CERS

Centre for Ethnicity & Racism Studies

THINKING THRU ISLAMOPHOBIA

Symposium Papers

Organised by

S.Sayyid
Abdoolkarim Vakil

May 2008

Shezad Dawood, Nation of Islam (2004)

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Table of Contents

Introductory Note

Islamophobia: Europe's new McCarthyism

Liz Fekete 5

A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: the neologism Islamofascism

Gabriele Marranci 8

Islamophobia and Capitalism

Amir Saeed 14

Dangerous Brown Men and the War on Terror

Gargi Bhattacharyya 18

State Islamophobia in France

Karima Laachir 23

Governing Muslims after 9/11

Yahya Birt 26

K.I.S.S. Islamophobia (keeping it simple and stupid)

Chris Allen 30

On conceptualising Islamophobia, anti-Muslim sentiment

and cultural racism
Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood 34

Is the Islam in Islamophobia the same as the Islam in Anti-Islam;

Or, When is it Islamophobia Time?
AbdoolKarim Vakil 40

The unbearable whiteness of seeing: moderated Muslims,

(in)/visibilities and Islamophobia
D Tyrer 48

Islamophobia and the Law

Samia Bano 54

Investigating Islamophobia within learning environments

Serena Hussain 59

Internal Consistency, Reliability and Construct Validity of the

Attitude Toward Muslim Proximity Index (AMPI):
A measure of social distance
Adrian Brockett, Andrew Village, Leslie J. Francis 64

Are Unicorns Muslim?

S. Sayyid 70

Talking Back Muslim. A Selected Bibliography on Islamophobia

compiled by A. Vakil 74

Notes on Contributors

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Thinking Thru Islamophobia
Introductory Note

Since the end of the Cold War, a series of 'moral panics' have swept over Western
plutocracies at the heart of which has been the figure of the Muslim. Contestations
about Western values such as freedom of expression, gender equality and national
belongings have been raised through interrogation of Muslim settlement in major
Western conurbations.

For many, these moral panics are reminder of growing Islamophobia; for others, they
are a testimony to real problems in Muslim communities and the talk of Islamophobia
is, at best, a distraction and, at worst, a form of cultural censorship under the cover of
which Muslim extremism and intolerance are allowed to go unchecked.

Those who see Islamophobia not as a polemical but analytical term are confronted by
the paucity of its current formulation. It is a concept that is neither consistently
defined, deployed, or understood. This lack of conceptual rigour and depth allows
Islamophobia to circulate widely but ineffectively. Like a buzzing fly, Islamophobia
seems to irritate without bringing any illumination. Policy and opinion makers often
resort to platitudes and clichs when Islamophobia is mentioned unable or unwilling
to see its analytical value as a tool for justice.

The aim of this workshop is to explore the analytical value of Islamophobia and its
limitations. To this end, we will address a number of key questions.

How was the phenomena that Islamophobia seeks to conceptualise dealt with
prior to the formation of the concept?

What is it that the category of Islamophobia brings to the table- is it useful and
if so why?

How would a consistent and clearer understanding of Islamophobia help?

How does Islamophobia relate to others of social exclusion?

What is the relationship between Islamophobia and racism?

Workshop presentations and discussion fall into three areas. Between them, it is
hoped contributors will cover the representative diversity of conceptual and empirical
contexts of Islamophobia, including Muslimistan:

Genealogies of Islamophobia explore the function that the category of

Islamophobia was recruited to perform, and examine the processes by which
Islamophobia entered public discourse.

Contributions on Morphologies of Islamophobia analyse Islamophobia's

relationship with racism and anti-Semitism in an effort to furnish a rigorous
understanding of the concept,

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 Sociologies of Islamophobia address concrete instances of Islamophobia,
trends, monitoring institutions and instruments, and published reports and
policies.

The format adopted for the workshop is that of short presentations based on the draft
position papers included in this booklet and circulated to all registered participants in
advance of the meeting, followed by comments by fellow panellists and discussion
open to all workshop participants.

The Workshop has been divided into three sessions of 2 hours each. Each 10 minute
presentation will be followed by 5 minutes for individual discussion leaving 1 hours
for general discussion in each session. But general discussion at each of the sessions
will also draw upon and continue the conversations from previous sessions.

The papers in this booklet are draft papers and represent work in progress. are
not to be quoted without the express authorisation of their authors.

4
Islamophobia: Europe's new McCarthyism
Liz Fekete

Edward Said, commenting on the redoubtable durability of Orientalist discourse,

observed how Orientalism transmitted or reproduced itself from one era to another? In
todays Europe, the revamped Orientalism that dominates political discourse has not
emerged, post September 11, because of some sudden atavistic tendency within
European societies. On the contrary, the greater circulation of Orientalist ideas is
directly linked to the war on terror and the emergence of the security state. Taking the
form of a virulent Islamophobia, European Orientalism treats the Orient not as a
separate geographical region but as a problem located - due to Europes growing
Muslim minority population - within the boundaries of Europe itself.

In my presentation, I will situate this new virulent Islamophobia in the political

climate, veering towards nativism, which has emerged after eight years of draconian
European emergency laws. On the one hand, populist nativists, rallying around the
extreme-Rights call to Stop the Islamisation of Europe, are openly hostile towards
any visible sign of cultural difference, whether it be the headscarves that mark
Muslim women out as indelibly different or the mosques and minarets which threaten
European skylines and Christian heritage. On the other hand, EU-wide anti-
radicalisation measures introduced after the London and Madrid bombings amidst a
debate about home-grown terrorism, accompanied by security-inspired citizenship
reforms and integration policies, have nourished an official nativism. European
Muslims today are routinely represented in the media as untrustworthy citizens,
subject to foreign allegiance and divided loyalties. Out of the turmoil provided by
anti-terrorist measures, security and integration policies, a new strain of McCarthyism
emerges.

Particular strains of McCarthyism, with its highly-public loyalty reviews, are

emerging in particular policy contexts. My research to date has identified three major
areas of concern.

Anti-radicalisation measures and new crimes of undesirable behaviour

The first strain, which primarily affects young Muslims, is a direct result of the
intelligence services promotion of anti-terrorist measures based on countering the
radical ideas of young Muslims For just as the red scare held that traditional
security methods could not adequately safeguard the US against the Communist
threat, the Islam scare holds that certain beliefs are so dangerous that any measure
taken to restrict them is justified. Within anti-radicalisation measures, as progressive
lawyer Gareth Peirce has warned, radicalisation has become a condemnation as
conveniently imprecise as the label subversive` used in the post-war McCarthyite
witch-hunts in America. Hence new offences related to the vague new criminal
offence of undesirable behaviour have been brought under the scope of the anti-
terrorism laws and university lecturers and higher education bodies are being
encouraged to monitor young Muslims for signs of subversive behaviour.

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Framing the debate: the media and the preachers of hate
A second variant on the Islam scare with its discourse on Muslim loyalties has
emerged out of the interplay between the intelligence services targeting of mosques
as cites for international jihadist networks and radicalisation and the medias
preoccupation with Islamic fundamentalism and preachers of hate. Tabloid
journalism is promoting scare scenarios Journalists are increasingly going into
mosques with a view to exposing radical clerics, extremism and terrorism in hastily-
constructed, low-budget and badly-resourced productions which take the place of
high-quality investigative journalism, and provide a sexy sequence where the
reporter looks into his own camera and explains how frightened he feels as he
prepares to infiltrate the bad boys.

Citizenship, loyalty and allegiance to the State

During the period of McCarthyism, the McCarran-Walter Immigration and
Nationality Act (1952) was introduced, allowing for the deportation of immigrants or
naturalised citizens engaged in subversive activities. In modern day reforms to
citizenship and immigration laws can be found yet another intimation of the Red
scare, with its discourses about loyalty and patriotism; its ceaseless search for the
enemy within. This is leading to an increase in administrative racism, where security
services, police and civil servants have unchecked powers to judge the loyalties of
individual citizenship applicants, and to decide what constitutes acceptable
behaviour This administrative racism has been accompanied, post-September 11, by
a rise in constitutional patriotism whereby citizenship applicants, particularly in
France and Germany, must declare allegiance to the State

Integration discourse and accusatory processes

The final element of the new McCarthyism comes through the accumulation of anti-
Muslim stereotypes via the political debate on national identity, core values and
integration. It is precisely though the integration debate, that the moral indignation
of the majority identified by sociologist Daniel Bell as a key feature of the red scare
has been popularised. For within it Muslims stand constantly accused of being the un-
assimilable Other, with the new yardstick for integration being integration into
values. Although what the majority really demands is not integration (a two way
process of mutual adaptation) but assimilation (a one-way process whereby the
minority are absorbed by the majority). A debate on integration that makes
assimilationist demands presupposes, in Sivanandans words, that there is one
dominant culture, one unique set of values, one nativist loyalty

Central to this very public discussion of Islam and integration is a kind of conjuring
trick. Muslims comprise something like 3.5 per cent of the total population of Europe
and are so diverse Turks, Kurds, Moroccans, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Somalis,
Afghanis, Iraqis, Iranians, etc and so fragmented in ethnic, national, linguistic and
sect terms and so economically marginalized as to defy any attempt at unity, let
alone power. But by removing Muslims from the social reality they face here in
Europe and linking them to the homogenous and repressive force that is said to be
global Islam, the discourse vests them with an illusion of unity and power so
subversive as to constitute the enemy within. And it is the States attempts to
rigorously police the public sphere of religion and religious representation not least
through bans on the headscarf and rules on appropriate clothing - that has given
succour to the extreme-Rightss campaigns against mosques and minarets. For

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governments that promote assimilationist measures, also generate the notion that
Muslims must become socially invisible, by force if necessary, if they are to be fully
integrated. In the streets of European cities, as well as in the more rural areas, the cry
goes up Against the Islamisation of Europe

This paper draws on my A Suitable Enemy: Islamophobia and xeno-racism in Europe,

forthcoming from Pluto Press in January 2009

7
A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: the neologism Islamofascism
Gabriele Marranci

Three days ago the Italian police arrested Roberto Sandalo, a former communist
terrorist of the group Prima Linea (First Line). He has been charged with being the
leader of the a new Christian terrorist organization called Fronte Combatente
Cristiano (Christian Combat Front), which had organised some bomb attacks against
Islamic targets, such as mosques and Islamic centres in the North (see Repubblica 11
April 2008). During the police interrogation, he declared that his groups intent is to
fight Islamofascism. The term is a neologism allegedly coined in 1978 by the
Marxist Maxime Rodinson to condemn the overthrow of the Shah and the unexpected
rise of Khomeinis Islamic republic during a critical exchange with Michel Foucault
in Le Monde. Within the academic world, the scholar Malise Ruthven in a column for
the Independent ( 8 September 1990) used the term Islamo-fascism in reference to
the Islamicization of Moroccan and Pakistani political life.

