Gustav Kirchhoff was born on 12 March 1824 in Königsberg, Prussia, the son of Friedrich Kirchhoff, a lawyer, and Johanna Henriette Wittke. His family were Lutherans in the Evangelical Church of Prussia. He graduated from the Albertus University of Königsberg in 1847 where he attended the mathematico-physical seminar directed by Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, Franz Ernst Neumann and Friedrich Julius Richelot. In the same year, he moved to Berlin, where he stayed until he received a professorship at Breslau.
Later, in 1857, he married Clara Richelot, the daughter of his
mathematics professor Richelot. The couple had five children. Clara died
in 1869. He married Luise Brömmel in 1872.
Kirchhoff formulated his circuit laws, which are now ubiquitous in electrical engineering,
in 1845, while he was still a student. He completed this study as a
seminar exercise; it later became his doctoral dissertation. He was
called to the University of Heidelberg in 1854, where he collaborated in spectroscopic work with Robert Bunsen. In 1857, he calculated that an electric signal in a resistanceless wire travels along the wire at the speed of light. He proposed his law of thermal radiation in 1859, and gave a proof in 1861. Together Kirchhoff and Bunsen invented the spectroscope, which Kirchhoff used to pioneer the identification of the elements in the Sun, showing in 1859 that the Sun contains sodium. He and Bunsen discovered caesium and rubidium in 1861. At Heidelberg he ran a mathematico-physical seminar, modelled on Franz Ernst Neumann's, with the mathematician Leo Koenigsberger. Among those who attended this seminar were Arthur Schuster and Sofia Kovalevskaya.
He contributed greatly to the field of spectroscopy by formalizing three laws that describe the spectral composition of light emitted by incandescent objects, building substantially on the discoveries of David Alter and Anders Jonas Ångström. In 1862, he was awarded the Rumford Medal
for his researches on the fixed lines of the solar spectrum, and on the
inversion of the bright lines in the spectra of artificial light.[a] In 1875 Kirchhoff accepted the first chair dedicated specifically to theoretical physics at Berlin.
He also contributed to optics, carefully solving the wave equation to provide a solid foundation for Huygens' principle (and correct it in the process).
Kirchhoff's first law is that the algebraic sum of currents in a
network of conductors meeting at a point (or node) is zero. The second
law is that in a closed circuit, the directed sums of the voltages in
the system is zero.
Visual depiction of Kirchhoff's laws of spectroscopy
A solid, liquid, or dense gas excited to emit light will radiate at all wavelengths and thus produce a continuous spectrum.
A low-density gas excited to emit light will do so at specific wavelengths, and this produces an emission spectrum.
If light composing a continuous spectrum passes through a cool, low-density gas, the result will be an absorption spectrum.
Kirchhoff did not know about the existence of energy levels in atoms. The existence of discrete spectral lines had been known since Fraunhofer discovered them in 1814. That the lines formed a discrete mathematical pattern was described by Johann Balmer in 1885. Joseph Larmor explained the splitting of the spectral lines in a magnetic field known as the Zeeman Effect by the oscillation of electrons. These discrete spectral lines were not explained as electron transitions until the Bohr model of the atom in 1913, which helped lead to quantum mechanics.
Islamophobia is the irrational fear of, hostility towards, or hatred against the religion of Islam or Muslims in general.Islamophobia is primarily a form of religious or cultural bigotry; and people who harbour such sentiments often stereotype Muslims as a geopolitical threat or a source of terrorism.
Muslims, with diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, are often
inaccurately portrayed by Islamophobes as a single homogenous racial
group.
A study conducted in 2013 revealed that Muslim women, especially
those wearing headscarves or face veils, are more vulnerable to suffer
from Islamophobic attacks than Muslim men.
Due to the racialized nature of Islamophobic discrimination and attacks
suffered by numerous Muslims in their daily lives, several scholars
have asserted that Islamophobia has explicit racist dimensions. On 15 March 2022, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution by consensus which was introduced by Pakistan on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation that proclaimed March 15 as 'International Day To Combat Islamophobia'.
The exact definition of the term "Islamophobia" has been a
subject of debate amongst Western analysts. Detractors of the term have
proposed alternative terms, such as "anti-Muslim", to denote prejudice
or discrimination against Muslims. It has been alleged, often by right-wing commentators, that the term is sometimes used to avoid criticism of Islam, by removing the distinction between racism and criticism of religious doctrine or practice.
However, academics, activists and experts who support the terminology
have denounced such characterizations as attempts to deny the existence
of Islamophobia.
Terms
There are a number of other possible terms which are also used in
order to refer to negative feelings and attitudes towards Islam and
Muslims, such as anti-Muslimism, intolerance against Muslims, anti-Muslim prejudice, anti-Muslim bigotry, hatred of Muslims, anti-Islamism, Muslimophobia, demonisation of Islam, or demonisation of Muslims. In German, Islamophobie (fear) and Islamfeindlichkeit (hostility) are used. The Scandinavian term Muslimhat literally means "hatred of Muslims".
When discrimination towards Muslims has placed an emphasis on
their religious affiliation and adherence, it has been termed
Muslimphobia, the alternative form of Muslimophobia, Islamophobism, antimuslimness and antimuslimism. Individuals who discriminate against Muslims in general have been termed Islamophobes, Islamophobists, anti-Muslimists, antimuslimists, islamophobiacs, anti-Muhammadan, Muslimphobes or its alternative spelling of Muslimophobes, while individuals motivated by a specific anti-Muslim agenda or bigotry have been described as being anti-mosque, anti-Shiites (or Shiaphobes), anti-Sufism (or Sufi-phobia) and anti-Sunni (or Sunniphobes).
Etymology and definitions
The word Islamophobia is a neologism formed from Islam and -phobia, a Greek suffix used in English to form "nouns with the sense 'fear of – – ', 'aversion to – – '."
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word means "Intense dislike or fear of Islam, esp. as a political force; hostility or prejudice towards Muslims". It is attested in English as early as 1923 to quote the French word islamophobie,
found in a thesis published by Alain Quellien in 1910 to describe "a
prejudice against Islam that is widespread among the peoples of Western
and Christian civilization".
The expression did not immediately turn into the vocabulary of the
English-speaking world though, which preferred the expression "feelings
inimical to Islam", until its re-appearance in an article by Georges
Chahati Anawati in 1976. The term did not exist in the Muslim world, and was later translated in the 1990s as ruhāb al-islām (رُهاب الإسلام) in Arabic, literally "phobia of Islam".
The University of California at Berkeley's Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project
suggested this working definition: "Islamophobia is a contrived fear or
prejudice fomented by the existing Eurocentric and Orientalist global
power structure. It is directed at a perceived or real Muslim threat
through the maintenance and extension of existing disparities in
economic, political, social and cultural relations, while rationalizing
the necessity to deploy violence as a tool to achieve 'civilizational
rehab' of the target communities (Muslim or otherwise). Islamophobia
reintroduces and reaffirms a global racial structure through which
resource distribution disparities are maintained and extended."
