Skip to main content

'Global Islamophobia' by Mona Makinejad

Category
News
Date

Global Islamophobia

Blog by Mona Makinejad

Today, the global manifestations of Islamophobia span from West to East. But what if contemporary Islamophobia in the UK, Germany, India, and Iran is not just a series of national crises? What if it is a global phenomenon, connecting racism across the world?

During Islamophobia Awareness Month, the Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies (CERS) organised a panel, on Global Islamophobia at Home and Abroad featuring Dr Tajul Islam, Dr Waqas Tufail, and Dr Claudia Radiven. The panel discussed Islamophobia as a framework to map the racialisation of Muslims in different contexts and explored the multi-layered manifestations of Islamophobia—from genocide in Bosnia to the Prevent policy and citizenship issues in the UK, to the policing of pro-Palestinian solidarity. It situated them within the same global Islamophobia logic.

The recognition of discriminatory practices against Muslims as Islamophobia raises the question of the relationship between Islamophobia and racism. Through the intertwined histories of the genocide of Jewish and Muslim communities, Dr Islam explored Islamophobia as a form of racism. In response to arguments denying Islamophobia—particularly the question of how Islamophobia can be considered racism when Islam is not a race? Dr Islam repeated the argument that racism is not a consequence of race; rather, racism precedes the invention of race. In other words, race did not create racism; in fact, it is the other way around. By highlighting how Islam is treated by racial and colonial ideology as a race, Dr Islam categorised Islamophobia as racism. This categorisation not only emphasises the racialisation of Muslims in different contexts but also contributes to revealing the grammar of racialisation in a post-racial world.

Following the discussion on the global racialisation of Muslims, Dr Claudia Radiven focused on the "Muslim question" in the UK. Radiven categorised Prevent as a discourse that disciplines the relationship between citizens and the state, identifying Muslims as different and dangerous. She demonstrated that Muslim citizens in the UK never have an equal standing compared to their other British counterparts.  She claimed that the threat of Muslimness, and its articulation in relation to Britishness and British values is used through the Prevent strategy to restrict Muslim citizenship and belonging in the UK, to the detriment of Muslim communities.

By emphasising the "family resemblance" between the Prevent strategy and colonial practices used to maintain order and control over a so-called "civilised" subjugated population under the supremacy of Whiteness, Dr Radiven argued that Muslims in the UK continue to be managed and contained in ways reminiscent of colonial practices. The transhistorical link Radiven drew between colonial tactics and the Prevent policy highlighted the relational nature of the racialisation of Muslims in different contexts. This recognition creates an epistemic framework that extends beyond the limitations of studying the racialisation of Muslims solely from a local perspective, which often fails to capture the broader framework.

Dr Waqas Tufail expanded on the idea of understanding the treatment of Muslims as a continuation of the experiences of colonised peoples, centring his discussion on Islamophobia and the Policing of Palestine solidarity in Western countries. Dr Tufail traced the colonial roots of the over-policing of Palestine solidarity, emphasising its role in suppressing resistance and solidarity among Muslims and Arabs in the UK. He argued that this new racism, which targets Muslim and Arab students and academics, should be understood in the context of older, more familiar racist institutional practices and the enduring harm inflicted by the War on Terror.

He also addressed the contentious question of whether the term "terrorism" should be applied to movements like far-right riots. Dr Tufail suggested avoiding the use of this term categorically. He argued against deploying counter-terrorism frameworks, even when addressing far-right movements. He explained that policies, like Prevent and counterterrorism reflect colonial legacies that reinforce systemic oppression, ultimately making marginalised and minority groups the primary victims of these discourses.

The panel discussion explored Islamophobia in relation to the grammar of racialisation in a so called post-racial world, emphasising the "family resemblance" between acts of Islamophobia in both the UK and abroad. They offered critical insights into recognising Islamophobia as a global phenomenon. Recognising Islamophobia as a global phenomenon does not imply uniform patterns of Islamophobic activity across contexts. Nor does it disregard the diversity of its manifestations. In this regard, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of "family resemblance" is particularly insightful. Wittgenstein, in discussing what is common to all instances that make them language, states: “Instead of producing something common to all that we call language, I am saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all — but that they are related to one another in many different ways. And it is because of this relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all 'language’” (Wittgenstein, 1972: 31). Similarly, the concept of global Islamophobia, like the relationship among languages, establishes connections among different manifestations of Islamophobia and racialisation of Muslims without dictating specific content. This perspective allows us to understand the underlying systems within which diverse local expressions of Islamophobia are situated.