Recently some university campuses in the US and Europe have been, though
unsuccessfully, celebrating the first Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week which was
internationally organised by the former Marxist, and now Neo-conservative, David
Horowitz with the support of Mr Robert Spencer, the editor of Jihad Watch, Mr Pipes
and among others, Mr Kramer. As we shall see, the term has not found very much
support among academics, who have expressed their dissent through email lists and
personal Blogs (see Varisco on Tabsir, for instance). It is not surprising, thus, that the
organizers of the Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week have often shown contempt for as
well as denigration of sound academic criticism, so that Mr Spencer has observed,
The academic establishment doesnt work on the basis of reason it just smears its
opponents, and assumes the sheep will fall into lockstep.

I was tempted to ignore this discussion. I wondered whether it might be useful or not
to debate, and to engage in a tenson which inevitably lacks the great tradition of
chivalric duels or the Greek agora diatribes. Furthermore, I have to admit that this
debate has not attracted very much attention within the UK, and it appears to be one
of these American (provincial) pre-presidential election games. Even our own home-
grown Neo-Con, and Western Civilisation paladin, Melanie Phillips has totally
ignored the event as well as the discussion, though she likes and supports the term
IslamoFascism. So, why should I comment on this event? I can tell you that, as an
anthropologist, I am more interested in real people and real fieldwork, rather than
fantasy-politick, in which labels are debated, discredited, defended, attacked in the old
game of I am right, you are wrong. Yet Roberto Sandalos clear new terrorist aims
as well as the total lack of academic discussion of both the neologism, and the sect
developing around it, require an urgent scholarly investigation. I have mentioned the
word sect, since it is my contention that a sort of neo-tribe (see Hetherington 1998)
is forming around certain opinion makers such as Mr Spencer and Horowitz. Let
me, however start from the epicentre of the neologism Islamofascism.

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Islamofascism is becoming a very popular expression, particularly among right-wing
western (but not only western) politicians, and it is slowly replacing more common
labels, such as Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic radicalism, and even Islamic
terrorism. It is one of the key words of the increasingly less popular, and so
increasingly defensive, American Neo-conservatives and Born Again Christians.

Fascism is a word that has a particular emotional and historical value for me. I was
born in Italy, where Fascism developed from Mussolinis ideas. Mussolini was a
socialist politician, journalist, and convinced nationalist. Fascism has marked the
history of my family. One of my grandfathers was a convinced Fascist; so convinced
that he took part in the final and tragic phases of the Salo, Italian Social Republic. The
other grandfather was part of the anti-Fascist, Catholic movement, or White Partigiani
(which, despite some tensions, fought together with the Partigiani, who were
communists and socialists).

In other words, I was born into a family which was the product of the successful, yet
still troubled, Italian reconciliation process. Nonetheless, as you can expect, the two
grandfathers disagreed upon nearly everything. Only one thing united them, however,
and that was the fact that they believed that Americans were pathologically unable to
understand what Fascism is and the differences that exist between it and Nazism.
After reading, or even viewing video clips, about Islamofascism offered by the
Freedom Center1 as well as Mr Spencers viewpoints, I tend to agree with my
grandfathers. Although some fundamentalist movements and radical Islamic
ideologies may share, like many other aggressive and repressive ideologies, aspects
with Fascism, the use of the terminology Islamofascism (or whatever other religious
denomination one may wish to use as prefix) is an abuse to the historical drama that
Fascism, and in particular Italian Fascism, has represented.

Fascism is a nationalist movement, based on the strong leadership of a Dux. It has an

autarkic and protectionist view of economy, and is very suspicious of any form of
religion, which should be controlled partially by the state. Fascism is an arrogant,
strong belief in a superiority of the Roman, thus western, civilisation over any other
(Griffin 1993). Fascism sacralised the secular leader and it is a very extremist secular
creed (Pope and King have to stay where the state agree they can stay). Fascism is
different from Nazism, and I have notice that Mr David Horowitz, tends, as others, to
use Fascism as synonymous with Nazism. Fascism is a product of a certain way of
understanding socialism, and Mussolini, like, funnily enough Mr Horowitz, swung to
the far right, since he saw traditional socialism as a failure. Fascism advocated
providing people with freedom, real freedom. Fascism was (and is) based on slogans
and simplistic truisms, anti-intellectual and anti-academe spirit. It used to accuse
scholars of undermining or opposing Civilisation with their own intellectual ideas.
The Fascist intellectual is the only one that Fascists recognise, the one that sees the
truth and does not ask questions, one that is practical, who is useful for the cause,
one that has neither doubts, questions nor bias. The others should be demonised as
enemies, false scholars and apologists.

Of course, some readers would recognise easily some of these elements that
characterise not only some Islamic movements, but also Italian, American, Dutch, and

1
http://www.horowitzfreedomcenter.org/

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Danish right wing ones. Freedom, as well as liberty, understood in populist terms, has
been often a strong slogan of Fascist ideology. So much that, by historical default, I
become extremely suspicious of right-wing movements that defined themselves as the
House of liberty, such as Berlusconis coalition or other freedom labelled
movements.

That said, and strongly disagreeing with the propagandistic and sophistic use of the
terminology which Mr Horowitz and Mr Spencer employ, we, as intellectuals and
scholars have to recognize that within the Muslim world (and not within Islam as they
advocate) there are troubles which cannot be adduced uniquely to the Palestinian
issues, the War in Iraq, and the USAs new, dangerously right wing, political
approach. So, I welcome Mr Horowitz, Spencer, Kramer, and Pipes efforts to raise
awareness of the issues we face. Yet I totally deplore and strongly criticise their
approach and their views. At this stage, I even do not criticise their views of Islam.
There is something more deep which makes me very suspicious and uncomfortable
with their preaching style.

They, sometimes, are too reminiscent of that pre-Fascism Mussolinian rhetoric of

Civilization, Intellectual enemies, autarkism, real Truths, essentialisation, and
populist slogan-based rhetoric which, as an Italian and grandson of that tragic history,
I have learnt to recognise and be suspicious of. As Americans, Mr Horowitz&Co.
would never see things in this way, they can be even emically offended by my etic
observation, since they are just conservative pupils of the Leo Strauss school, offering
an authoritarian and elitist view of western society (Drury 1988). Yet to an Italian
anthropologist, British adopted, their rhetoric and the way in which they present their
own argument reminds me of a very western civilizational unpleasant past.

These are cultural differences, but still they exist. So even if I can understand the
reasons (beyond the fully legitimate economic ones) of raising awareness of the risk
of what they call Islamofascism, I think that, with their methodology and style, they
put us at risk of seeing old, and more western rooted, traditional Fascism, which I am
sure would never affect probably the USA but rather my Old Europe. The terrorist
attempts by the newborn Christian Combat Front seems to explain very well the
danger of such rhetoric and the moral implication of hysterical campaign such as
those offered by Mr Spencer and others.

What Mr Spencer and the others say about Islam derives from their interpretation
which is based on the interpretations offered by the movements and Muslims they
wish to criticise. Then they essentialize it in a hermeneutic approach, which, like
Gellner (1981), and in different terms Geertz, (1968), but unfortunately I have to say
with less sophistication, views the Quran and the Hadith as the essence of Islam. In
other words, they believe that Islam, as such, exists beyond complex elements such as
individuality, emotions, environment and so on (see Marranci 2008). Here is the
reason for their constant reference, akin to that of a fundamentalist Muslim, to some
isolated extracts from the Quran and Hadith. I supposed (and please correct me if I
am wrong) that Mr Spencer and Horowitz have never spent time, not days, weeks, nor
months, with ordinary fundamentalists or extremists, discussing and trying to
understand the dynamics behind their way of thinking. Mr Spencer and Horowitz
understand ordinary fundamentalists or extremists just by interpreting some
extracts of the Quran that these Muslims refer to.

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I believe that Mr Spencer and Horowitz merely read Qutb, al Banna, Afghani, the
Quran and the Hadiths and so on, and from there, and the political views of
fundamentalist movements, they offered their own interpretation, not just of these
movements or individual writers, but all Islam, as religion and practice. They explain
that Islam is a violent and blood thirsty religion through practices such as the
principle of abrogation, and other traditional, but still debated, theological Islamic
machineries. In other words, Mr Robert Spencer acts no differently to those
reprehensible commentators that, referring to the Talmud, wish to demonstrate that
Jews are blood thirsty, power hungry, and even paedophiles. The intent may be
different but the methodology is just the same.