Debate on the term and its limitations
In 1996, the Runnymede Trust established the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia (CBMI), chaired by Gordon Conway, the vice-chancellor of the University of Sussex. The Commission's report, Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, was published in November 1997 by the Home Secretary, Jack Straw.
In the Runnymede report, Islamophobia was defined as "an outlook or
world-view involving an unfounded dread and dislike of Muslims, which
results in practices of exclusion and discrimination."
The introduction of the term was justified by the report's assessment
that "anti-Muslim prejudice has grown so considerably and so rapidly in
recent years that a new item in the vocabulary is needed".
In 2008, a workshop on 'Thinking Through Islamophobia' was held at the University of Leeds, organized by the Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies, the participants included S. Sayyid, Abdoolkarim Vakil, Liz Fekete,
and Gabrielle Maranci among others. The symposium proposed a definition
of Islamophobia which rejected the idea of Islamophobia as being the
product of closed and open views of Islam and focused on Islamophobia as
performative which problematized Muslim agency and identity. The
symposium was an early attempt to bring insights from critical race theory, postcolonial and decolonial thought to bear on the question of Islamophobia.
At a 2009 symposium on "Islamophobia and Religious Discrimination", Robin Richardson, a former director of the Runnymede Trust and the editor of Islamophobia: a challenge for us all,
said that "the disadvantages of the term Islamophobia are significant"
on seven different grounds, including that it implies it is merely a
"severe mental illness" affecting "only a tiny minority of people"; that
use of the term makes those to whom it is applied "defensive and
defiant" and absolves the user of "the responsibility of trying to
understand them" or trying to change their views; that it implies that
hostility to Muslims is divorced from factors such as skin color,
immigrant status, fear of fundamentalism, or political or economic
conflicts; that it conflates prejudice against Muslims in one's own
country with dislike of Muslims in countries with which the West is in
conflict; that it fails to distinguish between people who are against
all religion from people who dislike Islam specifically; and that the
actual issue being described is hostility to Muslims, "an
ethno-religious identity within European countries", rather than
hostility to Islam. Nonetheless, he argued that the term is here to
stay, and that it is important to define it precisely.
The exact definition of Islamophobia continues to be discussed, with academics such as Chris Allen saying that it lacks a clear definition.
According to Erik Bleich, in his article "Defining and Researching
Islamophobia", even when definitions are more specific, there is still
significant variation in the precise formulations of Islamophobia. As
with parallel concepts like homophobia or xenophobia, Islamophobia
connotes a broader set of negative attitudes or emotions directed at
individuals of groups because of perceived membership in a defined
category. Mattias Gardell
defined Islamophobia as "socially reproduced prejudices and aversion to
Islam and Muslims, as well as actions and practices that attack,
exclude or discriminate against persons on the basis that they are or
perceived to be Muslim and be associated with Islam".
As opposed to being a psychological or individualistic phobia,
according to professors of religion Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel
Greenberg, "Islamophobia" connotes a social anxiety about Islam and Muslims.
Some social scientists have adopted this definition and developed
instruments to measure Islamophobia in form of fearful attitudes
towards, and avoidance of, Muslims and Islam, arguing that Islamophobia should "essentially be understood as an affective part of social stigma towards Islam and Muslims, namely fear".
Several scholars consider Islamophobia to be a form of xenophobia or racism. A 2007 article in Journal of Sociology defines Islamophobia as anti-Muslim racism and a continuation of anti-Asian, anti-Turkic and anti-Arab racism. In their books, Deepa Kumar
and Junaid Rana have argued that formation of Islamophobic discourses
has paralleled the development of other forms of racial bigotry. Similarly, John Denham has drawn parallels between modern Islamophobia and the antisemitism of the 1930s, as have Maud Olofsson and Jan Hjärpe, among others.
Others have questioned the relationship between Islamophobia and
racism. Jocelyne Cesari writes that "academics are still debating the
legitimacy of the term and questioning how it differs from other terms
such as racism, anti-Islamism, anti-Muslimness, and anti-Semitism."
Erdenir finds that "there is no consensus on the scope and content of
the term and its relationship with concepts such as racism ..." and Shryock, reviewing the use of the term across national boundaries, comes to the same conclusion.
Some scholars view Islamophobia and racism as partially
overlapping phenomena. Diane Frost defines Islamophobia as anti-Muslim
feeling and violence based on "race" or religion. Islamophobia may also target people who have Muslim names, or have a look that is associated with Muslims. According to Alan Johnson, Islamophobia sometimes can be nothing more than xenophobia or racism "wrapped in religious terms".
Sociologists Yasmin Hussain and Paul Bagguley stated that racism and
Islamophobia are "analytically distinct", but "empirically
inter-related".
The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance
(ECRI) defines Islamophobia as "the fear of or prejudiced viewpoint
towards Islam, Muslims and matters pertaining to them", adding that
whether "it takes the shape of daily forms of racism and discrimination
or more violent forms, Islamophobia is a violation of human rights and a
threat to social cohesion".
One early use cited as the term's first use is by the painter Alphonse Étienne Dinet and Algerian intellectual Sliman ben Ibrahim in their 1918 biography of Islam's prophet Muhammad. Writing in French, they used the term islamophobie.
Robin Richardson writes that in the English version of the book the
word was not translated as "Islamophobia" but rather as "feelings
inimical to Islam". Dahou Ezzerhouni has cited several other uses in
French as early as 1910, and from 1912 to 1918. These early uses of the term did not, according to Christopher Allen, have the same meaning as in contemporary usage, as they described a fear of Islam by liberal Muslims and Muslim feminists, rather than a fear or dislike/hatred of Muslims by non-Muslims.
On the other hand, Fernando Bravo López argues that Dinet and ibn
Sliman's use of the term was as a criticism of overly hostile attitudes
to Islam by a Belgian orientalist, Henri Lammens, whose project they saw
as a "'pseudo-scientific crusade in the hope of bringing Islam down
once and for all.'" He also
notes that an early definition of Islamophobia appears in the 1910 Ph.D.
thesis of Alain Quellien, a French colonial bureaucrat:
For some, the Muslim is the natural and irreconcilable
enemy of the Christian and the European; Islam is the negation of
civilization, and barbarism, bad faith and cruelty are the best one can
expect from the Mohammedans.
Furthermore, he notes that Quellien's work draws heavily on the work
of the French colonial department's 1902–06 administrator, who published
a work in 1906, which to a great extent mirrors John Esposito's The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?.
The first recorded use of the term in English, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was in 1923 in an article in The Journal of Theological Studies. The term entered into common usage with the publication of the Runnymede Trust's report in 1997.
"Kofi Annan asserted at a 2004 conference entitled "Confronting
Islamophobia" that the word Islamophobia had to be coined in order to
"take account of increasingly widespread bigotry".
During the Yugoslav Wars
in the 1990s, far-right Serbian Orthodox Christian militants who were
heavily indoctrinated with Islamophobic sentiments, perpetrated a
genocide against Bosniak Muslims. Since 1989, Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević publicly disseminated Islamophobic rhetoric throughout Yugoslavia, inciting Serbian far-right militants to massacre Bosniak Muslims.