Global Islamophobia, which my PhD also focuses on, reveals how racial coloniality has been globalised and developed, highlighting that the racialisation of Muslims is not confined to Western contexts where Muslims’ experiences are often associated with migrants and refugees facing xenophobic discourses. Instead, it encompasses prejudiced and discriminatory practices towards Muslims and those perceived as Muslim, even in regions where Muslims are the demographic majority.

The concept of Islamophobia is rarely employed to analyse the racism and racialisation of Muslimness in Muslim-majority contexts. However, examining Islamophobia in these societies enables us to explore not only contemporary discrimination targeting Muslims but also the historical development of racism in these settings, as my PhD seeks to do.

For instance, the Afghan refugees in Iran are racialised and this process cannot be reduced simply to xenophobic discourses. Instead, it is rooted in a specific form of racialisation that emerged in the 20th century. There is a family resemblance between the racialisation of Afghans over the past few decades and the racialisation of Arabs that became hegemonic in the 20th century, fuelled by the de-Islamisation of Iranian identity and antagonism towards Islam—processes that firmly entrenched racial identity and racism. The point I want to emphasise here is that Islamophobia is the grammar for the formation of racial subjects and is a key factor in the contemporary development of racism in Iranian society.

Similar patterns can be observed in the formation of national and racial identities in other Islamicate countries, such as Türkiye, Afghanistan, and Egypt in the 20th century. The formation of national and racial subjects in these countries developed through adherence to the Islamophobia discourses, which Sayyid (2018) theorises as Kemalism. Kemalism is the main form of Islamophobia taking place in Muslilmistan or Islamistan. Despite the nationalist historiographies on Kemalism, which reduce the measures pursued by Mustafa Kemal in 20th-century Türkiye, Kemalism understood as an analytical tool is not limited to the ideology of the Turkish Republic. Instead, transnationally it serves as a main repertoire of Islamophobia in Islamicate contexts.

In discussing racism and racialisation within the context that is the subject of my discussion, I employ the term "Islamicate," a concept introduced by Marshall Hodgson (1974). Hodgson coined "Islamicate" to describe civilisations and regions culturally influenced by Islam, aiming to transcend discussions confined solely to Islam as a religion. This term offers an alternative to hegemonic Eurocentric categorisations, such as the "Middle East" and "South Asia." Furthermore, the term Islamicate, as a transnational category, serves as a tool for mapping countries like Iran, Türkiye, and Pakistan, where racism and national racial subjects have emerged and been shaped by antagonism toward Muslimness.

Kemalist discourses reveal how today’s national and racial identities—often taken as given or as natural conditions of society—became cemented and retained over time. Mapping the formation of racial subjects within these contexts through Kemalism suggests that analyses which solely focus on local dynamics are insufficient for comprehending the processes that gave rise to these racial subjects.

The racialisation of Afghans, Arabs, and Syrian refugees in countries such as Iran, Türkiye, and Pakistan, shaped by Orientalist representations, reveals how national and racial subjects are formed through Eurocentric discourses of 'civilising missions' and 'modernisation' that became hegemonic through Kemalist discourses in Islamicate contexts. These discourses frame Islam and Muslimness as sources of backwardness in these contexts, mirroring the treatment of Muslims in the colonial order.

While Islamophobia is often framed as a problem of Western societies, discussing global Islamophobia as the grammar of the colonial world has significantly contributed to understanding racism in non-Western societies. In other words, we cannot talk about racism in Muslim-majority societies without recognising the traces of global Islamophobia.

 

 Reference

Sayyid, S. (2018) ‘Islamophobia and the Europeanness of the other Europe’, Patterns of Prejudice, 52(5), pp. 420–435. doi: 10.1080/0031322X.2018.1512481.

Wittgenstein, L. (1972) Philosophische Untersuchungen/Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte. Revised 4th edn. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.