Tackling the relationship between Islamophobia and Radicalization from different perspectives, this book reflects on different types of interactions between Islamophobia and Radicalization. The first part of the book explores the co-existence between Islamophobia and Radicalism that is assumed to be neither coincidental nor independent from one another. This push and pull factor is also referred to “reactionary radicalism”. The second part of the book reflects on the recycling relationship causing mismatches, overgeneralizations and sometimes dismiss of Islamophobia and Radicalism when engrained in one another. In the third part, the relationship between Islamophobia and Radicalization is likened to a medicine causing another sickness while intending to cure it. This relationship is medically termed as iatrogenic relationship, which is most applicable to the CVE programs today. The last part of the book focuses on a deviating relationship that breaks the vicious cycle of the fringes feeding each other. This is achieved by the mainstream Muslims who develop positive perception and response individually, perform civic citizenship as a community and adopt spiritual and social motivation as a religious philosophy (or mindset) to generate positive attitude and action.

Although radicalization is a generic category defining the process of adopting extreme political, social and religious ideals, it is interchangeably used for Islamist Radicalization. According to the British government’s definition, extremism is slightly different than radicalization as a vocal and active opposition to fundamental values like democracy, rule of law and individual liberty ¹ Violent extremism promotes or engages in violence as a means of furthering one’s radical political, ideological or religious views. ² Violent extremism and terrorism are also used interchangeably.

Islamophobia is defined as anti-Muslim racism by the recent Runnymede Trust report, which addressed the word Islamophobia first time in 1997, ³ whose level can range from an ideology to violent extremism/terrorism. In this collection, radicalism is used interchangeably when referring to Islamist radicalism or generically to denote levels of extremity.

Islamophobia and Islamist Radicalism are exclusivist ideologies which survive and thrive by blaming, defaming and despising the other and such exclusivist ideologies do not occur in a vacuum. Reflecting on the socio-political context, John Esposito in Chapter 2 provides us with the historical roots of Islamophobia and Radicalism. Islamophobia like other discriminatory ideologies (i.e., racism, anti-Semitisms and xenophobia) has deep-seated roots, and its resurgence dates back to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, hijackings, hostage taking, the September 11 attacks and more recently ISIS. In addition to these significant acts of terrorism, far-right groups, politics and media are addressed as the auxiliary forces reinforcing and normalizing Islamophobia in the West.

Esposito points out that like Islamophobia, Islamic radicalization has deep roots in bias and discrimination, xenophobia and racism. Political and socioeconomic causes should also be considered prior to discussing ideological indoctrination. Religion is identified in this regard, not as a reason but as a tool for legitimizing narratives of marginalization while recruiting and mobilizing followers in the Muslim world and from the West.

While Western societies are increasingly multicultural and multi-religious, Esposito suggests Western governments adopt a more robust policy of inclusion and for Muslim communities to continue with organically blending their religious and cultural identities with Western dynamics including citizenship and healthy nationalism. Esposito suggests that the ISIS brand influencing the marginalized Muslims youth in the West can be debunked if the internal cracks are sealed.

Socio-political ideologies and groups cannot function independently from their surrounding environments. The first section of the book focuses on the co-existence of Radicalisation and Islamophobia. Among the examples of this co-existence in the last few decades are: Al Qaida’s use of the term “War on Islam” in responding to Al Qaida, ISIS and the “War on Terror” rhetoric popularized by the Bush administration and more recently by the Trump administration, the spike of Islamophobic attacks following the Islamist terrorist attacks, ⁴ the increasing far-right groups in tandem with the increasing visibility of ISIS in the West and as captured as a case study in this book, the effective ISIS recruitment among the Moroccan youth of the Netherlands, where Moroccanized Islamophobia is in force under the leadership of the Islamophobe Geert Wilders.

