Islamophobia: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
Line 21: Line 21:
== Runnymede Trust definition ==
== Runnymede Trust definition ==


The [[Runnymede Trust]] has identified eight components that they say define Islamophobia. This definition, from the [[1997]] document ‘ Islamophobia: A Challenge For Us All’ is widely accepted, including by the [[European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia]]. The eight components are:
The [[Runnymede Trust]] has identified eight components that they say define Islamophobia. This definition, from the [[1997]] document ‘Islamophobia: A Challenge For Us All’ is widely accepted, including by the [[European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia]]. The eight components are:


#Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.
#Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.

Revision as of 03:54, 31 January 2005

Islamophobia is the fear and/or hatred of Islam, Muslims or Islamic culture. Islamophobia can be characterized by the belief that all or most Muslims are religious fanatics, have violent tendencies towards non-Muslims, and reject as directly opposed to Islam such concepts as equality, tolerance, and democracy. It is viewed as a new form of racism whereby Muslims, an ethno-religious group, not a race, are nevertheless constructed as a race. A set of negative assumptions are made of the entire group to the detriment of members of that group. During the 1990’s many sociologists and cultural analysts observed a shift in forms of prejudice from ones based on skin colour to ones based on notions of cultural superiority and othernessTemplate:Fn Template:Fn.

History of the term 'Islamophobia'

The term is a neologism dating from the early 1990’s and derives from Xenophobia. As such, it reflects the influence of such 1990s movements as multi-culturalism and identity politics.

The term most often appears in discourse on the condition of immigrant Muslims living as minorities in the United States, Europe, and Austrailia, although it has also been used in recent years in countries such as India, and occasionally in connection with non-immigrant Muslim communities or individuals. In the most prominent cases, however, experiences of immigrant communities of unemployment, rejection, alienation and violence have combined with Islamophobia to make integration particularly difficultTemplate:Fn. This has led, in the United Kingdom, for example, to Muslim communities suffering higher levels of unemployment, poor housing, poor health and levels of racially motivated violence than other communitiesTemplate:Fn.

Islamophobia, as a phenomenon, dates back to the initial expansion of Islam and grew as a result of the crusades. It has been argued that Islamophobia exists outside the West, for example in India. This is more closely related to Communal Politics in India, although Islamophobia in India does share, with western Islamophobia, the denigration of Islamic culture and history (see linked article by William Dalrymple).


Given the strong association between Arabs and the religion of Islam, Islamophobia is often expressed as a form of anti-Arab racism, though not all Arabs are Muslim and the majority of Muslims are not Arab. Anti-Muslim bias has occasionally been expressed in violent attacks on Sikhs who were mistaken for Muslims on account of their distinctive turbans.

Reasons for Islamophobia

Islamophobia has been increased in western societies, due to the linking of all members of the Muslim faith with the small numbers of violent Islamist movements.

It has been argued by some, most notably Edward Said, that the denigration of Islamic civilisation associated with Islamophobia is central to the concept of Western Civilisation. The ousting and marginalising of Islam marks the debut of ‘Western’ Civilisation and, thus, explains the depth and longevity of western Islamophobia:

“Islam was a provocation in many ways. It lay uneasily close to Christianity, geographically and culturally. It drew on the Judeo-Hellenic traditions. It borrowed creatively from Christianity - it could boast unrivalled military and political successes. Nor was this all. The Islamic lands sit adjacent to and even on top of the biblical lands. Moreover, the heart of the Islamic domain has always been the region closest to Europe... Arabic and Hebrew are Semitic languages, and together they dispose and re-dispose of material that is urgently important to Christianity. From the end of the 7th century to the 16th century, Islam in either its Arab, Ottoman, North African or Spanish form dominated or effectively threatened European Christianity. That Islam outstripped and outshone Rome cannot have been absent from the mind of any European." Edward SaidTemplate:Fn