The stereotyping of Bosniak Muslims as a hostile force
threatening Europe with "terrorism" in Serbian propaganda was closely
linked to the rise of Islamophobic narratives in Western media and European political discourse.
Contrasting views on Islam
The Runnymede report contrasted "open" and "closed" views of Islam,
and stated that the following "closed" views are equated with
Islamophobia:
Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.
It 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.
It is seen as inferior to the West. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive, and sexist.
It is seen as a political ideology, used for political or military advantage.
Criticisms made of "the West" by Muslims are rejected out of hand.
Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices
towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.
Anti-Muslim hostility is seen as natural and normal.
These "closed" views are contrasted, in the report, with "open" views
on Islam which, while founded on respect for Islam, permit legitimate
disagreement, dialogue and critique.
According to Benn and Jawad, The Runnymede Trust notes that anti-Muslim
discourse is increasingly seen as respectable, providing examples on
how hostility towards Islam and Muslims is accepted as normal, even
among those who may actively challenge other prevalent forms of
discrimination.
Identity politics
It has been suggested that Islamophobia is closely related to identity politics,
and gives its adherents the perceived benefit of constructing their
identity in opposition to a negative, essentialized image of Muslims.
This occurs in the form of self-righteousness, assignment of blame and
key identity markers. Davina Bhandar writes that:
[...] the term 'cultural' has
become synonymous with the category of the ethnic or minority [...]. It
views culture as an entity that is highly abstracted from the practices
of daily life and therefore represents the illusion that there exists a
spirit of the people. This formulation leads to the homogenisation of
cultural identity and the ascription of particular values and
proclivities onto minority cultural groups.
She views this as an ontological
trap that hinders the perception of culture as something "materially
situated in the living practices of the everyday, situated in time-space
and not based in abstract projections of what constitutes either a
particular tradition or culture."
In some societies, Islamophobia has materialized due to the portrayal of Islam and Muslims as the national "Other",
where exclusion and discrimination occurs on the basis of their
religion and civilization which differs with national tradition and
identity. Examples include Pakistani and Algerian migrants in Britain
and France respectively. This sentiment, according to Malcolm Brown and Robert Miles, significantly interacts with racism, although Islamophobia itself is not racism.Author Doug Saunders has drawn parallels between Islamophobia in the United States and its older discrimination and hate against Roman Catholics,
saying that Catholicism was seen as backwards and imperial, while
Catholic immigrants had poorer education and some were responsible for
crime and terrorism.
Brown and Miles write that another feature of Islamophobic
discourse is to amalgamate nationality (e.g. Saudi), religion (Islam),
and politics (terrorism, fundamentalism) – while most other religions
are not associated with terrorism, or even "ethnic or national
distinctiveness".
They feel that "many of the stereotypes and misinformation that
contribute to the articulation of Islamophobia are rooted in a
particular perception of Islam", such as the notion that Islam promotes
terrorism – especially prevalent after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The two-way stereotyping resulting from Islamophobia has in some
instances resulted in mainstreaming of earlier controversial discourses,
such as liberal attitudes towards gender equality and homosexuals. Christina Ho has warned against framing of such mainstreaming of gender equality in a colonial, paternal discourse, arguing that this may undermine minority women's ability to speak out about their concerns.
Steven Salaita contends that, since 9/11, Arab Americans
have evolved from what Nadine Naber described as an invisible group in
the United States into a highly visible community that directly or
indirectly has an effect on the United States' culture wars, foreign
policy, presidential elections and legislative tradition.
The academics S. Sayyid and Abdoolkarim Vakil maintain that
Islamophobia is a response to the emergence of a distinct Muslim public
identity globally, the presence of Muslims in itself not being an
indicator of the degree of Islamophobia in a society. Sayyid and Vakil
maintain that there are societies where virtually no Muslims live but
many institutionalized forms of Islamophobia still exist in them.
Cora Alexa Døving, a senior scientist at the Norwegian Center for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities, argues that there are significant similarities between Islamophobic discourse and European pre-Nazi antisemitism.
Among the concerns are imagined threats of minority growth and
domination, threats to traditional institutions and customs, skepticism
of integration, threats to secularism, fears of sexual crimes, fears of misogyny, fears based on historical cultural inferiority, hostility to modern Western Enlightenment values, etc.
Matti Bunzl [de]
has argued that there are important differences between Islamophobia
and antisemitism. While antisemitism was a phenomenon closely connected
to European nation-building processes, he sees Islamophobia as having the concern of European civilization as its focal point. Døving, on the other hand, maintains that, at least in Norway, the Islamophobic discourse has a clear national element. In a reply to Bunzl, French scholar of Jewish history, Esther Benbassa,
agrees with him in that he draws a clear connection between modern
hostile and essentializing sentiments towards Muslims and historical
antisemitism. However, she argues against the use of the term Islamophobia, since, in her opinion, it attracts unwarranted attention to an underlying racist current.
The head of the Media Responsibility Institute in Erlangen,
Sabine Schiffer, and researcher Constantin Wagner, who also define
Islamophobia as anti-Muslim racism, outline additional similarities and
differences between Islamophobia and antisemitism.
They point out the existence of equivalent notions such as
"Judaisation/Islamisation", and metaphors such as "a state within a
state" are used in relation to both Jews and Muslims. In addition, both
discourses make use of, among other rhetorical instruments, "religious
imperatives" supposedly "proven" by religious sources, and conspiracy
theories.
The differences between Islamophobia and antisemitism consist of the nature of the perceived threats to the "Christian West".
Muslims are perceived as "inferior" and as a visible "external threat",
while on the other hand, Jews are perceived as "omnipotent" and as an
invisible "internal threat". However, Schiffer and Wagner also note that
there is a growing tendency to view Muslims as a privileged group that
constitute an "internal threat" and that this convergence between the
two discources makes "it more and more necessary to use findings from
the study of anti-Semitism to analyse Islamophobia". Schiffer and Wagner
conclude,
The achievement in the study of
anti-Semitism of examining Jewry and anti-Semitism separately must also
be transferred to other racisms, such as Islamophobia. We do not need
more information about Islam, but more information about the making of
racist stereotypes in general.
The publication Social Work and Minorities: European Perspectives describes Islamophobia as the new form of racism in Europe, arguing that "Islamophobia is as much a form of racism as anti-semitism, a term more commonly encountered in Europe as a sibling of racism, xenophobia and intolerance." Edward Said considers Islamophobia as it is evinced in Orientalism to be a trend in a more general antisemitic Western tradition. Others note that there has been a transition from anti-Asian and anti-Arab racism to anti-Muslim racism, while some note a racialization of religion.
According to a 2012 report by a UK anti-racism group, counter-jihadist
outfits in Europe and North America are becoming more cohesive by
forging alliances, with 190 groups now identified as promoting an
Islamophobic agenda. In Islamophobia and its consequences on young people
(p. 6) Ingrid Ramberg writes "Whether it takes the shape of daily forms
of racism and discrimination or more violent forms, Islamophobia is a
violation of human rights and a threat to social cohesion." Professor John Esposito of Georgetown University calls Islamophobia "the new anti-Semitism".