Although existence of the radicalization is not an excuse for the presence of Islamophobia (or vice versa), the relationship between the two needs to be investigated further. Yet, the correlation of such multifaceted social realities is beyond statistical calculations. Douglas Pratt in Chapter 3, theorizes this relationship through an analysis of the co-reactive radicalization concept. Pratt provides a conceptual framework for understanding and analyzing extremism, particularly religious extremism, and defines religious it as the extremity (margins) or centering (intensifying) of an existing religion. Addressing pluralism as the hallmark of post-modernity, the author addresses the role of exclusivism in paving way to extremism. Pratt introduces reactive co-radicalization, which can develop into parallel and reactionary extremisms. Islamophobia can be counted as one of them. The author focuses on two examples to unpack Islamophobia as a form of reactive co-radicalization: the 2009 Swiss ban on the building of minarets and the 2011 Norwegian massacre carried out by Anders Behring Breivik.

Sam Cherribi coins Pratt’s term as ‘reactive radicalization’ focusing on the Morrocanized Islamophobia in the Netherlands in Chapter 4. Cherribiconfronts the pressing question of why more Dutch-Moroccan youth have joined ISIS than any other ethnic group in the Netherlands by examining rising anti-Moroccan rhetoric within the Islamophobic discourse. Cherribi proposes that religion “functions as a race boundary” and argues that this racialization process has made it extremely difficult for Moroccan youth to access Dutchness. He critiques the news media for circulating this Islamophobia, particularly in the over-reporting of Wilder’s ‘fewer Moroccans’ promise. Geert Wilder built, through his Party for Freedom, a unique brand intended for Dutch internal consumption by targeting Moroccans, and in the process launched a successful party-model for other far-right political parties in the West. The consequence of this Islamophobia is articulated as a ‘reactionary extremism’, which the author suggests is contributing to radicalization within both the dominant and dominated groups, such as mass killers like Anders Breivik and joining ISIS.

While co-existing reactionary radicalism is in force for the fringe groups, the relationship between Islamophobia and Radicalism is not limited to reactionary radicalization. Presenting an ironic relationship between Islamophobia and Radicalism, Derya Iner in Chapter 5 argues that there is Islamophobia in Radicalism discourse and likewise, there is Radicalism in Islamophobia practice, using the anti-halal debate in Australia as a case study. She argues that Islamophobia is tacitly embedded in the Radicalism discourse by reducing all Muslims to terrorist suspects through the deliberately blurring of the lines between terrorists and ordinary Muslims in political, media and academic discourses. Iner discusses that this approach helps in strengthening the Islamophobic arguments equating all Muslims to terrorists even in seemingly unrelated matters like the halal debate. Likewise, the Radicalism embedded in Islamophobia but neglected by the public allows for the denial of Islamophobic extremism by assuming the convict is not ideologically motivated but mentally sick, and not part of an organization but a lone wolf. Similarly, branding Islamophobes under different group names and dismissing varying levels of extremism among them, portrays them as harmless local groups. After discussing the diametrically opposite attitude towards their Muslim counterparts, Iner concludes that such disparity towards similar types of cases causes overestimation of Islamist terrorism and underestimation of Islamophobic terrorism while leading to an unnecessary social panic on the one hand and absolute denial in the other based on the convict’s religious and ideological background.

As the most influential players in society, politicians, media and academia have a significant impact on shaping public perception. Focusing on the media component, Nahid Afrose Kabir in Chapter 6 documents these Islamophobic tendencies through the content analysis of two selected Australian media outlets, The Australian and The Advertiser, within a six-month period (from August 2014 to January 2015). Based on her previous studies, which outlined the frustrations of Muslims in response to their negative portrayal in the media, Kabir explores the ways in which media representations of Muslims can marginalize vulnerable Muslim youth and steer them towards radicalization. Kabir’s content analysis and comparison of the two media outlets concludes that the selective representation of news and images by The Australian (as compared to The Advertiser) can be considered Islamophobic and reinforces Islamic State propaganda in furthering division between Muslims and non-Muslims.