Yet try to fully discuss with ordinary Muslims, which are the majority, the principal
of abrogation or ijtihad, or even ask them for a detailed explanation of Qutbs theory
of governance, or Afghanis interpretation of modernity, and you will discover that
these elements play a very small role in their understanding of Islam, or even jihad
(Marranci 2006) . Mr Spencer, an extreme hermeneutic and also a historical
unilinearalist, misses the main elements to explain, in a convincing way, the situation
in which both Muslims and non-Muslims find themselves today. Therefore, the
oppression of women which we find in certain Muslim countries or certain ideological
views of radical movements, could not be reduced simplistically to the Quran and the
Hadith. Indeed, Italy is not a Muslim country, but it shares, for example with North
African culture, many of the misogynist views which Mr Spencer and others would
consider to be a product of Islam as religion (even not as culture). How, then, would
Mr Spencer explain such similarities (even in traditional sayings as well as practices)?
I hope that he, or others for that matter, would not suggest that South Italy was for
centuries under the Saracens.Whoever would attempt to justify traditional Italian
misogyny in such a way would attract derision.

However, Mr Spencer (along with the others mentioned above) often engage in
something very similar. For instance, he attempts to link historical facts of the past to
the present situation, so that Muslims, all of them, even the moderate majority, are
trying to reduce us to Dhimmitude (Spencer 2005), of the same kind experienced in
Europe during the Middle Ages. The state of dhimmi did not imply a secondclass
citizen status. Indeed, I doubt that Muslims even had the concept of second-class
citizens we possess today. In medieval kingdoms money, power and knowledge,
more than religion, ethnicity and nationality, made status. Medieval Spanish
documents prove that Islamic courts employed Jewish teachers, military commanders
and accountants. Reguer (2000 (Reguer 2000) has explained that in Muslim societies,
although dhimmi, Jews could reach influential positions. He has provided us with the
example of Samuel ibn Nagrela:

Samuel ibn Nagrela [a Jew], who rose to become vizier [adviser of

the khalifa] of Granada, was a statesman, poet, scholar and military
commander. His political career marks the highest achievement of a
Jew in medieval Muslim Spain. In 1027, the Jews conferred on him
the title of nagid, designating him head of the community. (2000:
134)

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Hence, the argument offered by the supporters of the neologism Islamo-fascism, may
suffer from faulty reasoning. Had the second-class position of Jews within Muslim
societies saved them from anti-Semitism, in Christian Europe, where Jewish
populations suffered ostracism and persecution rather than second-class status, the
pernicious and long-standing anti-Semitism we can observe until today would have
been non-existent.

Mr Spencer also uses the same historically unilinear reasoning and methodology for
the case of IslamoFascism, mentioning the meeting of some Muslim leaders with Nazi
diplomats. This historical link between Muslim leaders in the 1930s and Nazi and
fascist leaders is becoming one of the main evidences to shows that Islam as religion
may have links with the ideology forming fascism. Again, we find that Spencer and
the other supporters of the Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week has only reported half of
the historical truth. They have reminded their readers of the contacts that some
Palestinian leaders had with Nazi and Fascist leaders. However, they have omitted
another grim side of the dirty political battle for Jerusalem. Both some Arabs and
some Zionist leaders (the so-called Zionist-Revisionists) had contacts with the
German Nazi and Italian Fascist regimes in the attempt to achieve the same goal: a
nation for their people in the contended Holy Land. While Arabs attempted to contact
the Nazi authorities, in November 1934 the Zionist-Revisionists convinced Mussolini
[to] set up a Betar squadron at his scuola marittima at Civitavecchia, where 134
[Jewish] cadets were trained by the notorious Blackshirts; in 1936, Il Duce himself
reviewed his Zionist wards (Brenner 1983, but see also the Encyclopaedia Judaica
1972: 175).

Why should we be so surprised that both Arab and Zionists leaders tried to bargain
with what they considered European superpowers? Both sides were only interested in
the land rather than ethics. To read these historical events as the ultimate evidence of
Arab anti-Semitism derived from the Quran or as the ultimate proof that Zionism is
the Jewish version of Fascism would be seriously misleading and unethical.

My main problem with Mr Spencers argument is his idea that history does not
change, his anti-Heraclitean vision of time. Mr Spencer and Mr Horowitz, willing or
unwilling, seem to suggest that Muslims today still think and act as those at the time
of Mohammed or the Middle Ages. I suppose that this should imply that there exists
something like a Muslim mind. I do not know because they do not say if this is the
case. But the idea of a Muslim mind does not make any more sense to an
anthropologist than the existence of a specifically Christian, Atheist, Jewish (and so
on) mind. Of course, even those Muslims that refer, like bin-Laden, to historical
concepts, do so in a totally different context, with totally different aims and strategies.

References

Brenner, L. (1983), Zionist-Revisionism: the Years of Fascism and Terror, Journal of

Palestinian Studies 13 (1): 6692.
Hetherington, K. (1998), Expressions of Identity: Space, Performance, Politics, London:
Sage.
Drury, S. B. (1988). The political ideas of Leo Strauss. New York: St. Martin's Press
Geertz, C. (1968), Islam Observed, New Haven and London: Yale University Press

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Griffin, R. (1993). The nature of fascism. London: Routledge
Marranci, G. 2006 Jihad beyond Islam, London, New York: Berg.
Gellner, E. (1981), Muslim Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marranci, G. 2008 The Anthropology of Islam, London, New York: Berg
Reguer, S. (2000), Judaism in the Muslim World in J. Neusner and A. J. Every-Peck (eds),
The Blackwell Companion to Judaism, London: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 13141.
Spencer, R. (2005). The politically incorrect guide to Islam (and the Crusades). Washington,
DC: Regnery Pub.

13
Islamophobia and Capitalism
Amir Saeed

Imperialism is the project, globalisation the process, culture the

vehicle and the nation-state the political and military agent. To look
at racism as an isolate without considering its relationship to
globalisation and therefore imperialism, is not only to descend into
institutional racism and gives a fillip to popular racism. To look at
globalisation without relating it to imperialism and therefore racism
is not only to regard its penetration into Third World countries as an
inevitable extension of trade, and not as precursor to the regime
change that follows in its wake, but to overlook the racist discourse
that accompanies it and stirred up by the media, feed into popular
racism.
A. Sivanandan2

Contemporary globalisation has led to another shift in the evolving nature of racism
that is where Muslims and Islam are (once again) demonised within popular culture as
the threatening other. This essay argue that it would be naive to assume that the
resurgence of anti Muslim and anti-immigrant racism is a just a direct consequence of
the War on Terror. Rather it is apparent the War on Terrorism is an attempt by
proponents of free market capitalism and the United States in particular to control
resources in what it considers to be less civilised parts of the world. The attacks on
East European immigrants and the US critique of Cuba and Venezuela further support
this point.

International and National Concerns in the contemporary world.

Recent polls suggest that immigration is now the third most important topic for
British voters. Since 9/11 issues of race, religion and migration have become centre
stage in society. During the late 1980s and continuing into the 1990s interest in the
whole Muslim community in the UK increased significantly. Beginning with national
issues such as the Rushdie affair and international matters such as the 1991 Gulf War,
a series of events brought Muslims into the media spotlight and adversely affected the
Muslim population in the UK. New components within racist terminology appeared,
and were used in a manner that could be argued were deliberately provocative to bait
and ridicule Muslims and other ethnic minorities. Old favourites such as Paki, were
accompanied by shouts of Taliban, Bin Laden and of course terrorists. This abuse was

2
(29/10/2004) http://www.irr.org.uk/2004/october/ha000024.html

14
also directed to non-Muslims such as Sikhs, Hindus and Christian-Arabs. Anyone
who looked like the other was fair-game for such abuse.

The language of the media prompted the idea of a criminal culture and a perception
that British Muslims supported of Bin Laden, Palestinian suicide bombers and
Kashmiri separatists. This view was further fuelled by recent events in the North of
England. The disturbances in the North of England have in some quarters been
presented as a particular problem with the Muslim community and not with the
British-Asian community as a whole.

However much they seek to identify themselves as British, young Muslims regularly
find that others assume them to be first and foremost Muslim. In Britain today,
especially after the events of 9/11 and the beginning of the so-called War on Terror, it
is now Muslims who have been identified as a group of potentially false nationals
and systematically constructed as the other. A discourse has been produced that
directly links British Muslims with support for terrorism, fundamentalism, illegal
immigration and an Oriental stereotype of the East. British Muslims are repeatedly
implored by voices in the media and by politicians of all sides to make more
strenuous efforts to integrate into British society, and reassert their loyalty to the
British state in a manner that no non-Muslim anti-war group would ever be
instructed.

Race
Contemporary racism manifests itself in a number of different hybrid forms.
However, its agency is premised on a number of false assumptions about race, and
on generalising human beings existence and experiences into simple homogenous
groupings. Race as a concept does not exist, yet belief in this lie leads to the direct
and indirect discrimination, abuse and suffering of billions of people on Earth on a
daily, hourly and secondly basis. Across the globe racism manifests itself in various
ways that ensures people are victimised on the basis of some supposedly hallucinatory
negative biological and/or cultural trait that they are supposed to possess. Any attempt
to explain comprehensively global accounts of the immediacy, currency and future of
racism is virtually impossible, since the institutional structures, types, targets and
experiences are so potentially vast and full of regional, local and national variations
that dispute and debate will be inevitable. What cannot be disputed is that human
beings will suffer.

Simultaneously cultural racism is evident with politicians questioning the success of a

multicultural society. The moral panic surrounding the events of 9/11, and 7/7 have
led to a right-wing led debate under the guise of community cohesion that have
suggested a return to core national values/culture (note that the debates suggest the
lack of precise meanings for these terms; national and culture) alongside stricter
immigration and policing controls. Recently a new dominant neo-right wing discourse
has been formulated that questions the whole concept of multiculturalism. What
makes this different from previous right wing criticism of multiculturalism is that
much of this criticism is coming from previously centre left commentators. Much of
this language has taken even the more sinister view of questioning the need of
immigration, questioning minority communities and questioning the actual benefits of
a multicultural society. Furthermore much of the blame for the failure of

15
multiculturalism has been attached to Muslims incompatibility to live within the
democratic principles of the West.