In their 2018 American Muslim Poll, the Institute for Social
Policy and Understanding found that when it came to their Islamophobia
index (see Public Opinion), they found that those who scored higher on
the index, (i.e. more islamophobic) were, "associated with 1) greater
acceptance of targeting civilians, whether it is a military or
individual/small group that is doling out the violence, 2) greater
acquiescence to limiting both press freedoms and institutional checks
following a hypothetical terror attack, and 3) greater support for the
so-called "Muslim ban" and the surveillance of American mosques (or
their outright building prohibition)."
Mohamed Nimer
compares Islamophobia with anti-Americanism. He argues that while both
Islam and America can be subject to legitimate criticisms without
detesting a people as a whole, bigotry against both are on the rise.
Gideon Rachman wrote in 2019 of a "clash of civilizations" between Muslim and non-Muslim nations, linking anti-Islam radicalisation outside the Muslim world to the rise of intolerant Islamism in some Muslim countries that used to be relatively free from that ideology.
According to Gabrielle Maranci, the increasing Islamophobia in the West is related to a rising repudiation of multiculturalism.
Maranci concludes that "Islamophobia is a 'phobia' of multiculturalism
and the transruptive effect that Islam can have in Europe and the West
through transcultural processes."
According to Elizabeth Poole in the Encyclopedia of Race and Ethnic Studies, the media have been criticized for perpetrating Islamophobia. She cites a case study examining a sample of articles in the British press
from between 1994 and 2004, which concluded that Muslim viewpoints were
underrepresented and that issues involving Muslims usually depicted
them in a negative light. Such portrayals, according to Poole, include
the depiction of Islam and Muslims as a threat to Western security and values.
Benn and Jawad write that hostility towards Islam and Muslims are
"closely linked to media portrayals of Islam as barbaric, irrational,
primitive and sexist."
Egorova and Tudor cite European researchers in suggesting that
expressions used in the media such as "Islamic terrorism", "Islamic
bombs" and "violent Islam" have resulted in a negative perception of
Islam. John E. Richardson's 2004 book (Mis)representing Islam: the racism and rhetoric of British broadsheet newspapers, criticized the British media for propagating negative stereotypes of Muslims and fueling anti-Muslim prejudice.
In another study conducted by John E. Richardson, he found that 85% of
mainstream newspaper articles treated Muslims as a homogeneous mass and
portrayed them as a threat to British society.
The Universities of Georgia and Alabama in the United States
conducted a study comparing media coverage of "terrorist attacks"
committed by Islamist militants with those of non-Muslims in the United
States. Researchers found that "terrorist attacks" by Islamist
militants receive 357% more media
attention than attacks committed by non-Muslims or whites. Terrorist
attacks committed by non-Muslims (or where the religion was unknown)
received an average of 15 headlines, while those committed by Muslim
extremists received 105 headlines. The study was based on an analysis of
news reports covering terrorist attacks in the United States between 2005 and 2015. This was despite the fact that far-right extremists were responsible for almost double the number of terrorist acts in US
attributed to Muslim individuals between 2008 and 2016. In spite of
this disparity, US and UK governments have been negligent in confronting
far-right terrorists, instead focusing almost all their counter-terrorism
resources on imposing surveillance measures on Muslim population and
censoring Muslim activists. Many right-wing politicians have also
engaged in anti-Muslim rhetoric, indirectly motivating far-right groups
to intensify violent hate crimes against Muslims.
In 2009, Mehdi Hasan in the New Statesman criticized Western media for over-reporting a few Islamist terrorist incidents but under-reporting the much larger number of planned non-Islamist terrorist attacks carried out by "non-Irish white folks".
A 2012 study indicates that Muslims across different European
countries, such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom, experience
the highest degree of Islamophobia in the media. Media personalities have been accused of Islamophobia. The obituary in The Guardian for the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci described her as "notorious for her Islamaphobia" [sic].
The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding published a report in
2018 where they stated, "In terms of print media coverage,
Muslim-perceived perpetrators received twice the absolute quantity of
media coverage as their non-Muslim counterparts in the cases of violent
completed acts. For "foiled" plots, they received seven and half times
the media coverage as their counterparts."
Nathan Lean used the term "Islamophobia industry" in the 2012 book The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims to describe how certain ideologies and political proclivities have converged to advance the same agenda. The "Islamophobia industry" has since been discussed by other scholars including Joseph Kaminski, Hatem Bazian, Arlene Stein, Zakia Salime, Reza Aslan, Erdoan A. Shipoli, and Deepa Kumar, the latter drawing a comparison between the "Islamophobia industry" and Cold War era McCarthyism.
Some media outlets are working explicitly against Islamophobia. In 2008 Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
("FAIR") published a study "Smearcasting, How Islamophobes Spread
Bigotry, Fear and Misinformation". The report cites several instances
where mainstream or close to mainstream journalists, authors and
academics have made analyses that essentialize negative traits as an
inherent part of Muslims' moral makeup. FAIR also established the "Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism", designed to monitor coverage in the media and establish dialogue with media organizations. Following the attacks of 11 September 2001, the Islamic Society of Britain's
"Islam Awareness Week" and the "Best of British Islam Festival" were
introduced to improve community relations and raise awareness about
Islam.
Silva and Meaux et al both theorized that one of the main causes of negative interactions, stigma, and marginalization toward the Arabic community is due to the fact that many media framing from news outlets tend to associate Arab-Muslims with terrorism and jihadist-inspired motivations when it came to mass violence incidents. Silva noted in their research looking through New York Times
articles about gun violence and noted that over the sixteen-year period
of 2000 until 2016 this media framing would only increase through the
time period. Silva compared his results to find out that Arabic perpetrators
were significantly more like to be framed as terrorists than their
White counterparts. Meaux et al note back to research conducted by Park
et al that indicated that the most salient association that Americans
held on to was Arab-Muslims to terrorism with the notion that people
that believed in this association the strongest were more likely to hold
implicit bias.
Movies
Pro-Palestinian protest in Los Angeles against the war in Gaza and Hollywood's role in dehumanizing Muslims, November 2023
Throughout the twentieth century, Muslim characters were portrayed in Hollywood often negatively and with Orientalist stereotypes visualising them as being "uncivilised". Since the Post-9/11 era, in addition to these tropes, a securitization of Muslims; portraying them as a threat to the Western world, have drastically increased in movie depictions.
There are growing instances of Islamophobia in Hindi cinema, or Bollywood, in films such as Aamir (2008), New York (2009) and My Name is Khan (2010), which corresponds to a growing anti-minorities sentiment that followed the resurgence of the Hindu right.
Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and the Freedom Defense Initiative are designated as hate groups by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. In August 2012 SIOA generated media publicity by sponsoring billboards in New York City Subway
stations claiming there had been 19,250 terrorist attacks by Muslims
since 9/11 and stating "it's not Islamophobia, it's Islamorealism."
