, it is more likely that we hear the word “Islamophobia,” think about categories and words that are similar, and place it—along with our understanding of what it is—into that group. Thus, “Islamophobia” occupies in the same mental real estate as anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, etc., though we know that what distinguishes it from those other things is that it relates to Islam and Muslims.

In the end, what more could we ask for? To identify “Islamophobia” immediately with “prejudice” is to legitimize the feelings of animus that Muslims who are the targets of Islamophobia feel, while at once calling attention to the fact that those who are responsible for such feelings (as a result of their words or actions) belong to the same group of people who would express racist, anti-Semitic, or homophobic views. The wide net of “prejudice” as the category to which the public believes “Islamophobia” belongs leaves space for discussions about, for instance, the nexus between Islamophobia and racism, while making the topic digestible enough that an ordinary citizen can use it and understand it without having to participate in such discussions.

Of course, there are those who will invariably insist that “phobia” does not indicate “prejudice,” but rather an “irrational fear.” This, as I hope I have spelled out, misses the point entirely. To be sure, “phobia” does not mean “prejudice,” but my argument about the general use of the word “Islamophobia” and the triviality of searching for a perfect alternative or definition is that...