Many writers have observed that in recent times biological notions of race have been
replaced by cultural definitions which draw on discourses of national belonging and
national identity. Many have claimed that in the past twenty years a new racism has
successfully distanced itself from crude notions of biological inferiority and instead
forged links between race, nationhood, patriotism and nationalism. It has done so by
defining the nation as a unified cultural community, a national culture ethnically pure
and homogeneous in its whiteness.

The new racism is not always covert and at times it seems to echo discredited
biological assumptions about race and the perceived superiority of the West. This
link can be most clearly seen in the appropriation of Samuel Huntingtons Clash of
Civilisations. He argues that a new cold war is taking place based not upon
economics or politics but on culture. He continues that Islam with its innate
propensity to violence poses the most serious threat to Western civilisation. It is clear
for Huntington that Islam is and Muslims are inherently inferior whilst this argument
is based on religion and culture the essentialist argument forwarded is chillingly
similar to the biological reasoning forwarded in the nineteenth century to justify
colonialisation and imperial war.

In short even now racism can still resemble the biological arguments employed to
justify slavery and imperialism.

All Muslims, like all dogs, share certain characteristics. A dog is not
the same animal as a cat just because both species are comprised of
different breeds. An extreme Christian believes that the Garden of
Eden really existed; an extreme Muslim flies planes into buildings -
there's a big difference.3

The above can be seen as an example of contemporary neo-Orientalist thinking. First,

this is indicative of Western ethnocentric thinking that homogenises Muslim identity.
It is also suggesting that Islam or the people of Islam, are somehow less advanced
than modern Christians, which once again repackages the historical conceptions of the
Orient as uncivilised, uncultured and irrational.

Islamophobia, like the colonial discourse of its predecessor, Orientalism, does not
allow for diversity; contradictions and semiotic tensions are ignored as the
homogenising ethnocentric template of otherness assumes that there is only one
interpretation of Islam.

Thus in the era of globalisation the rhetoric used to exclude unwanted migrants
takes on an explicitly racist tone exemplified in the discourse of Islamophobia
however this politics of exclusion is in many ways fuelled by economic
underpinnings. It is argued that the forces of globalisation occupy and re-invent
cultures and discourses of racial superiority in order to safeguard the economic

3
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/07/25/do2504.xml

16
interest of power. Thus economic group such as the IMF, WTO, G8 etc are seen as
almost preserving white cultural domination through economic subjugation. This
ideology at times is clear and brutal but is maintained through hegemonic control.
Thus the privileged position of the Western nations is seen as natural and due to
greater political pluralism and democracy not the continued exploitation of other parts
of the world or other peoples.

17
Dangerous Brown Men and the War on Terror
Gargi Bhattacharyya

I began this work in response to the case of Binyam Mohamed, and, because I know
his name and cannot name the thousands of others detained in the secret and illegal
prisons of the War on Terror, I think of his case as emblematic of the horror and
character of War on Terror torture. The terrible creativity of the violence, the fixation
on genitalia these are characteristics that can be seen in other scenes of sexualised
racial violence and I have some knowledge of both how such theatricalised abuse
operates and how it can be understood as a component of a larger culture of
oppression and violence (Bhattacharyya, 1998; Bhattacharyya, Gabriel and Small,
2001). I have tried to argue throughout this work that the sexualisation of racism and
violence is not incidental, but instead is a significant component of the workings of
the War on Terror. Other incidents confirm this view. Khaled El Masri, a German
citizen, was abducted by the CIA and also subjected to highly sexualised torture,
including penetration of his rectum using a blunt instrument. Reports from
Guantanamo repeatedly point to the use of sexualised assault and sexual humiliation
as supposed interrogation methods (Otterman, 2007). Abu Ghraib staged the War on
Terror through the lens of sadistic pornography. The horrific use of sexual torture and
violence appears to employ a version of cultural knowledge in order to heighten the
humiliation (Strasser, 2004). Well-known accounts of US interrogation techniques
confirm this sense that the techniques of inter-cultural understanding have come to
inform this other world (McCoy, 2006). Despite the apparent knowingness of
statements that proclaim the benefits of western tolerance for diverse societies, the
deployment of this supposed cultural knowledge in the processes of torture reveals an
image of an essentialised Muslim man, a man who truly can be broken only through
the cultural pressure-point of sexual humiliation. This racist myth enables the dual
suggestions that all other violence, however extreme, has no impact and that the
barbarism of these people is demonstrated by their backward beliefs about sex.
I want to argue that the emergence of an expansionary militarism from the US and its
allies infects the conduct of civilian life within these and other nations. This infection
builds on previous practices of racialised policing but with an expansion of targets
and an adaptation of the legitimising narrative. Racial myths evolve so that the
demonised figure of the dangerous black man becomes the dangerous brown man,
an adaptation of earlier racist mythologies that may refer to the same groups of men
but that enables the inclusion of more recent racialised anxieties. This is a process that
continues the influence of US-defined racial politics on other parts of the world the
cultural representation of dangerous blackness in various parts of the world has been
shaped by US culture and politics and similarly the inclusion of dangerous brownness
in this formulation echoes shifts in US racial politics, both at home and internationally
(Winant, 2001). Importantly, there is a shift to include new communities and develop
racial myths for new circumstances. In the process, there is a concerted campaign to

18
suggest that race is no longer the issue and that those who previously suffered
racism are now with us (as opposed to against us).

The shift from what I am describing as black to brown myths is centred around the
implied dangers of non-western cultures. There is a reworking of long-running racist
myths so the black rapist becomes the brown man from a backward and
misogynistic culture, anti-feminist, sexually frustrated by traditional culture, addicted
to honour killing and viewing women as tradable objects (for a summary of some of
these ideas, see Abbas, 2007). Such a narrative represents a further development of
the take-up of anti-essentialism as a defence of racism the proposition that identities
are based on cultures and that cultures are separate and absolutely different enables all
kinds of terrible things to be said and, sadly, believed. This is a language of racism
that has learned to disavow the terms of race in order to re-legitimise racist practises
(for a discussion of this so-called cultural racism see Taylor and Spencer, 2004). It is
this shift that I am characterising as the refocusing on brown men with brown here
signifying a difference that can be depicted as cultural, non-essential, beyond the
horrific histories of violence against Africans and yet enabling a continuance of the
link between bodies and social meaning. None of this means that old-fashioned anti-
blackness has disappeared (Bashi, 2004). However, I do think the take-up of an active
language of anti-racism has altered the public framing of racist activity and that the
legitimating narratives of racism, in particular of state racisms, reach for terms that
can at once maintain the effects of racial categorisation while refusing the salience of
the term race.

Dangerous brown men on our streets

What I am describing as the shift from dangerous black men to dangerous brown men
in popular mythologies that legitimise state racism and authoritarianism builds on
histories of constraining the hyper-visible black body. However I also want to suggest
that this is a slightly different twist in the development of a culture of global racism.

Of course the move from black to brown targets of vilification is somewhat illusory.
The populations under scrutiny and attack span the identities of black, brown and
beyond. I am certainly not suggesting here that the long and virulent history of anti-
African racism that lies at the heart of so much transnationalised mediatised racism is
over. What I am arguing is that the conduct of the War on Terror has given rise to
renewed techniques of state racism in a variety of locations and this reinvigorated
campaign has drawn on distinct mythologies of race and culture.

In terms of repressive techniques, this culturally sensitive version of state racism very
much continues the strategies of earlier times. However, the mythology of difference
that accompanies these actions is distinct. On the whole, this is not a narrative of
racism that centres on such familiar tropes as physicality or hyper-sexuality.

The relatively rapid construction of an everyday mythology of what Muslims are

like including detailed narratives about their purported beliefs, histories, social
habits and alleged proclivity for violence builds on a popular familiarity with
culturalist accounts of identity and behaviour (for some examples, see Rippin, 2005;
Khan, 2003; Lewis, 2004). In a context where explicit racism has ceased to be
respectable and where the allegation of racism is regarded as a profound personal slur,

19
the take-up of complex culturalist accounts of difference enables racist antagonisms to
be voiced in a different and seemingly legitimate manner.

The various statements that are used to present this position, including government
and policy pronouncements, media representations and a range of everyday
conversational statements of varying status, tend to be structured to refute the
accusation of racism while presenting the legitimacy of unequal treatment or of
antagonism to a group (for examples see Koch and Smith, 2006; Khalaf, 2005; for a
critical analysis, see Carr, 2006). I am indebted to the analysis of Roger Hewitt in his
work on white backlash to multiculturalism for this formulation. Hewitt collates and
analyses a series of responses to racist attacks and murders among white groups in
particular demonised areas of South London and finds that such utterances contribute
to a complex and shared counter-narrative about the racist character of the incidents
and the role and status of white inhabitants of the area. Overall he finds that there is a
shared narrative circulating that asserts that these acts of violence were not motivated
by racism and that whites suffer similar levels of racist attack by other groups but that
this is not recognised by public authorities or the media. Hewitt summarises the term
counter-narrative as,

having the appearance of being proffered in response to a previous story or stories,

and of anticipating further narrative moves by others. (Hewitt, 2005, 57)

The various disavowals of racism that occur in the name of the War on Terror and the
related activity of reclaiming state racism as a legitimate response to dangerous
differences of belief and culture could be seen as embodying a wider backlash
against the analytic status of race and racism as structuring forces in society. Instead,
the rhetoric of us and them portrays this new battle of ideas as rooted in differences of
values, beliefs and ways of life. If the other is hiding their adherence to a demonic,
violent and destructive culture and set of beliefs, it is not racist to use the surveillance
and categorisation techniques of a modern state to limit the threat that this poses. We
are back to deciphering bodies, but now in order to discern adherence to these
dangerous beliefs.