It later ran advertisements reading "In any war between the civilized
man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat
Jihad." Several groups condemned the advertisements as "hate speech"
about all Muslims.
In early January 2013 the Freedom Defense Initiative put up
advertisements next to 228 clocks in 39 New York subway stations showing
the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center
with a quote attributed to the 151st verse of chapter 3 of the Quran:
"Soon shall we cast terror into the hearts of the unbelievers." The New York City Transit Authority, which said it would have to carry the advertisements on First Amendment grounds, insisted that 25% of the ad contain a Transit Authority disclaimer. These advertisements also were criticized.
The English Defence League
(EDL), an organization in the United Kingdom, has been described as
anti-Muslim. It was formed in 2009 to oppose what it considers to be a
spread of Islamism, Sharia law and Islamic extremism in the UK. The EDL's former leader, Tommy Robinson, left the group in 2013 saying it had become too extreme and that street protests were ineffective.
Furthermore, the 7 July 2005 London bombings
and the resulting efforts of the British civil and law enforcement
authorities to help seek British Muslims' help in identifying potential
threats to create prevention is observed by Michael Lavalette as
institutionalized Islamophobia. Lavalette alleges that there is a
continuity between the former two British governments over prevention
that aims to stop young Muslim people from being misled, misdirected and
recruited by extremists who exploit grievances for their own "jihadist"
endeavors. Asking and concentrating on Muslim communities and young
Muslims to prevent future instances, by the authorities, is in itself
Islamophobia as such since involvement of Muslim communities will
highlight and endorse their compassion for Britain and negate the
perceived threats from within their communities.
The extent of negative attitudes towards Muslims varies across different parts of Europe. Polls in Germany and the Czech Republic (as well as South Korea) have suggested that most respondents do not welcome Muslim refugees in those countries.
A 2017 Chatham House poll of more than 10,000 people in 10 European countries had on average 55% agreeing that all further migration from Muslim-majority countries
should be stopped, with 20% disagreeing and 25% offered no opinion. By
country, majority opposition was found in Poland (71%), Austria (65%),
Belgium (64%), Hungary (64%), France (61%), Greece (58%), Germany (53%),
and Italy (51%).
In Canada, surveys have suggested that 55% of respondents think the
problem of Islamophobia is "overblown" by politicians and media, 42%
think discrimination against Muslims is 'mainly their fault', and 47%
support banning headscarves in public.
In the United States, a 2011 YouGov poll found that 50% of respondents expressed an unfavourable view of Islam, compared to 23% expressing a favourable view. Another YouGov poll done in 2015 had 55% of respondents expressing an unfavourable view. However, according to a 2018 Institute for Social Policy and Understanding,
86% of American respondents said they wanted to "live in a country
where no one is targeted for their religious identity", 83% told ISPU
they supported "protecting the civil rights of American Muslims", 66%
believed negative political rhetoric toward Muslims was harmful to U.S.,
and 65% agreed that Islamophobia produced discriminatory consequences
for Muslims in America.
The chart below displays collected data from the ISPU 2018 American Muslim Poll
which surveyed six different faith populations in the United States.
The statements featured in this chart were asked to participants who
then responded on a scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The
total percentage of those who answered agree and strongly agree are
depicted as follows:
Question 1: "I want to live in a country where no one is targeted for their religious identity."
Question 2: "The negative things politicians say regarding Muslims is harmful to our country."
Question 3: "Most Muslims living in the United States are no more responsible for violence carried out by a Muslim than anyone else."
Question 4: "Most Muslims living in the United States are victims of discrimination because of their faith."
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Muslim
Jewish
Catholic
Protestant
White Evangelical
Unaffiliated
Question 1 (% Net agree)
Question 2 (% Net agree)
Question 3 (% Net Agree)
Question 4 (% Net agree)
The table below represents the Islamophobia Index, also from the 2018 ISPU poll. This data displays an index of Islamophobia among faith populations in the United States.
ISPU Islamophobia Index
Most Muslims living in the United States... (% Net agree shown)
Muslim
Jewish
Catholic
Protestant
White Evangelical
Non-Affiliated
General Public
Are more prone to violence
18%
15%
12%
13%
23%
8%
13%
Discriminate against women
12%
23%
29%
30%
36%
18%
26%
Are hostile to the United States
12%
13%
9%
14%
23%
8%
12%
Are less civilized than other people
8%
6%
4%
6%
10%
1%
6%
Are partially responsible for acts of violence carried out by other Muslims
10%
16%
11%
12%
14%
8%
12%
Index (0 min- 100 max)
17
22
22
31
40
14
24
Internalized Islamophobia
ISPU also highlighted a particular trend in relation to anti-Muslim
sentiment in the U.S. – internalized Islamophobia among Muslim
populations themselves. When asked if they felt most people want them to
be ashamed of their faith identity, 30% of Muslims agreed (a higher
percentage than any other faith group). When asked if they believed that
their faith community was more prone to negative behavior than other
faith communities, 30% of Muslims agreed, again, a higher percentage
than other faith groups.
Trends
Islamophobia has become a topic of increasing sociological and political importance. According to Benn and Jawad, Islamophobia has increased since Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 fatwa inciting Muslims to attempt to murder Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses, and since the September 11 attacks in 2001. AnthropologistSteven Vertovec writes that the purported growth in Islamophobia may be associated with increased Muslim presence in society and successes. He suggests a circular model,
where increased hostility towards Islam and Muslims results in
governmental countermeasures such as institutional guidelines and
changes to legislation, which itself may fuel further Islamophobia due
to increased accommodation for Muslims in public life. Vertovec
concludes: "As the public sphere shifts to provide a more prominent
place for Muslims, Islamophobic tendencies may amplify."
An anti-Islamic protest in Poland
Patel, Humphries, and Naik (1998) claim that "Islamophobia has always
been present in Western countries and cultures. In the last two
decades, it has become accentuated, explicit and extreme."
However, Vertovec states that some have observed that Islamophobia has
not necessarily escalated in the past decades, but that there has been
increased public scrutiny of it.
According to Abduljalil Sajid, one of the members of the Runnymede
Trust's Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, "Islamophobias"
have existed in varying strains throughout history, with each version
possessing its own distinct features as well as similarities or
adaptations from others.
