In 2001 I was first year undergraduate student of politics. As we tentatively formed groups based on little more than seating preferences in a lecture theatre, I found myself drawn to Sofia, a local woman with a broad Birmingham accent. Ambitious and outgoing, with a fierce sense of social justice, Sofia was also visibly Muslim. She wore a headscarf (and always called it this, never hijab), dressed modestly, avoided alcohol and fasted at Ramadan, yet she rarely discussed her faith and when she did, always articulated it in terms of the social obligations she understood it to require.
The semester had barely started when the world was shaken by the September 11 attacks. As we meandered in the classroom, waiting for the instructor to arrive, a new polarisation formed among the class. The hijackings were on everyoneâs lips, and in the heated conversations several people turned to Sofia to explain them. She was Muslim, and so, the media loudly exclaimed, were the hijackers. In unease and confusion students looked to her for an explanation. What was it about Islam that had driven these attacks? Did she think the hijackers were right? Did all Muslims secretly share these grudges? As she tried to deal with the increasingly hostile questioning, one woman turned to me, shaking her head disapprovingly, and muttered âhow can she say this has nothing to do with Islam? This is all about Islamâ.
In the fifteen years since this incident, I, like many identifiably white people, have been privy to similar whispered utterances that drew me aside as if I were an ally in the uttererâs suspicion, fear and hostility towards Muslims. Sofia, no doubt, like many identifiably Muslim people, has been the subject of these conversations, a proxy for the shadowy Muslim enemy that is increasingly perceived to threaten the very civilisation in which we live. Commonly understood as Islamophobia, this fear of, or hostility towards, Muslims is employed today to explain a plethora of social ills. Terrorism, riots, segregated communities, lack of national identity, child grooming and low educational achievement have all been enfolded into a discourse that marks Muslims out as the âotherâ that threatens âourâ ideals and progress. The polarisation evident in that classroom in 2001 has become an embedded feature of British and European society, where Muslims are at least marked out as different, and are frequently subject to suspicion, harassment, abuse and violence.
This book is the story of how Islamophobia has come to have such explanatory power in the British (and European) imagination. Through an analysis of Islamophobiaâs form and content and a theoretical exploration of its function, I argue that the key to understanding this phenomenon is an appreciation of why individuals and groups from across the social strata employ these narratives. Contemporary Islamophobic discourse is articulated at a wide variety of social sites and by differently positioned social actors, yet the narratives it relies on are always deployed for a purpose. This book seeks to understand that purpose, and argues that Islamophobia upholds Eurocentrism, the dominant contemporary racialised system in Europe, where Western-identified subjects are awarded a better social, economic and political âracial contractâ and seek to defend these privileges against real and imagined Muslim demands. Under such a system, Islamophobia is not an âunfounded hostilityâ, but a rational defence of collective Eurocentric advantages.
Defining Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All
It is customary to begin any writing on Islamophobia with a discussion of the controversy surrounding the term. The concept is central to understanding the political and social struggles that mark the contemporary world, yet it is highly contested and its definition, social meaning and analytical use is fraught with conflict. Everyday conversational use of the term ranges from uncritical acceptance to virulent denial, making the lack of an agreed upon definition a central controversy. But the issue is not merely semantic. The debate over whether there is such a thing as Islamophobia and what it might comprise is a political struggle, over the recognition, articulation and protection of identities, and the incorporation, and limits, of difference.
There is some dispute about when the expression âIslamophobiaâ was first used in English. AbdoolKarim Vakil has noted that Edward Said used it in his article âOrientalism reconsideredâ, published in three different print contexts in 1985, and thus reaching both an academic and a wider activist readership (Vakil 2008, 43). Most other scholars date the term to the early 1990s. Chris Allen (2007, 148â149) placed the first usage around December 1991, when it appeared in both the American journal Insight, and Tariq Modoodâs book review in The Independent, while others have dated its first appearance in the UK media to 1994, indicating that the term had gained popular traction, likely because of the first Gulf War and increased perceptions that Muslims were being targeted on the basis of their religious identity in both global and local contexts (Hopkins and Kahani-Hopkins 2006, 249; Cole 2009, 1681).
The Runnymede Trustâs 1997 report, Islamophobia: A challenge for us all, however, has come to form the starting point for discussions regarding the movement of the term into the mainstream. Labelled as a shorthand way of referring to the dread or hatred of Islam, the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia defined it as unfounded hostility towards Islam, and the practical consequences of this for Muslims. Foreseeing potential objections to this definition, it was disambiguated by an attempt to clarify the point at which legitimate criticism ended and unfounded hostility began. To this end a list of eight views about Islam and Muslims was submitted, with âclosedâ and âopenâ positions attached to them, comprising whether Islam was seen as: monolithic or diverse; separate or interacting; inferior or different; whether Muslims were considered enemies or partners; manipulative or sincere; whether Muslim criticisms of the West were rejected or considered; whether discrimination against Muslims was defended or criticised; and whether Islamophobia was seen as natural or problematic. Legitimate criticism, the Commission claimed, was the province of open views, while Islamophobia was âthe recurring characteristic of closed viewsâ (Commission on British Muslims and Islamphobia 1997, 4). Islamophobia could therefore be challenged by the proliferation of open, and the challenge of closed, views.