Religious identity occupies a different status to ideas of race, and there have been
claims from different quarters that religion is the new race and that ideas of social
justice should be reconsidered in the light of this shift (Modood, 1992; Gottschalk,
2007). For those wishing to defend and represent religious minorities, this claim is
framed to extend demands for social equality to include extended rights to religious
freedom and recognition and a linking of social and cultural rights. For others, the
same claim is presented to argue that racism has been eliminated precisely because it
was recognised to be an unnecessary and irrational social evil but that antagonism
towards the practices and values of religious minorities is not and cannot be racism
because religion is an issue of belief and free-will. Seeking to accommodate the
beliefs and practices of minorities in the name of equality is a bad thing for society,
because some beliefs and practices make bad things happen and are bad for society.

The continual return to the alleged status of women in Islam and/or in the conception
of those professing various strands of political Islam could be seen to represent one
process of counter-narrative. In implicit, and sometimes explicit, response to the
allegation that Muslim minorities are marginalised and face social exclusion in

20
western societies, a counter-claim is made that alleges that these groups cannot expect
equality when their own cultural practices deny equality to women. This claim
suggests that the social ills faced by Muslim communities are not discrimination on
the grounds of religion or race, but are an outcome of other groups proper
disapproval of Muslim accounts of the status of women. As such beliefs are a cultural
choice, unlike the naturalised and absolute difference of physicalised conceptions of
race, Muslims should change their unpleasant ways in order to gain social acceptance
and equality.

There are similar implications in statements about purported Muslim attitudes to

sexuality, personal freedom and allegiance to state and nation. Therefore counter-
narratives include the suggestions that granting equal treatment to Muslims would
entail condoning discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people and a
general unleashing of sexual repression against all; that Islam denies personal liberty
and therefore any accommodation with Muslim communities would lead to an erosion
of personal freedom for all; that Islam demands a transnational and mutual allegiance
between Muslims that over-rides the claim of any national law or allegiance and
therefore Muslims must be scrutinised and persecuted if national security is to be
defended.

At the heart of each narrative is the assertion that unequal treatment is not only
justifiable, it is necessary for the greater good. In the process, racism is resurrected as
a respectable and also necessary practice, but now on the grounds of the dangers of
insurmountable cultural difference. The demonisation of Muslims serves as a model
through which to rework racial difference as a matter of threatening cultural
difference and the need to preserve social goods such as womens rights, sexual
freedom and personal liberty. Thus, while old-fashioned physicalised racism is
derided, yet another new cultural racism emerges to explain the misfortunes of
minority communities in the labour market, criminal justice and education systems
and at the hands of their neighbours as an outcome of their own illiberal, repressive
and discriminatory culture which makes it impossible for them to integrate with the
more progressive majority culture and leads to their self-segregation. Muslims are the
most identified focus of such narratives, but similar allegations transfer easily to other
groups who face disadvantage.

At the same time as the shift in popular racist mythologies calls upon earlier tropes of
the sexually predatory other, representations of political/religious extremism imply a
refusal of westernised sexual cultures, an alternative set of myths about those who
refuse the pleasure-centred commodified depravity of the West. This is portrayed as a
much more suspect perversion - one that leads to outbursts of frustrated sexualised
violence or, alternatively, that uses sexuality as a tool in a larger ideological battle.
The dangerous brown man of the war on terror is a sexualised figure, but this is a
different sexualisation from that of the mythically phallic black man. The cultural
narrative of terror also relies on an idea of sex: as an explanation for inhuman
behaviour; as an extension of the fear of violence; as the narrative that can
imaginatively embody the otherwise faceless demons of War on Terror.

21
References

Abbas, Tahir (2007) Islamic Political Radicalism: A European Perspective, Edinburgh,

Edinburgh University Press
Bashi, Vina (2004) Globalized anti-blackness: Transnationalizing Western immigration law,
policy, and practice, Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 27 No. 4 July 2004
Bhattacharyya, Gargi (2008) Globalizing racism and myths of the other in the war on terror,
in Lentin (2008), London, Zed
Bhattacharyya, Gabriel and Small, 2001 Race and Power, London, Routledge
Carr, Matt (2006) You are now entering Eurabia, Race and Class 48:1
Gottschalk, Peter (2007) Islamophobia: Making Muslims the Enemy, Lanham, MD., Rowman
& Littlefield
Hewitt, Roger (2005) White Backlash and the Politics of Multiculturalism, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press
Khalaf, Roula (2005) Urgent challenges of Muslim integration in Europe, Financial Times,
14/7/05
Khan, Arshad (2003) Islam, Muslims and America: Understanding the Basis of the Conflict,
New York, Algora Publishing
Koch, Richard; Smith, Chris (2006) Suicide of the West, London, Continuum
Lentin, Ronit (2008) Thinking Palestine, London, Zed
Lewis, Bernard (2004) The Crisis of Islam, Holy War and Unholy Terror, London, Phoenix
Books
Lewis, Reina (2004) Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel and the Ottoman Harem,
London, I.B.Tauris
McCoy, Alfred W. (2006) A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to
the War on Terror, New York, Metropolitan Books
Modood, Tariq (1992) Not easy being British: Colour, culture and citizenship, Stoke-on-
Trent, Trentham
Otterman, Michael (2007) American Torture, From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond,
London, Pluto
Rippin, Andrew (2005) Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, London, Routledge
Strasser, S. 2004 @ The Abu Ghraib Investigations: The Official Independent Panel and
Pentagon Reports on the Shocking Prisoner Abuse in Iraq, New York, PublicAffairs
Taylor, Gary; Spencer, Steve (2004) Social Identities: Multidisciplinary Approaches, London,
Routledge
Winant, Howard (2001) The World is a Ghetto, Race and Democracy since World War II,
New York, Basic Books

This text draws on Gargi Bhattacharyya, Dangerous Brown Men, forthcoming from
Zed Books in June.

22
State Islamophobia in France
Karima Laachir

This paper examines the thorny relationship of French Muslims with the State and
how some of its politics exclude, denationalise and marginalise Muslims in the name
of laicit or secularism. Islam is the second largest religion in France which is home
to Europes largest Muslim communities (estimated between 4 and 5 million). French
Muslims are heterogeneous groups with diverse origins, ethnicity and cultures. They
consist mainly of descendants of North African immigrants who originate from
Frances ex-colonies in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia as well as descendants of
Turkish and African immigrants.

French Muslims have been the target of a growing public hostility that has sought to
represent them as a threat to national security.4 In their comparative study between
Muslim religious demands and the States policies and treatment of these demands in
three European countries: Britain, France and Germany, Fetzer and Soper conclude
that [in] stark contrast to Britain, France not only has done precious little positively
to accommodate Muslims religious practices but has also exerted all too much effort
to make Muslims life even more difficult than it already is for this largely immigrant-
origin, working class population. 5 The French State explains its aggressive policies
to contain, control and regulate Islam in the public sphere as a form of adherence to
the principles of lacit. I examine how the states application and use of lacit
advocates a politics of exclusion of Muslims through the regulation of wanted and un-
wanted subjectivities in the public sphere. Muslim subjectivities are not accepted
since they are represented as a threat to the unity of the nation. This phobia of Islam
and Muslims can be traced back to colonial times and must be seen in the light of the
inherited colonial legacies that shape the States policies towards its Muslim citizens.

Most of the Muslim populations reside in the deprived banlieues of Frances big cities
which are known as zones of economic, social and political exclusion. Since the
1990s, the French media representations of the banlieues have been largely
responsible for their negative perception as the space of the threatening other.
Some sections of the media have established a link between international terrorist
networks and the banlieues.6 The representation of the banlieues as a breeding
ground for Islamic fundamentalists in France and the dislike of the figure of the
Arab/Muslim have increased dramatically since the 9/11 terrorist attack.7 Public

4
See V. Geisser La nouvelle Islamophobie (2003) and V. Geisser and A. Zemouri Marianne et Allah,
(2007).
5
J. S. Fetzer and J.C. Soper Muslims and the State in Britain, France and Germany,(2005), p. 90.
6
P. Silverstein Sporting Faith: Islam, Soccer and the French Nation-State in Social Text 18.4 (2000),
p. 24.
7
See the report by Mouvement contre le Racisme et pour lAmiti enre les Peuples (MRAP),

23
debates since then have been marked by a politics of fear of Islam and Muslims
which, as Geisser8 argues, is channelled through those he calls experts of fear, or
security experts, those who promote a scaremongering discourse about the threat of
Islamism in France.9 Moreover, Islamophobic comments by some public
intellectuals and politicians have been expressed with impunity in French society,
unlike anti-Semitic ones.10

In comparison with other European countries, France has a unique history of lacit,
which was the outcome of a long struggle between the Catholic Church and the
secular members of the French Republic. It is generally understood that the State
safeguards laicit by being the protector of the freedom of worship and conscience.
However, there has never been any clear definition of what laicit means in France
and the concept has been developed in various forms in a series of debates, depending
on the context. The eruption of a visible Islam in the public sphere with the first
headscarf affair in 1989, provoked a new politically-charged debate about laicit,
and the principles of the Republic.11 Laicit and the supposed neutrality of the public
sphere were deemed to be under threat by the visibility of the headscarf which came
to represent patriarchy, communalism and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism among
the Muslim communities. Muslim women were seen as the representatives of Islam.
They were representatives of inadmissible differences that for some compromised
the integrity and cohesion of the nation. The challenge of Islam was not met with
vigorous debate and analysis but rather with mistrust, consternation and the
implementation of rigid laws that were claimed to be a solution to the problem.
The 2004 law banning ostentatious religious symbols from public schools is an
indication of Frances uncertainty about its political predicament as well as an
imagined fear of Islam that is inherited from colonial times, a fear that has been
reinforced by the war on terror and terrorism.