In 2005 Ziauddin Sardar, an Islamic scholar, wrote in the New Statesman that Islamophobia is a widespread European phenomenon. He noted that each country has anti-Muslim political figures, citing Jean-Marie Le Pen in France; Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands; and Philippe van der Sande of Vlaams Blok, a Flemish
nationalist party in Belgium. Sardar argued that Europe is
"post-colonial, but ambivalent". Minorities are regarded as acceptable
as an underclass of menial workers, but if they want to be upwardly
mobile anti-Muslim prejudice rises to the surface. Wolfram Richter,
professor of economics at Technical University of Dortmund, told Sardar: "I am afraid we have not learned from our history. My main fear is that what we did to Jews we may now do to Muslims. The next holocaust would be against Muslims." Similar fears, as noted by Kenan Malik in his book From Fatwa to Jihad, had been previously expressed in the UK by Muslim philosopher Shabbir Akhtar in 1989, and Massoud Shadjareh, chair of the Islamic Human Rights Commission in 2000. In 2006 Salma Yaqoob, a Respect Party
Councillor, claimed that Muslims in Britain were "subject to attacks
reminiscent of the gathering storm of anti-Semitism in the first decades
of the last century." Malik, a senior visiting fellow in the Department of Political, International and Policy Studies at the University of Surrey,
has described these claims of a brewing holocaust as "hysterical to the
point of delusion"; whereas Jews in Hitler's Germany were given the
official designation of Untermenschen,
and were subject to escalating legislation which diminished and
ultimately removed their rights as citizens, Malik noted that in cases
where "Muslims are singled out in Britain, it is often for privileged
treatment" such as the 2005 legislation banning "incitement to religious
hatred", the special funding Muslim organizations and bodies receive
from local and national government, the special provisions made by
workplaces, school and leisure centres for Muslims, and even suggestions
by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, that sharia
law should be introduced into Britain. The fact is, wrote Malik, that
such well-respected public figures as Akhtar, Shadjareh and Yaqoob need
"a history lesson about the real Holocaust reveals how warped the Muslim
grievance culture has become."
In 2006 ABC News
reported that "public views of Islam are one casualty of the
post-September 11, 2001 conflict: Nearly six in 10 Americans think the
religion is prone to violent extremism,
nearly half regard it unfavourably, and a remarkable one in four admits
to prejudicial feelings against Muslims and Arabs alike." They also
report that 27 percent of Americans admit feelings of prejudice against
Muslims.
Gallup polls in 2006 found that 40 percent of Americans admit to
prejudice against Muslims, and 39 percent believe Muslims should carry
special identification.
These trends have only worsened with the use of Islamophobia as a
campaign tactic during the 2008 American presidential election (with
several Republican politicians and pundits, including Donald Trump,
asserting that Democratic candidate Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim),
during the 2010 mid-term elections (during which a proposed Islamic
community center was dubbed the "Ground Zero Mosque"),
and the 2016 presidential election, during which Republican nominee
Donald Trump proposed banning the entrance into the country of all
Muslims. Associate Professor Deepa Kumar writes that "Islamophobia is about politics rather than religion per se"
and that modern-day demonization of Arabs and Muslims by US politicians
and others is racist and Islamophobic, and employed in support of what
she describes as an unjust war. About the public impact of this
rhetoric, she says that "One of the consequences of the relentless
attacks on Islam and Muslims by politicians and the media is that
Islamophobic sentiment is on the rise." She also chides some "people on
the left" for using the same "Islamophobic logic as the Bush regime". In this regard, Kumar confirms the assertions of Stephen Sheehi,
who "conceptualises Islamophobia as an ideological formation within the
context of the American empire. Doing so "allows us to remove it from
the hands of 'culture' or from the myth of a single creator or
progenitor, whether it be a person, organisation or community." An
ideological formation, in this telling, is a constellation of networks
that produce, proliferate, benefit from, and traffic in Islamophobic
discourses."
The writer and scholar on religion Reza Aslan
has said that "Islamophobia has become so mainstream in this country
that Americans have been trained to expect violence against Muslims –
not excuse it, but expect it".
A January 2010 British Social Attitudes Survey
found that the British public "is far more likely to hold negative
views of Muslims than of any other religious group," with "just one in
four" feeling "positively about Islam", and a "majority of the country
would be concerned if a mosque was built in their area, while only 15
per cent expressed similar qualms about the opening of a church."
A 2016 report by CAIR and University of California, Berkeley's
Center for Race and Gender said that groups promoting islamophobia in
the US had access to US$206 million between 2008 and 2013. The author of
the report said that "The hate that these groups are funding and
inciting is having real consequences like attacks on mosques all over
the country and new laws discriminating against Muslims in America."
In the United States, religious discrimination against Muslims
has become a significant issue of concern. In 2018, The Institute for
Social Policy and Understanding found that out of the groups studied,
Muslims are the most likely faith community to experience religious
discrimination, the data having been that way since 2015. Despite 61% of
Muslims reporting experiencing religious discrimination at some level
and 62% reporting that most Americans held negative stereotypes about
their community, 23% reported that their faith made them feel "out of
place in the world".
There are intersections with racial identity and gender identity, with
73% of Arabs surveyed being more likely to experience religious
discrimination, and Muslim women (75%) and youth (75%) being the most
likely to report experiencing racial discrimination. The study also
found that, although, "most Muslims (86%) express pride in their faith
identity, they are the most likely group studied to agree that others
want them to feel shame for that identity (30% of Muslims vs. 12% of
Jews, 16% of non-affiliated, and 4–6% of Christian groups)."
A 2021 survey affiliated with Newcastle University
found that 83% of Muslims in Scotland said they experienced
Islamophobia such as verbal or physical attacks. 75% of them said
Islamophobia is a regular or everyday issue in Scottish society and 78%
believed it was getting worse.
Anti-Islamic hate crimes data in the United States
Data on types of hate crimes have been collected by the U.S. FBI since 1992, to carry out the dictates of the 1990 Hate Crime Statistics Act. Hate crime offenses include crimes against persons (such as assaults) and against property (such as arson), and are classified by various race-based, religion-based, and other motivations.
The data show that recorded anti-Islamic hate crimes in the
United States jumped dramatically in 2001. Anti-Islamic hate crimes then
subsided, but continued at a significantly higher pace than in pre-2001
years. The step up is in contrast to decreases in total hate crimes and
to the decline in overall crime in the U.S. since the 1990s.
Specifically, the FBI's annual hate crimes statistics reports
from 1996 to 2013 document average numbers of anti-Islamic offenses at
31 per year before 2001, then a leap to 546 in 2001 (the year of 9-11
attacks), and averaging 159 per since. Among those offenses are
anti-Islamic arson incidents which have a similar pattern: arson
incidents averaged 0.4 per year pre-2001, jumped to 18 in 2001, and
averaged 1.5 annually since.
Year-by-year anti-Islamic hate crimes, all hate crimes, and arson subtotals are as follows:
Anti-Islamic hate crimes
All hate crimes
Year
Arson offenses
Total offenses
Arson offenses
Total offenses
1996
0
33
75
10,706
1997
1
31
60
9,861
1998
0
22
50
9,235
1999
1
34
48
9,301
2000
0
33
52
9,430
2001
18
546
90
11,451
2002
0
170
38
8,832
2003
2
155
34
8,715
2004
2
193
44
9,035
2005
0
146
39
8,380
2006
0
191
41
9,080
2007
0
133
40
9,006
2008
5
123
53
9,168
2009
1
128
41
7,789
2010
1
186
42
7,699
2011
2
175
42
7,254
2012
4
149
38
6,718
2013
1
165
36
6,933
Total
38
2,613
863
158,593
Average
2.1
145.2
47.9
8810.7
1996–2000 avg
.40
30.6
57.0
9,707
2001
18
546
90
11,451
2002–2013 avg
1.50
159.5
40.7
8,217
In contrast, the overall numbers of arson and total offenses declined from pre-2001 to post-2001.