Runnymede Trust definition

The Runnymede Trust has identified eight components that they say define Islamophobia. This definition, from the 1997 document ‘Islamophobia: A Challenge For Us All’ is widely accepted, including by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. The eight components are:

  1. Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.
  2. Islam is seen as separate and 'other'. It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them.
  3. Islam is seen as inferior to the West. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist.
  4. Islam is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism and engaged in a 'clash of civilisations'.
  5. Islam is seen as a political ideology and is used for political or military advantage.
  6. Criticisms made of the West by Islam are rejected out of hand.
  7. Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.
  8. Anti-Muslim hostility is seen as natural or normal.

Anti Islamophobic efforts

Recently there have been several efforts by non-Muslims to combat Islamophobia. In the wake of September 11, for example, a few non-Muslim women wore a hijab in a show of solidarity with their Muslim counterparts, who it was feared would be particularly vulnerable for reprisal given their distinctive dress. Non-Muslims also helped form community watches to protect mosques from attack.

Examples of Islamophobia

  • Rep. C. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA): "Just turn (the sheriff) loose and have him arrest every Muslim that crosses the state line" (to Georgia law officers, November 2001)Template:Fn
  • Ann Coulter: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."Template:Fn
  • Will Cummins: "It is the black heart of Islam, not the black face, to which millions object." Template:Fn
  • Robert Kilroy-Silk: "Muslims everywhere behave with equal savagery. They behead criminals, stone to death female - only female - adulteresses, throw acid in the faces of women who refuse to wear the chador, mutilate the genitals of young girls and ritually abuse animals"Template:Fn
  • Jean-Marie Le Pen: "These elements have a negative effect on all of public security. They are strengthened demographically both by natural reproduction and by immigration, which reinforces their stubborn ethnic segregation, their domineering nature. This is the world of Islam in all its aberrations."Template:Fn
  • Jerry Vines: "Christianity was founded by the virgin-born Jesus Christ. Islam was founded by Mohammed, a demon-possessed paedophile who had 12 wives, and his last one was a 9-year-old girl."Template:Fn
  • Michael Savage: "I think these people [Arabs and Muslims] need to be forcibly converted to Christianity ... It's the only thing that can probably turn them into human beings." [05/12/03] (on his radio show The Savage Nation)
  • Rabbi Meir Kahane (1974): "There are no 'moderate' Arabs. There are only clever and less clever, patient and impatient. The final solution for all is the same - the elimination of any Jewish State. And so we repeat: There is no 'Palestine people' and there is no 'Palestine.'"Template:Fn

See also: anti-Islamism, persecution of Muslims, Religious intolerance

Criticism of the concept

Some commentators have questioned the concept of Islamophobia, arguing that use of the term is often an attempt to police or censor opinion by characterizing any criticism of Islam or Muslims as pathological and irrational, just as use of the term anti-Semitism, many Muslims would argue, is an attempt to police and censor criticism of Israel. Some of these critics cite the case of the liberal feminist British journalist Polly Toynbee, who was nominated for the title of "Most Islamophobic Media Personality of the Year" at the Annual Islamophobia Awards overseen by the Islamic Human Rights Commission in May 2003. The nomination was based on her comments in an article she had written for London-based liberal newspaper The Guardian:

Religious politics scar India, Kashmir, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, Sudan ... the list of countries wrecked by religion is long. But the present danger is caused by Islamist theocracy … There is no point in pretending it is not so. Wherever Islam either is the government or bears down upon the government, it imposes harsh regimes that deny the most basic human rights.Template:Fn Template:Fn

Although some would argue that such views are Islamophobic and confuse Islamism and Islam, Toynbee has rejected the label of "Islamophobe" and argued that her comments must be judged on their truth or falsity, not on the offence they might give to some members of the Muslim community.


References

External Links

Anti Islamophobia websites and articles

Examples of Use

Examples of use by the writer Faisal Bodi:

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Islamophobia&oldid=9819356"