The French State uses the ambiguity of the concept of laicit to regulate religion in
the public sphere and to produce both accepted and non-accepted subjectivities.
Muslim subjectivities are banned from the public sphere; they are viewed with
suspicion because of the imagined anxiety of what they may do. For this reason, they
are kept under surveillance. The 2004 law outlawing religious symbols in schools is a
clear example of the States control over the definition of the public domain. The ban
on the headscarf aims at domesticating Islam and restricting it to the private sphere.
This French logic means that one cannot be a public Muslim and at the same time
a good citizen because the two cannot be compatible and hence this amounts to
double-talk.12 The idea here is to denounce what must not be merged or what the
French do not want to merge: the fact that one can be publicly a Muslim and yet a
good citizen.

Racisme anti-arabe: nouvelle volution , August 6, 2003 (www.mrap.asso.fr/dossiers/doc-94.pdf).

8
V. Geisser, La Nouvelle Islamophobie, (2003) pp. 57-76.
9
See for example the book of M. Sifaoui La France malade de lislamism: menaces terroristes sur
lhexagone (2002); and C. Deloire and C. Debois Les Islamists sont dja l : Enqute sur sur une
guerre secrte (2004).
10
See P. Declerch in Le Monde of 12, August 2004 for an analysis of the different reactions in French
society to anti-Semitic remarks and Islamophobic ones.
11
E. Balibar, La Crainte des Masses, (1997), p. 391-2.
12
J. Bowen, Why the French dont like Headscarves (2007), p. 183.

24
Through its policies towards its Muslim citizens (marked by the legacy of the colonial
discourse about the inferiority of Muslim cultures), the French State still refuses to
accept Islam as a French religion like any other religion in the Republic.
Consequently, French Muslims are still presented as outsiders and not as equal
citizens. This politics of denationalising or externalising Muslims, i.e., the idea that
they do not belong to France, is reinforced in the recurrent State policy of consulting
foreign governments about matters related to its own citizens. The State also
exercises direct control over Muslim affairs. This is clear in the way it continues to
intervene in the running of the CFCM, the recognized Muslim representative body
(i.e., the creation of an institutionalised Islam that does not represent the beliefs of the
Muslims at the grassroots level and that privileges elitism and lack of transparency).

The States policies towards its Muslims citizens are also marked by distrust and
security fears. These have been increasingly restrictive since the 9/11 terrorist
attacks and the war on terror. They range, as Geisser and Zemouri argue, from the
creation of a research centre in 2004, the INHES13 which devotes a considerable
part of its research activities to the Muslim question and security to the
establishment of security police units whose aim is to infiltrate and survey the Muslim
population.14 Moreover, the State still implements a policy of preferential treatment
towards some Muslim organisations and interlocutors who hold little credibility
among French Muslims and who are known for their allegiance to their home
countries (such as Dalil Boubekeur and the Grand Paris Mosques relations with the
Algerian government and the Fdration nationale des musulmans de France
(FNFM) with its links to the Moroccan government). This politics of favouritism
alienates and marginalises French-born Muslims who strongly object to foreign
interference and whose voice remains unheard. It also creates a double discourse of
good Muslims (state interlocutors) and bad Muslims, those who can not be co-
opted or domesticated.15

13
Institut national des hautes etudes de scurit which replaced linsitut des hautes etudes de scurit
intrieure IHESI.
14
Geisser and Zemouri Marrianne et Allah (2007), p. 24.
15
Ibid. 26.

25
Governing Muslims after 9/11
Yahya Birt

It is arguable that Islamophobia is primarily the fear of Muslim political agency; in

fact, the term comes into use (at least in English) with the ending of the Cold War
religious revival in the Muslim world, and Muslim political mobilisation in Europe.
But what precisely is "feared" in Muslim political agency? I would suggest that it is a
fear of reversal: Muslim political agency is feared because it is imaginatively linked
with Europe's own pre-modern Christianity and its history of violent sectarianism, the
Crusades and the Inquisition. Muslim political agency, or Islamism simply put, the
engagement of Muslims with modern politics, mobilising Islamic discourses, symbols
and practices contains many possibilities within itself, but it is construed as
retrogressive and atavistic. For the Islamophobe, Islamism's victory would be the
reversal of the European story of Progress, Reformation and Enlightenment. But how
is this potential reversal to be contained and stopped? I would contend that applying
governmentality theory may provide us with some answers.

In his discussion of governmentality, or the conduct of conduct, the techniques of

state governance that direct behaviour, Michel Foucault identifies the following
repertoire that emerged over the centuries:

(i) sovereignty: a discontinuous exercise of power through display and

spectacle, law as command, sanctions as negative and deductive, applied to
"the thin moral subject of habits..."
(ii) discipline: the continuous exercise of power through surveillance,
individualisation and normalisation, applied to the individuated normal subject
of constitution, character and condition (or the social subject of solidarity or of
alienation and anomie);
(iii) governmentality: maximizing the forces of the population collectively
and individually, applied to the autonomous 'deep' subject of choice and self-
identity or to the citizen subject of rights and obligations in regimes of social
welfare and social insurance.

These modes could either be applied to the individual body (discipline) or to the
collectivity (bio-politics). (Rose 1999: 23, 45-6)

Additionally these three modes of governmentality sovereignty, discipline and

governmentality have been applied to Muslims within and beyond "the West".
Historically, the liberal state was not solely concerned with the individual but with the
promotion of empire and free trade; in the post-colonial setting, and its artificial forms
of closure between the colonial past and mass migration to the metropole, racialized
migrants were set within the boundaries of an assimilative process or an "immigrant

26
imaginary" (Hindess 2004, Hesse and Sayyid 2006). Forms of racialised
governmentality are applied to Muslims both inside and outside the nation-state, and
unpacking this is essential to the question of defining Islamophobia. Indeed, I would
argue, for this reason Islamophobia should be contrasted with neo-Orientalism.
Although, Matti Bunzl has made a reasonable point in arguing that in post-Holocaust
federalising Europe, across the continent Europe is lurching to the right on the back of
anti-Muslim sentiment, Id say that Islamophobia is an assimilative discourse that
attempts to domesticate Muslims within the nation-state through the contrast between
"good" and "bad" Muslims. Therefore I would constrast Islamophobia with neo-
Orientalism, which with two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, two proxy ones in
Lebanon and Somalia, and a threatened attack on Iran is part and parcel of today's
neo-imperialism in the Muslim world. After the Cold War, "the West" led by the US
has sought to expand into post-Soviet areas of influence, including much of the
Muslim world, in order to stamp a unipolar ascendency on the globe, partly in order to
outflank the emerging powers of Asia. Neo-orientalism provides the rationale to allow
for the massive reordering of what is seen as the anarchic non-West periphery, dealing
with "failed" or "weak" states. How else can one understand the huge reaction to 9/11,
which was essentially a second order threat, that pales into insignificance in
comparison with the nuclearised mutually assured destruction of the Cold War era?

Therefore one might propose that Islamophobic governmentality works both

nationally (and perhaps in the case of Europe, federally) and globally, using all of its
three major modalities. The table below is set out in very preliminary form, and it
certainly needs more thought, but it is a initial attempt to provide a framework by
which to understand very disparate strands of Islamophobia governmentality in their
diverse configurations.

Neo-Orientalist Governmentality
Islamophobic Governmentality (Internal)
Modality/Subject (External)
Bio-politics Discipline Bio-politics Discipline
Sovereignty/ thin Anti-Terrorism Combatting War/Occupation/ Combatting
moral subject Legislation/Policing extremist ideology State of Exception extremist ideology
Reform of Muslim Reform of Promotion of Reform of
Discipline/
institutions/ conservative Muslim colonial or client conservative Muslim
individuated subject
communities practices political order practices
Self-Regulating
Governmentality/ Promotion of liberal Self-governing pro- Promotion of liberal
Muslim
citizen subject Islam West political order Islam
Communities

It is beyond the scope of this outline to discuss all these strands, but let me touch on a
few examples of internal bio-politics. The re-emergence of a legal state of exception
is a prime example of sovereign power applied discriminately to Muslim
communities. This has many features, including internment without trial, increased
stop and search and so on. The state of exception has gone hand in hand with the
racialized securitization of Muslim communities, held collectively responsible for
"Islamic terrorism" and tied to differential legal treatment as a result. Those who have
resisted being wooed at home while Muslims were being bombed abroad have been
labelled as "Islamists".

An example is the application of "discipline" to the regulation of Muslim identity

politics in Europe. The preferred approach is to initiate Muslims into the concordatory

27
model, based on the historical settlements reached between the Churches and the State
in the modern European nation-states, based on the formula of official recognition in
exchange for the delimitation of the role of religion to civil society and its
confinement to prescribed institutional pastoral roles, e.g. in prisons, hospital and
interfaith.

Interfaith has played some role in redirecting Muslim politics with the lead of the
Churches. Interfaith allows for a redirection not only into theology but also to affect a
separation as any true political integration of Muslims must come through party
politics and not through religious lobbies. In the concordatory model the state
explicitly sets out the nature and parameters of the dialogue in the pursuit of the
delimitation of Islamism rather than seeking to mediate between interests, which has
been a hallmark of the British approach in the past. Whom to talk to and why must be
strictly regulated.

Political "dialogue does not involve mutual interaction but asymmetric discipline
through four main features (Lawrence 2007):
(i) the state sets the terms of debate;
(ii) official Islam platforms must be separated from the political process;
(iii) the accommodation of religious practices must seek their banalization, or
separation from identity politics;
(iv) the selection of Muslim participants must fit in with the states agenda, and
remain diverse.
In this way, Muslim umbrella bodies can be circumvented and contained if required.
For instance in Britain, the MCB was given government patronage between 1997-
2006 but thereafter fell out of favour for being seen as "Islamist", after which the
government has been supporting a plethora of liberal and Sufi groups, and providing
local and national funding to preferred Muslim interlocutors.

Furthermore, the regulation of chief religious institutions, gains additional salience as

the means by which to contain Muslim identity politics and redirect Islamism into
pastoral provision, mosque management and interfaith dialogue. In Britain, this seems
to be the purpose of the new Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board, used to
contain the MCB, the BMF, MAB and the Al-Khoei Foundation. The provision of
local imam training, attached to tertiary education, comes near the top of the agenda,
and is linked explicitly with the goals of combating extremism and fostering cultural
(and note, not political) integration. The imam is to play to the stereotype of the
shepherd who directs his flock. Recently a number of Muslim panels have been
convened by government to lead on issues relating to women, youth and imams.