Anti-Islamic hate crimes in Europe
There have also been reports of hate crimes targeting Muslims across
Europe. These incidents have increased after terrorist attacks by
extremist groups such as ISIL. Far-right and right-wing populist political parties and organizations have also been accused of fueling fear and hatred towards Muslims. Hate crimes such as arson and physical violence have been attempted or have occurred in Norway, Poland, Sweden, France, Spain, Denmark, Germany and Great Britain. Politicians have also made anti-Muslim comments when discussing the European migrant crisis.
According to Yvonne Haddad:
The Islamophobia Industry in America is "driven by neocon stars: Daniel
Pipes, Robert Spencer, David Yerushalmi, Glenn Beck, Pamela Gellner,
Paul Wolfowitz, David Horowitz, and Frank Gaffney as well as native
informers Walid Shoebat, Walid Phares, Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn
Warraq, Brigitte Gabriel, Tawfik Hamid, and Zuhdi Jasser. They have
been prolific, producing and re-circulating false or exaggerated
information about Islam and Muslims in order to gain lucrative speaking
engagements and increase their influence among neocons in government."
Research on Islamophobia and its correlates
According to data by the Pew Research Center
elaborated by VoxEurop, in European Union countries the negative
attitude towards Muslims is inversely proportional to actual presence.
Various studies have been conducted to investigate Islamophobia and its correlates among majority populations and among Muslim
minorities themselves. To start with, an experimental study showed that
anti-Muslim attitudes may be stronger than more general xenophobic attitudes.
Moreover, studies indicate that anti-Muslim prejudice among majority
populations is primarily explained by the perception of Muslims as a
cultural threat, rather than as a threat towards the respective nation's
economy.
Studies focusing on the experience of Islamophobia among Muslims have shown that the experience of religious discrimination is associated with lower national identification and higher religious identification.
In other words, religious discrimination seems to lead Muslims to
increase their identification with their religion and to decrease their
identification with their nation of residence. Some studies further
indicate that societal Islamophobia negatively influences Muslim
minorities' health. One of the studies showed that the perception of an Islamophobic society is associated with more psychological problems, such as depression and nervousness, regardless whether the respective individual had personally experienced religious discrimination. As the authors of the study suggest, anti-discrimination laws
may therefore be insufficient to fully protect Muslim minorities from
an environment which is hostile towards their religious group.
Farid Hafez and Enes Bayrakli publish an annual European Islamophobia Report since 2015.
The European Islamophobie Report aims to enable policymakers as well as
the public to discuss the issue of Islamophobia with the help of
qualitative data. It is the first report to cover a wide range of
Eastern European countries like Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, and
Latvia. Farid Hafez is also editor of the German-English Islamophobia Studies Yearbook.
Muslim immigration into Europe has led some critics to label Islam incompatible with secular Western society. This criticism has been partly influenced by a stance against multiculturalism advocated by recent philosophers, closely linked to the heritage of New Philosophers, including the likes of Pascal Bruckner. Jocelyne Cesari, in her study of discrimination against Muslims in Europe,
finds that anti-Islamic sentiment may be difficult to separate from
other drivers of discrimination. Because Muslims are mainly from
immigrant backgrounds and the largest group of immigrants in many
Western European countries, xenophobia
overlaps with Islamophobia, and a person may have one, the other, or
both. So, for example, some people who have a negative perception of and
attitude toward Muslims may also show this toward non-Muslim
immigrants, either as a whole or certain group (such as, for example,
Eastern Europeans, sub-Saharan Africans, or Roma), whereas others would
not.
The European Network Against Racism
(ENAR) reports that Islamophobic crimes are on the increase in France,
England and Wales. In Sweden crimes with an Islamophobic motive
increased by 69% from 2009 to 2013.
An increase of Islamophobia in Russia follows the growing influence of the strongly conservative sect of Wahhabism, according to Nikolai Sintsov of the National Anti-Terrorist Committee.
Various translations of the Qur'an have been banned by the Russian government for promoting extremism and Muslim supremacy. Akhmed Yarlikapov, an expert on Islam, said the Bible too could be banned just as easily for identical motives.
Anti-Muslim rhetoric is on the rise in Georgia.
In Greece, Islamophobia accompanies anti-immigrant sentiment, as
immigrants are now 15% of the country's population and 90% of the EU's
illegal entries are through Greece. In France Islamophobia is tied, in part, to the nation's long-standing tradition of secularism. With the popularization of the Bulgarian nationalist party ATAKA, Islamophobia in Bulgaria also showed an increase. The party itself participated in the 2011 Banya Bashi Mosque clashes.
A report from Australia has found that "except for Anglicans, all
Christian groups have Islamophobia scores higher than the national
average" and that "among the followers of non-Christian religious
affiliations, Buddhists and Hindus [also] have significantly higher Islamophobia scores."
Following the San Bernardino attack in 2015, Donald Trump,
then a candidate for President, proposed "a total and complete shutdown
of Muslims entering the United States, until we can figure out what the
hell is going on". Throughout the campaign, Trump repeatedly described Islam and Muslim immigrants and refugees as a threat to the West, and condemned then-current President Barack Obama for not referring to Islamic State
militants as "Islamic terrorists" or "radical Muslims", accusing Obama
of cowardice in the face of radical Islam and claiming that Obama had
"founded ISIS" through his foreign policy. Trump's rhetoric was condemned by his opponent, Hillary Clinton, as well as numerous Muslim advocacy groups and activists, and became a focal issue in the 2016 United States presidential election.
In 2016, the South Thailand Insurgency, having caused more than 6,500 deaths and purportedly fuelled in part by the Thai military's harsh tactics, was reported to be increasing Islamophobia in the country. The Mindanao conflict in the Philippines has also fuelled discrimination against Muslims by some Christian Filipinos.
The 2018 anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka was suggested to have been a possible trigger for the 2019 Easter bombings. Muslims in the country have reportedly faced increased harassment after the bombings, with some Sinhala Buddhist groups calling for boycotts of Muslim businesses and trade.
In July 2019, the UN ambassadors from 22 nations, including Canada, Germany and France, signed a joint letter to the UNHRC condemning China's mistreatment of the Uyghurs as well as its mistreatment of other Muslim minority groups, urging the Chinese government to close the Xinjiang internment camps, though ambassadors from 53 others, not including China, rejected said allegations. According to a 2020 report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, since 2017, Chinese authorities have destroyed or damaged 16,000 mosques in Xinjiang – 65% of the region's total.
Emigrants from nearly every predominantly Muslim country have immigrated to Canada.
According to a 2013 poll, 54% of Canadians had an unfavourable view of
Islam, which was higher than for any other religion (Hinduism, Sikhism
etc.).
