By JTW
By Fatma Yilmaz Elmas
Briefly described as an “unfounded fear of Islam”, Islamophobia is a phenomena which undeniably results in discrimination against Muslim individuals and communities, leading to their political and social exclusion. The United States and Europe provide many examples of targets of verbal and physical Islamophobic attacks. Indeed, in the U.S. in October, a public bus driver kicked off a 10-year-old Muslim child who recited a prayer while searching for his card. The bus driver, who is currently being sued by the child’s family, accused the child of being a “terrorist” because he spoke Arabic. Actually, even this singular event can demonstrate how Islamophobia is “a behavior pattern that includes specific beliefs”. For according to this understanding, “Islam is a belief system which contains a violent political ideology and a religion of violence that supports terrorism by nature”. The driver apparently made the connection between the child’s Quranic words and violence, terrorism, and politics, and felt the need to intervene.
The perception in Western world about the supposed relationship between Islam and violence after the 9/11 attacks has certainly shaped patterns of behavior toward Muslims within Western societies. However, this understanding is related to historical prejudices and Orientalist perspectives, reflecting not only religious discrimination but also white superiority and “othering” approaches. In addition, in many aspects it is not far from the racism debate.
The religion-violence link
Looking from the current data showing Islamophobia in the West as a manifest reality, back to the past-to let’s say 9/11 as a starting point- we see that Islamophobic reactions in the U.S. and in Europe have worsened over time. The violence-religion link was formalized by then U.S. President George W. Bush’s declaration of the beginning of a “crusade” against terrorism. Bin Laden became the basis of a terrorist typology that, in the eyes of Islamophobes, has persisted until today as the physical/visual representation of Islam.
Indeed, Chris Allen, from the University of Birmingham, affirmed this approach with his November 2013 study investigating “the impact of anti-Muslim hate on British Muslim women”. Allen reveals that some in the UK still call out “Mrs. Osama bin Laden” to Muslim women who dress according to their religious beliefs despite 12 years passing since the events of 9/11. Muslims condemned because “they believe in a religion that connects religion to violence” are exposed to verbal and physical violence from a mentality which sees Islamophobia as legitimate.
According to the findings of Tell Mama, an organization documenting anti-Muslim attacks, 58 percent of the anti-Muslim incidents reported to the organization are directed at women. Of the women who are subjected to verbal and physical abuse, 80% wear visually religious symbols like burqas, headscarves, or veils. On 19 August a pregnant Muslim woman was attacked in Sweden’s capital, Stockholm, because of her headscarf.
Islamophobic incidents are not limited to just people. The number of attacks on Muslim places of worship are too high to be dismissed. For example, in the last 10 years about 200 mosques in the Netherlands have been attacked in different ways. According to the Collective against Islamophobia and Discrimination (CTID), 200 mosques were set on fire, violated with animal limbs, or subjected to harassment in many different ways. According to the Tell Mama report, about 700 places of worship have been attacked in the UK since 2001.
Matthew Feldman, an expert on fascist ideology and the contemporary far-right, thinks that Islamophobia has turned into a “cumulative extremism” due to the radical right. In this regard, the most violent voice in this process of “cumulative extremism” has certainly been Anders Behring Breivik, whose attack caused the death of 77 Norwegian youth on the island of Utøya on 22 July 2001. According to Breivik, who carried out his attack in the name of a “European civil war” to end Islam in Europe, “Islam is a religion that should be confined to small Eastern and Middle Eastern countries”. Categorizing Muslims as “terrorists”, Breivik emphasizes in his manifesto that “the peaceful aspect of Islam which rejects any kind of violence is actually a hoax.” Breivik, who links Islam and violence, omits the part where he has murdered with his own terrorist mentality.
It is a fact that Islamophobic perceptions in the West were 24 percent in 2002 and over 50 percent in 2012 (even if not to the cumulative-extremist extent of Breivik). It’s true that the violence in the Middle East and Arab world has affected this perception. However, it is also true that no one, especially in the Muslim world, has interpreted the Breivik case through Christianity. What’s more, when the story first broke the Western media sought the perpetrator among “Islamic terrorist” organizations. By neglecting socio-economic, political, and personal conditions, Islamophobia is a skewed understanding that reduces all differences to religion.
The Reflections of a Racist Philosophy
Despite appearing to be a religiously-based prejudice, Islamophobia is blatantly derived from an identity-centered understanding, especially in Europe. Moreover, as stated by Raymond Taras, “Islamophobia is a cryptic articulation of race and racism.” In this sense, Islamophobia has long been at the center of an academic debate as a new form of racism. For by linking Islam with radical events, this phenomena has turned into the expression of aggression and prejudice towards Islam – expressions which can reach the level of verbal and physical harassment, torching mosques, and even armed attacks.
Islamophobia thus forms the basis of racism and xenophobia against Muslim-origin immigrants. Islamophobia not only expresses fear and hate toward foreigners of Muslim identity, but it also supports claims of superiority of one group over another. Today, Muslim immigrants are perceived as a threat to the superiority of white Christians in the West. Setting aside the “enemy inside” perception caused by the 9/11 attacks, Muslim minorities are exposed to social exclusion because of the reason that they “threaten European values and European identity itself”.
To conclude, Islam continues to be a reference point, introduced as the “other” and humiliated. The orientalist understanding that identifies the East as barbaric and backward -in opposition to the socially, politically, and economically developed, civilized West-is still valid to an important degree. So Islamophobia, which finds its grounds for legitimacy in the seething Middle East and Arab world, continues to represent an approach that “others” Muslims wholesale.
* This piece was initially published in the Analist, a Turkish monthly journal, in December 2013.
The article Islamophobia: From Unfounded Fear To Racism – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.