The report was groundbreaking in its assertion that Muslims were experiencing specific targeting on the basis of their faith and represents the first attempt to comprehensively define this phenomenon. It has also been hugely influential on the conceptualisation of Islamophobia for policy makers, and a number of organisations have incorporated similar definitions (for example, the Council of Europe). However, it has drawn criticism for its procedural approach to Islamophobic discourse and practice, as well as the essentialisation of identities that follows from such a conceptualisation.
The first criticism foregrounds the procedural manner in which Islamophobia was defined. Because the report was intended as guidelines for equalities and anti-racist practitioners, it overemphasised a checklist style approach, which gave rise to a reductionist and dualistic conceptualisation of the phenomenon. This is embodied in the central focus on Islamophobia as the recurrence of âclosed viewsâ, a focus that Chris Allen notes took on a life of its own, becoming so central to Runnymedeâs understanding of Islamophobia that the immediately preceding definition was changed only a page later, from fear or hostility towards Muslims and Islam, to the recurring characteristic of closed views and nothing more (Allen 2008, 31). Although this tick-box approach may be useful to discern routine and overt cases of Islamophobia, it is severely limited when considering more complex and subtle articulations.
This was exacerbated by the Commissionâs suggestion that closed views could be challenged by the proliferation of open views, a position that might be termed Islamophilia (Allen 2010, 168). If Islamophobia is an abnormal and pathological dislike of Muslims and Islam, then Islamophilia is the equally abnormal love of Muslims and Islam, and is no less reductionist or essentialist with regard to Muslim identities. Defending the neologism, the report stated that the coining of a new word and the identification of a growing danger could âplay a valuable part in the long endeavour of correcting perceptions and improving relationshipsâ (Commission on British Muslims and Islamphobia 1997, 4). The very terms used in this passage point to a profound problem with the way the Commission conceived Muslim identities and the status of Islamophobia. To correct a perception implies an essence that can be uncovered, a correct Islam that could be endorsed through open views, and an incorrect Islam that individuals had been mistakenly promoting. What makes this notion so deeply problematic is its assumption of some form of collective responsibility among Muslims for the circulation of this âincorrectâ Islam. In its reliance on the notion of a right way to be Muslim, identities were restricted and existing power relations reinforced through a dualism which conferred on outside observers the right to decide whether particular Islamic expression fell into the realm of open or closed. Such essentialising, especially when backed up by the power of the state to legitimise particular versions of Islam, has the potential to silence and delegitimise individuals outside of these traditions. This dualism rears itself again in the form of âgoodâ and âbadâ Muslims; those who conform to the correct Islam and those who do not.
The Commissionâs understanding of what constituted Islamophobia not only implicated Muslims as collectively responsible for the circulation of this âincorrect Islamâ, but also intimated that âbadâ, âextremistâ Muslims bore some responsibility for the Islamophobia directed towards them. By this logic, Islamophobia is only illegitimate when directed at âgoodâ, âmoderateâ Muslims, while âbadâ, âextremistâ Muslims bear some responsibility for Islamophobic sentiment and may therefore be legitimately targeted with âclosedâ views. In his Oxford University Press blog, Walter Laqueur made exactly this point, stating that people subscribe to such âclosed viewsâ (that Islam is a political ideology, separate and âotherâ, and profoundly aggressive) because this is precisely what Iranian leaders had preached to the world for more than three decades (Laqueur 2006). For Laqueur, these closed views had some legitimacy because of the behaviour of some Muslims, and this view is widely shared. Ed Husain, writing in the London Evening Standard, stated âIf there is anti-Muslim sentiment, we Muslims have to ask what some of us have done to provoke such feelings in a country that is proudly multi-culturalâ (Husain 2008). Such statements would be inconceivable for any other racialised group, yet it is precisely this type of thinking that the Runnymede Report encouraged. Until âbadâ Muslims stop saying and doing what âbadâ Muslims say and do, Islamophobia is (at least when addressed to these Muslims) in some sense legitimate, and âclosedâ views justified .
The Runnymede Reportâs conceptualisation of Islamophobia is profoundly problematic. Its reductionist approach meant that Islamophobic expression was dualistically sorted into categories of legitimate and illegitimate, and Muslims were subsequently reduced to âgoodâ and âbadâ, undeserving or deserving of Islamophobic sentiment. What is most troubling, however, is its failure to recognise the power dynamics inherent in Islamophobia. By reducing it to a question of perceptions that can be corrected, this understanding fails to significantly challenge most Islamophobic discourse and practice, which is predicated not on closed minded âviewsâ, but ideological currents and shared social narratives that are perceived to have a great deal of explanatory power.
More sophisticated conceptualisations have compared it to other discourses of exclusion. Historical approaches to the phenomenon have identified contemporary Islamophobia as rooted in imperial and colonial discourses, particularly Orientalism. Scholars adopting this understanding have foregrounded the historical antecedents of Islamophobia and argued that its manifestation today involves the recycling and rearticulation of older tropes for similar exclusionary purposes and with analogous effects. Another approach considers that Islamophobia can be most usefully understood through comparison with similar exclusionary discourses. Proponents of this position have made use of the vast theoretical literature on racism and anti-Semitism to aid understanding of the contemporary situation of Muslims. While the historical approach tells us something about where Islamophobia comes from, the comparative approach attempts to explain what it is and how it works.
Imperialism, Colonialism and Orientalism
Tracing the historical antecedents of Islamophobia, a number of scholars have drawn attention to the way in which imperial, colonial and Orientalist discourses are rearticulated for the social and political needs of the present period, and in doing so have foregrounded the constitutive role that Islam and Muslims have played as the other against which European and Western identity has defined...