While the lack of a clear distinction between ordinary Muslims and terrorists in the public discourse inadvertently makes ordinary Muslims pay the bill for Islamist terrorism, certain Islamophobic institutions deliberately do this in order to defame, exclude and paralyze the integrated, successful, contributing, civic and vocal Muslims of Islamic communities. Farid Hafez in Chapter 7 analyzes how the erudite and institutional stream of Islamophobia, i.e. the Islamophobic think tanks in Europe, defame active and organized Muslims by systematic production of biased knowledge. Hafez focuses on the Brussels-based ‘European Foundation for Democracy’ (EFD) and argues that by outing “Muslim Brotherhood,” as a dangerous Islamist group and associating active and vocal Muslims of the community with the Brotherhood, the EFD discards the vocal and active actors of the Muslim civil society. Hafez likens the allegations about the Brotherhood to the conspiracy theories of Jewish world domination. Such allegations “allow for the widening of the Muslim threat, including not only violent extremists, but putting potentially every Muslim civil society organization under suspicion”. A systematic effort to portray ordinary Muslims as terrorist suspects is a reoccurring concept (also addressed by Iner) and Hafez’s thought-provoking chapter sets the ground for future research to explore the impact of powerful Islamophobic think tanks in shaping public and politic opinions about the mainstream and high achieving civic Western Muslims.

Following the reactionary extremism debates offered by Pratt, Cherribi and Kabir, the vilification of ordinary Muslims due to the inadvertently blurred lines as argued by Kabir and Iner and the systematically driven connections between ordinary Muslims and terrorists discussed by Iner and Hafez, in Chapter 8, Julian Droogan and Shane Peattie address the repercussions in the violent extremist discourse, providing critical empirical data by focusing on the thematic analysis of Al Qaida’s and ISIS’s e-magazines Inspire and Dabiq. Droogan and Peattie find that Islamophobia/anti-Muslim discrimination as a concept was rarely addressed in both magazines. However, Islamophobia in the broader sense as a form of structural and systemic violence and discrimination targeted at Muslims in non-Western and Muslim majority appears more frequently than the narrower form of Islamophobia. Both Inspire and Dabiq frequently address ‘Western malevolence’, ‘occupation of Muslim lands’, “West at war with Islam,” “blasphemy” and “humiliation,” all of which generally relate to perceived Western impressions of aggression, violence, and oppression within the Muslim world. The meta global theme ‘Islam is at War’—and the implicit clash of civilizations thesis that it rests upon—is also another recurring theme of the e-magazines.

There is a relative absence of the ‘Islamophobia and Discrimination’ theme and a strong presence of the much broader ‘Western Malevolence’ and “Islam is at War” themes in both magazines. Both focus predominantly on Middle Eastern politics written by the non-Western editors, who would be less informed about the Western Muslims’ experience with Islamophobia in the West. Yet, from the vulnerable Western Muslim youth’s point of view, the narrower and broader forms of Islamophobia can be seamlessly connected through their own experience with Islamophobia in the West.

The debates on counterterrorism in this collection draw attention to another dimension of Islamophobia that appears both in “soft” and “hard” counterterrorism measures but not independently from the political landscape and media. Within this context, the authors argue that counterterrorism measures are counterproductive by focusing on British and Australian examples and considering the issue from Muslim communities’ point of view.

Paul Thomas in Chapter 9 examines Britain’s Prevent counterterrorism program to argue that counter-radicalization measures reinforce and reflect Islamophobia through their overt focus on British Muslims in implementation and discourse, as they suggest that extremism is a widespread problem for Muslim communities. Thomas draws on his previous empirical data on the implementation of ‘community cohesion’ policies to argue that, while alternative non-stigmatizing policies could offer a constructive vehicle for anti-extremism and counterterrorism work, they are sidelined, with Prevent favored as a “strategy overtly focused on British Muslims”. In providing an overview of the development of Prevent and literature to develop a theoretical contextualization of recent developments in British multiculturalism, the article argues t...