Finally there is the promotion of a post-Islamist younger generation of technocrats

who are expected over time to encourage and lead the development of liberal self-
discipline in Muslim communities. This new generation is also expected not only to
lead the rhetorical charge against extremism and Muslim conservatism but to imagine
more liberal, more patriotic, futures.

In short, all these three techniques of internal governmentality are designed to

neutralise Muslim agency by coercion, institutional reform and liberal self-discipline.
Although more might be said about agency here, it is clear that Muslims acting
globally, above and below the nation state, as in the Rushdie and Danish Cartoon

28
affairs, and most of the anti-war protests, have been more successful in disrupting the
application of governmentality.

References:

Hesse, B. and S. Sayyid (2006), 'Narrating the Postcolonial Political and the Immigrant
Imaginary' in Ali et al, A Postcolonial People (London: Hurst).
Hindess, B. (2004), 'Liberalism' in Larner and Walters, Governing International Spaces
(London: Routledge), available at
http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/LaurenceIslamicDialogue100407.pdf
Lawrence, J. (2007) Integrating Islam: A New Chapter in Church-State Relations
(Transatlantic Task Force on Immigration and Integration)
Rose, N. (1999), Powers of Freedom (Cambridge)

29
K.I.S.S. Islamophobia (keeping it simple and stupid)

Chris Allen

It might come as something of a surprise to realise that just five years ago both the
term and concept of Islamophobia had little discursive relevance or value across
much of Europe. Today however, the same could be no further from the truth.
Contemporarily, Islamophobia emerges from some of the most bi-polar extremes
across Europe: from those who decry and denounce any criticism whatsoever of
Muslims or Islam as being Islamophobic to those who actively and openly espouse
the vitriolic hatred of Islam and Muslims founded upon a premiss of various
ideological justifications. Because of this, neither clear thinking nor expression rarely
if indeed ever comes into the equation as regards usage or understanding. From
the high profile murder of Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands and the backlash against
Muslims that ensued through to complaints about irresponsible parking at mosques
during Friday prayers, these myriad and disparate events and incidents are whether
rightly or wrongly regularly and repeatedly incorporated into the discursive
landscape of Islamophobia. Islamophobia therefore is at times little more than an
indiscriminate and all-encompassing term that is employed to satisfy or appease a vast
spectrum of commentators, actors and perpetrators in varying different measures.

This situation has not necessarily been the same in the UK. Here, October 2007
marked the tenth anniversary of the publication of the groundbreaking and possibly
most influential document of its kind, the highly influential Runnymede Trust report,
Islamophobia: a challenge for us all. Produced by the Commission for British
Muslims and Islamophobia, the report stated in its opening pages that, "Islamophobic
discourse, sometimes blatant but frequently coded and subtle, is part of everyday life
in modern Britain" It went on, "in the last twenty years...the dislike [of Islam and
Muslims] has become more explicit, more extreme and more dangerous". Who on the
Commission at that time, given subsequent events that have unfolded since the
reports publication would or indeed could have predicted the situation today?

Back in 1997, the report spoke of how Islamophobia the shorthand way of
referring to the dread or hatred of Islam and, therefore, to fear or dislike of all or
most Muslims - was necessitated by a new phenomenon that needed naming.
Nowadays however, that same term is far from new where it is always seemingly
lingering in the murky underbelly of our public and political spaces. Yet despite its
wider usage, it remains questionable as to whether the debates concerning
Islamophobia today and the way we use the term is any more informed than it was ten
years ago. Increasingly the debates about Islamophobia see one side pitted against an
other, where claim and counter-claim, charge and counter-charge dictate what we
know and more crucially, how we know and subsequently voice what is and what is
not Islamophobia.

30
Why then, despite the Runnymede report being so influential, are we still simplistic in
the way that we speak about and understand Islamophobia? Why has a more nuanced
usage of the term failed to evolve? And why, ultimately, has Islamophobia failed to be
addressed let alone begin to go away? With hindsight the answer, it seems, can be
found in the Runnymede report itself.

At the heart of the reports notion of Islamophobia was the recognition of what it set
out as closed and open views. So important were these views that the report
changed its definition of what Islamophobia was: soon after the preceding definition,
the Runnymede version of Islamophobia became the recurring characteristic of closed
views and nothing more. Conceived by the Commission, the closed views of
Islamophobia were seeing Islam as monolithic and static; as 'other' and separate from
the West; as inferior; as enemy; as manipulative; as discriminated against; as having
its criticisms of the West rejected; and where Islamophobia was ultimately becoming
increasingly natural. All of which are useful in being able to identify Islamophobia in
certain given situations for example in the media but how for example might the
closed views offer any explanation or even relevance in other equally important
situations, in explaining how Muslims are discriminated against in the workplace, in
education or in service provision for instance?

In doing so, the Commission failed to offer a clear explanation as to how this might
be possible, preferring instead to focus on how say Pakistanis or Bangladeshis were
discriminated upon rather than Muslims per se. Incomprehensively overlooking what
must surely be the central tenet of any Islamophobia namely a distinctly Islamic or
Muslim marker the argument put forward for legislative protection was seriously
undermined given that existing equalities legislation already afforded rightful
protection to Pakistanis and Bangladeshis on the basis of their race and ethnicity.
With those who held the power to make the changes being left far from convinced
about the reality of such a phenomenon, thus setting a precedent that negated the
recognition and acceptance of Islamophobia as a very real and dangerous
phenomenon, and also as something that was distinctly different from other forms of
discrimination and prejudice.

Because of the emphasis upon closed views, so the report established a simple
premiss from which those who wanted to detract from or dismiss Islamophobia could
easily do so by merely suggesting that if closed views equalled Islamophobia, so one
must presume that open views equalled Islamophilia. Those who wanted to argue
against Islamophobia therefore suggested that the only solution being put forward by
the Commission was an abnormal liking or love of Islam and Muslims (philia). The
black and white duality of the love or hate of Muslims and Islam was therefore the
only options available thereby ignoring all those grey areas that exist in between.
Since 1997 then, all that which has fallen within that grey has been given licence to
gain momentum and form the basis upon which more indirect forms of Islamophobia
have found favour. So for example, to what extent has a grey Islamophobia been
underlying the more recent debates about the need for better integration, the death of
multiculturalism, the niqab as barrier to social participation, the need for universities
to spy on the students and the need to look for the tell-tale signs of radicalisation
as well as the whole community cohesion agenda.

31
It is these unaccounted for grey areas that have contributed to a climate where those
such as the BNP have found favour and gained an increasingly listened to voice. One
result of this was that following the 2006 local elections where the BNP won 11 of
the 13 seats they contested in Barking & Dagenham, making history through it being
the first time that a far-right political party has ever been the official opposition in any
council chamber in Britain on the evening of the first Barking and Dagenham
council meeting attended by the BNP, an Afghan man was repeatedly stabbed outside
Barking tube station, his body left on the pavement draped in the union flag. How
might the closed views offer any explanation of this?

Since 2001, the BNP have become increasingly sophisticated and nuanced in the way
in which it has spoken about and referred to Islam and Muslims. Unfortunately, the
same has failed to occur as regards Islamophobia and so in the Commissions last
report published in 2004 there was little change in evidence, persisting instead with
existing notions of Islamophobia, using the same language, ideas and meanings
throughout. Continuing to refer to Islamophobia in such simplistic ways is therefore
detrimental to understanding. More worryingly, the dualistic either-or system of
closed and open has reflected how Muslims have increasingly become understood in
wider society. Whether mainstream or extremist, moderate or radical, as
Ziauddin Sardar noted shortly after 9/11, Muslims have since been seen in one of two
ways: either as apologists for Islam or terrorists in the name of Islam. Take this
further and the closed and open, apologists and terrorists easily fall into that simplistic
trap of being either good or bad. As such, if youre not a good Muslim
moderate, mainstream and open then you can only be bad radical, extremist
and closed. What is known and understood about Islamophobia therefore rests upon
the nave premise that Islamophobia is bad only because it is and nothing more.

As noted at the outset, the Runnymede reports views of Islamophobia were at their
most useful in the media. Despite the reports apparent usefulness in terms of its ease
of identification in the media and its associated recommendations to better the
medias representation of Muslims and Islam, the situation has since the publication
of the report dangerously deteriorated. If research published by the GLA in 2007 is
anything to go by, the amount of coverage in a normal week relating to Muslims and
Islam in the British press has increased by almost 270% in the past decade. Of this,
just over 90% of this dramatic increase is entirely negative and typically rooted in
stories relating to war, terrorism, threat, violence and crisis. If this is where the report
was most useful, where then has the Runnymede report achieved its impact?

A decade on from the publication of the Runnymede report and a climate of ever
worsening mistrust, misunderstanding and misrepresentation can be easily witnessed.
Whilst the Runnymede report stated in 1997 that Islamophobia was becoming more
explicit, more extreme and more dangerous, so in 2008 the same phenomenon has
become more natural, more normal and because of this, far more dangerous than ever
before. The need for a new approach to tackling Islamophobia is therefore clearly
required, as indeed is a new language and greater knowledge to both explain and
respond to the subtleties and nuances of Islamophobia that are at present overlooked
and subsequently allowed to take root and flourish.

Given that the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia is once again in the
process of reforming, so the need for a much more radical approach to Islamophobia

32
is required, going beyond the simple and stupid approach of its previous reports. If
the Commission and indeed Muslims and wider society alike fail to do this, then it
is highly likely that in another ten years we will be speaking at the end of another
decade without having made any advances whatsoever, whether in understanding and
defining Islamophobia or indeed, even beginning to tackle it. Now is the time to be
much bolder and braver, addressing Islamophobia for what it is now and not what it
was then. In doing so, we will become much clearer as to what Islamophobia is and
more importantly, what Islamophobia is not.

