What is Islamophobia?

Introduction

Islamophobia is racism against Muslims. This is the basic definition of Islamophobia which is generally accepted. Some Islamic countries and groups seek to give the term much wider coverage, in ways which encompass criticism of Islamic practices or the imposition of secular law. These broader definitions have made the term controversial.

History and Etymology

The term Islamohobia came into use after September 11, 2001. Eid Mohamed analysed US press coverage after 9/11 on Islamonline.net [1] noting that the term "has achieved a degree of linguistic and political acceptance to the point that the secretary-general of the United Nations presided over a December 2004 conference entitled "Confronting Islamophobia".

Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg in their 2007 work Islamophobia: Making Muslims the Enemy identified common stereotypes about Muslims: "the ever-present connection between Muslim women and oppression/repression; Muslim men with an irrational violence; the notion that jihad is the foremost tenet in the average Muslim's life. So, for example, Muslim women wearing any kind of head covering is often taken as a sign of their oppression despite the fact that many voluntarily wear them, sometimes over the protests of men in their families." [2]

Examples of Islamophobia

In the UK: a 2001 study by the University of Leicester [3] reported a dramatic rise in attacks on Muslims after September 11. The attacks included verbal abuse of children on their way to school and women shopping and one incident where a baby was tipped out of a pram. In 2006 the Jamia Masjid mosque in Preston came under attack from a gang of white and black youths, who threw bricks at cars while 100 Muslims, attending mosque for Ramadan, worshipped inside. The following day Falkirk's Islamic centre was set on fire, causing 10,000 pounds damage. Within 24 hours of that incident, a dairy owned by a Muslim family in Windsor also came under siege. Groups of up to 30 people attacked the Medina Dairy, which has also allegedly been fire bombed.
In the US: a 2006 study found 46 per cent of Americans said they held unfavorable attitudes towards Islam, almost twice the number as admitted to these prejudices in 2002. [4] Since September 11, there have been attacks on mosques in Chicago, Ohio, Dallas, Kentucky, San Francisco and many other places.
In France girls were banned from wearing the hijab to school as part of a secularization move to ban all religious insignia. There were also a number of cases of women being asked to remove their hijab in public places.

Efforts to stop Islamophobia

After the upsurge of Islamophobia which followed the September 11 attacks, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) undertook a comprehensive monitoring program on Islamophobia. It detailed incidents of attacks and specific discrimination against Muslims, which ranged from assaults to verbal abuse, the removal of women's hijab to accusing Muslims of responsibility for the September 11 attack.

The Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain Iqbal Sacranie, welcomed the report's findings; "This report confirms our fears that under cover of the 'war on terrorism' safeguards have been lowered on the reporting of Muslims by some sections of the media. Even leading politicians have used inflammatory language which can only contribute to feeding anti-Muslim feelings." [5]

Grey areas and conflation issues

A number of difficult grey areas exist where some Muslims allege Islamophobia while others argue the behaviour in question constitutes fair criticism or necessary action for a wider society.

Racial profiling for security purposes has been a controversial practice in many countries. Following September 11 British Muslims reported a 41 per cent increase in stop and search operations against Muslims which Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain Iqbal Sacranie described as "a relentless increase in hostility towards Islam". [6]
Conflation of Islamophobia with criticism of Islam is also controversial. In the US, the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has labeled examples of criticism as Islamophobic. This has led to the response that there is no such thing as Islamophobia, it is a term designed to prevent criticism. Ironically, broad claims of Islamophobia tend to backfire, leading to less awareness of genuine problems.
The label Islamophobic is also used as a political smear tool against human rights activists and feminists protesting Sharia As Roger Kimball, editor of the The New Criterion, has written "phobia describes an irrational fear, and it is axiomatic that fearing the effects of radical Islam is not irrational, but on the contrary very well-founded indeed, so that if you want to speak of a legitimate phobia... ...we should speak instead of Islamophobia-phobia, the fear of and revulsion towards Islamophobia."
On the international human rights scene, the allegation of Islamophobia has been used to distract attention from genuine human rights issues, just as the scapegoating of Israel has been used to advance a political agenda. In the working document process for the Durban Review Conference, participants advanced broad definitions for Islamophobia that would have precluded any criticism of Islamic law or any attempt to secularise. These definitions were rejected under pressure from liberal democracies.

Summary

Attacks on Muslims have increased in the wake of 9/11. Anti-Muslim comment in the media and at governmental level has exacerbated the phenomenon. But the use of the term Islamophobia as a political tool is damaging the effort to reduce the real discrimination Muslims face. The current example of this is the Durban Review Conference where a significant amount of time and energy that could have been used to discuss discrimination against people was instead used to play the politics of states. The victims of racism, some of them Muslims, , will be the ultimate losers in this process.

References

[1] IslamOnline.net
[2] Faculty, Alumnus Discuss Concept of "Islamophobia" in Co-Authored Book, Wesleyan University
[3] UK 'Islamophobia' rises after 11 September, BBC, 29 August, 2002
[4] Islamophobia worse in America now than after 9/11, survey finds, The Guardian, Friday 10 March 2006
[5] Attacks on Muslims rise after veils row, The Independent, 14 October 2006
[6] New Islamohpobia Report, Muslim Council of Britain, 24 May 2002
[7] A Week in the Life of MCBs Media Committee, Muslim Council of Britain, 07 Jun 2004

Durban Review

The Durban 2 World Conference Against Racism 2009