According to a survey conducted by the European Commission in 2015 13% of the respondents would be completely uncomfortable about working with a Muslim person ( orange), compared with 17% with a transgender or transsexual person ( green) and 20% with a Romani person ( violet).
International
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation,
in its 5th report to Islamophobia Observatory of 2012, found an
"institutionalization and legitimization of the phenomenon of
Islamophobia" in the West over the previous five years.
The largest project monitoring Islamophobia was undertaken following 9/11 by the EU watchdog, European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC). Their May 2002 report "Summary report on Islamophobia in the EU after 11 September 2001", written by Chris Allen and Jorgen S. Nielsen of the University of Birmingham, was based on 75 reports – 15 from each EU member nation.
The report highlighted the regularity with which ordinary Muslims
became targets for abusive and sometimes violent retaliatory attacks
after 9/11. Despite localized differences within each member nation, the
recurrence of attacks on recognizable and visible traits of Islam and
Muslims was the report's most significant finding. Incidents consisted
of verbal abuse, blaming all Muslims for terrorism, forcibly removing women's hijabs, spitting on Muslims, calling children "Osama", and random assaults. A number of Muslims were hospitalized and in one instance paralyzed.
The report also discussed the portrayal of Muslims in the media.
Inherent negativity, stereotypical images, fantastical representations,
and exaggerated caricatures were all identified. The report concluded
that "a greater receptivity towards anti-Muslim and other xenophobic
ideas and sentiments has, and may well continue, to become more
tolerated." The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia has since released a number of publications related to Islamophobia, including The Fight against Antisemitism and Islamophobia: Bringing Communities together (European Round Tables Meetings) (2003) and Muslims in the European Union: Discrimination and Islamophobia (2006).
In 2016, the European Islamophobia Report (EIR) presented the "European Islamophobia Report 2015" at European Parliament
which analyzes the "trends in the spread of Islamophobia" in 25
European states in 2015. The EIR defines Islamophobia as anti-Muslim
racism. While not every criticism of Muslims or Islam is necessarily
Islamophobic, anti-Muslim sentiments expressed through the dominant
group scapegoating and excluding Muslims for the sake of power is.
On 26 September 2018, the European Parliament in Brussels launched the "Counter-Islamophobia Toolkit" (CIK), with the goal of combatting the growing Islamophobia across the EU
and to be distributed to national governments and other policy makers,
civil society and the media. Based on the most comprehensive research in
Europe, it examines patterns of Islamophobia and effective strategies
against it in eight member states. It lists ten dominant narratives and
ten effective counter-narratives.
One of the authors of the CIK, Amina Easat-Daas, says that Muslim
women are disproportionately affected by Islamophobia, based on both
the "threat to the west" and "victims of...Islamic sexism" narratives.
The approach taken in the CIK is a four-step one: defining the
misinformed narratives based on flawed logic; documenting them;
deconstructing these ideas to expose the flaws; and finally,
reconstruction of mainstream ideas about Islam and Muslims, one closer
to reality. The dominant ideas circulating in popular culture should
reflect the diverse everyday experiences of Muslims and their faith.[279]
Sweden
Anne Sophie Roald stated that Islamophobia was recognized as a form of intolerance alongside xenophobia and antisemitism at the "Stockholm International Forum on Combating Intolerance",[280] held in January 2001.
The conference adopted a declaration to combat "genocide, ethnic
cleansing, racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia and xenophobia, and to
combat all forms of racial discrimination and intolerance related to
it."
In 2014 Integrationsverket (the Swedish National Integration
Board) defined Islamophobia as "racism and discrimination expressed
towards Muslims."
"72 virgins" is a reference to the heavenly angels in Islamic depictions of heaven, specifically a fairly obscure Hadith describing them as dark-eyed virgin brides waiting for fallen soldiers in heaven.
Although the term "Islamophobia" is widely recognized and used, its use, construction, and the concept itself, have been criticized.
Additionally, the exact meaning of Islamophobia continues to be debated
amongst academics and policymakers alike. The term has proven
problematic and is viewed by some as an obstacle to constructive criticism of Islam.
Its detractors fear that it can be applied to any critique of Islamic
practices and beliefs, suggesting terms such as "anti-Muslim" instead.
The classification of "closed" and "open" views set out in the Runnymede report has been criticized as an oversimplification of a complex issue by scholars like Chris Allen, Fred Halliday, and Kenan Malik.
Professor Mohammad H. Tamdgidi of the University of Massachusetts,
Boston, has generally endorsed the definition of Islamophobia as defined
by the Runnymede Trust's Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All.
However, he notes that the report's list of "open" views of Islam itself
presents "an inadvertent definitional framework for Islamophilia": that
is, it "falls in the trap of regarding Islam monolithically, in turn as
being characterized by one or another trait, and does not adequately
express the complex heterogeneity of a historical phenomenon whose
contradictory interpretations, traditions, and sociopolitical trends
have been shaped and has in turn been shaped, as in the case of any
world tradition, by other world-historical forces."
Although a range of Western commentators have expressed
objections to the term "Islamophobia", in his paper "A Measure of
Islamophobia", British academic Salman Sayyid
(2014) argues that these criticisms are a form of etymological
fundamentalism and echo earlier comments on racism and antisemitism.
Racism and antisemitism were also accused of blocking free speech, of
being conceptually weak and too nebulous for practical purposes.
The French philosopher Pascal Bruckner
calls the term "a clever invention because it amounts to making Islam a
subject that one cannot touch without being accused of racism."
The concept of Islamophobia as formulated by Runnymede was criticized by Fred Halliday.
He writes that the target of hostility in the modern era is not Islam
and its tenets as much as it is Muslims, suggesting that a more accurate
term would be "Anti-Muslimism". He also states that strains and types
of prejudice against Islam and Muslims vary across different nations and
cultures, which is not recognized in the Runnymede analysis, as it was
specifically about Muslims in Britain.
Poole responds that many Islamophobic discourses attack what they
perceive to be Islam's tenets, while Miles and Brown write that
Islamophobia is usually based upon negative stereotypes about Islam
which are then translated into attacks on Muslims. They also argue that
"the existence of different 'Islamophobias' does not invalidate the
concept of Islamophobia any more than the existence of different racisms
invalidates the concept of racism." In a 2011 paper in American Behavioral Scientist,
Erik Bleich stated "there is no widely accepted definition of
Islamophobia that permits systematic comparative and causal analysis",
and advances "indiscriminate negative attitudes or emotions directed at
Islam or Muslims" as a possible solution to this issue.
In order to differentiate between prejudiced views of Islam and
secularly motivated criticism of Islam, Roland Imhoff and Julia Recker
formulated the concept "Islamoprejudice", which they subsequently
operationalised in an experiment. The experiment showed that their
definition provided a tool for accurate differentiation.
Nevertheless, other researchers' experimental work indicates that, even
when Westerners seem to make an effort to distinguish between
criticizing (Muslim) ideas and values and respecting Muslims as persons,
they still show prejudice and discrimination of Muslims—compared to
non-Muslims—when these targets defend illiberal causes.
Pour le Mérite (1874)
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