Underpinning the discourse and rhetoric, exists a highly fluid, protean and largely
inconsistent phenomenon that as yet has failed to be adequately captured. As Marcel
Maussen critically highlights, Islamophobia groups together all kinds of different
forms of discourse, speech and acts, by suggesting that they all emanate from an
identical ideological core, which is an irrational fear (a phobia) of Islam. With so
many disparate events, activities, actions and attitudes either emerging from or being
expressed as a consequence of Islamophobia, simplified discourses, definitions and
terminologies that even include the term Islamophobia itself fail to properly and
adequately provide enough explanation or understanding to a phenomenon whether
real or otherwise that has had such a dramatic impact on both Muslim and non-
Muslim communities here in the UK and beyond across the continent.

Given this recognition, how then do we move towards a better means of defining and
conceptualising Islamophobia? How do we stop keeping it simple and stupid?

33
On conceptualising Islamophobia, anti-Muslim sentiment and
cultural racism
Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood

One of the issues that has bedevilled an informed discussion of anti-Muslim discourse
of late has surrounded the correct use of terminology (Richardson, 2006). Perhaps the
best illustration of this can be found in the term Islamophobia which, and while
emerging as a neologism in the 1970s (Rana, 2007: 148), became increasingly
salient during the 1980s and 1990s, and arguably received its public policy
prominence with the Runneymede Trusts Commission on British Muslims and
Islamophobia (CBMI) (1997) Islamophobia: a challenge for us all. Defined as an
unfounded hostility towards Islam, and therefore fear or dislike of all or most
Muslims (ibid. 4), the report proposed eight argumentative positions conceived as
encapsulating its meaning; through which the commission sought to draw attention to
its assessment that anti-Muslim prejudice has grown so considerably and so rapidly
in recent years that a new item in the vocabulary is needed (CBMI, 1997: 4). This,
of course, was before global events had elevated the issue to a prominence previously
only hinted at, and which resulted in a second sitting of the commission that heard
testimonies from leading Muslim figures of how there is not a day that we do not
have to face comments so ignorant that even Enoch Powell would not have made
them (Baroness Uddin quoted in CBMI, 2004: 3).

While we may all be guilty of sometimes spending far too much time deconstructing
the key terms of social debate and far too little time analysing how they function
(Bunzle, 2005: 534), such an exercise here would be instructive, not least because one
of the difficulties with how the commission conceived Islamophobia stems from the
reference to an unfounded hostility towards Islam. This clearly entails the
interpretative issue of establishing hostility as founded or unfounded, 16 and what
the CMBI was perhaps naive in not anticipating is how the term would also be
politically criticised for, amongst things, allegedly reinforcing a monolithic concept
of Islam, Islamic cultures, Muslims and Islamism, involving ethnic, cultural,
linguistic, historical and doctrinal differences while affording vocal Muslims a ready
concept of victimology (Ozanne, 2006: 28, see also Afshar et al., 2005). From other
quarters the term faced criticism for neglecting the active and aggressive part of
discrimination (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001: 6) by conceiving discrimination as a
collection of pathological beliefs, inferred through the language of -phobias; with
the additional complaint that the term does not adequately account for the nature of
the prejudice directed at Muslims. This is advanced in Hallidays (1999) thesis and is
worth examining because Halliday accepts that Muslims experience direct
discrimination as Muslims. He considers the term misleading, however, because:

16
For example, does hostility to all religion ipso facto make one an Islamophobe?

34
 It misses the point about what it is that is being attacked: Islam as a
religion was the enemy in the past: in the crusades or the reconquista. It is
not the enemy now [] The attack now is not against Islam as a faith but
against Muslims as a people, the latter grouping together all, especially
immigrants, who might be covered by the term. (Halliday, 1999: 898
original emphasis)

So in contrast to the thrust of the Islamophobia concept, as he understands it, the

stereotypical enemy is not a faith or a culture, but a people who form the real
targets of prejudice. While Hallidays critique is perhaps richer than many others,
particularly journalistic accounts discussed in Meer (2006, 2007, 2008) and Meer and
Modood forthcoming (b) (cf Malik, 2005)17, what it ignores is how the majority of
Muslims who report experiencing street level discrimination recount as testimonies
to the 2004 Runneymede follow-up commission (CBMI, 2004) bear witness that
they do so when they appear conspicuously Muslim more than when they do not.
Since this can result from wearing Islamic attire, it makes it difficult to separate the
impact of appearing Muslim from the impact of appearing to follow Islam. For
example, the increase in personal abuse and everyday racism since 9/11 and 7/7 in
which the perceived Islamicness of the victims is the central reason for abuse,
regardless of the validity of this presumption (resulting in Sikhs and others with an
Arab appearance being attacked for looking like bin Laden), suggests that
discrimination and/or hostility to Islam and Muslims are much more interlinked than
Hallidays thesis allows.

One illustration of this may be found in the summary report on Islamophobia

published by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia shortly
after 9/11. This indicated a rise in the number of physical and verbal threats being
made, particularly to those visually identifiable as Muslims, in particular women
wearing the hijab (Allen and Nielsen, 2002: 16). Despite variations in the number
and correlation of physical and verbal threats directed at Muslim populations among
the individual nation-states, an overarching feature that emerged among the fifteen
European Union countries was the tendency for Muslim women to be attacked
because of how the hijab signifies an Islamic identity (ibid. 35). And the overlapping
17
For example, in a television documentary Kenan Malik has argued that the Islamic Human Rights
Commission monitored just 344 Islamophobic attacks in the 12 months following 9/11 - most of which
were minor incidents like shoving or spitting. That's 344 too many - but it's hardly a climate of
uncontrolled hostility towards Muslims. [...] It's not Islamophobia, but the perception that it blights
Muslim lives, that creates anger and resentment. That's why it's dangerous to exaggerate the hatred of
Muslims. Even more worrying is the way that the threat of Islamophobia is now being used to stifle
criticism of Islam (transcript of Are Muslims Hated?, 30 Minutes, 8 January 2005, Channel 4).
Malik is not alone in holding this view and there are several problematic issues that arise in his analysis
that may also be evident in others (Joppke, 2007; Hansen, 2006). For example, it is easy to complain
that Muslims exaggerate Islamophobia without noting that they are no more likely to do so than others
who might exaggerate colour-racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, ageism, homophobia or many other forms
of discrimination. That is that his claim remains a political rather than a comparatively informed
empirical claim. Secondly, and more importantly, Malik limits Islamophobia to violent attacks and
ignores its discursive character in prejudicing, stereotyping, direct and indirect discrimination,
exclusion from networks and so on, and the many non-physical ways in which discrimination operates.
Thirdly, Malik draws upon data gathered prior to the events of 7/7, following which, according to the
same source (the Islamic Human Rights Commission) and using the same indices, there were reported
to be 200 Islamophobic incidents in the first two weeks after the bombings. These included sixty five
incidents of violent physical attacks and criminal damage, and one fatal stabbing where the victim was
accosted by attackers shouting Taliban (IHRC press release, 25 July, 2005).

35
and interacting nature of anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic prejudice directed at Muslims
can be further illustrated in the attitude polling of non-Muslims in Britain one year
after 9/11. This showed that

there could be little doubt from G-2002e18 that 9/11 had taken some toll. Views
of Islam since 9/11 were more negative for 47%, and of Britains Muslims for
35% (almost three times the first post-9/11 figure in G-2001f19). [...] Dislike for
Islam was expressed by 36%, three in four of whom were fearful of what it
might do in the next few years. One quarter rejected the suggestion that Islam
was mainly a peaceful religion, with terrorists comprising only a tiny minority
(Field, 2007: 455).

What these examples make manifest are the confusions contained within working
references to racial and religious antipathy toward Muslims and Islam. Yet this is not
unique to conceptualising anti-Muslim sentiment, as debates concerning racism and
anti-Semitism betray (Meer and Noorani, 2008). Indeed, anti-Semitism makes a
particularly relevant analogy because as non-Christian monotheistic, though
heterogeneous, religious minorities in an otherwise Established Christian country -
both Muslims and Jews could also be subject to practices of cultural racism that
draw upon both race and religion, through the ways in which otherness or
groupness[are] connected to cultural and racial otherness (Modood, 2005: 56).
Goldberg (2006) has tried to unpack this by typologizing different forms of racism,
specifically the distinctions between biological racism, anti-Semitism and anti-
Muslim sentiment through tracing the European imaginary of the European, the
Black, the Jew, and the Muslim (ibid. 331) to conclude that while the relational
frame for thinking through race in the European context has usually been ordered in
dualistic termsthere is a third major artery (ibid. 362). This is comprised of The
Muslim (ibid. 344) which, in Bleichs (2006: 17) terms, has all the earmarks of
classic racialization, namely the classification of such a group as inherently
dangerous and inferior (ibid.). A good example of this characterisation may be
found on our own shores in the sentiments of the celebrated liberal-feminist author
Fay Weldon who, in response to British Muslim protests during the Rushdie affair,
once wrote:
Their hearts are in the right place its just that theyre a bit primitive.
They live in this advanced and intelligent society of ours. They insist on
their religious right in this multicultural, multi-religious, benighted
society, and almost convince us our guilt is so great. Of course they are
not right. You cannot, should not, teach a primitive, fear-ridden religion
(Weldon (1989) quoted in Sardar, 2004: 284).

A further typology of these different racisms is advanced in Werbners (2005: 6)

taxonomy of folk devils. These include the disobedient slave who carries a
biologically marked difference that amounts to a visible presence that can be seen in
the physicalising of Blacks in racist humour. Another is that of the Jewish malevolent
witch who crystallises fears of a hidden, disguised, malevolent stranger, of a general
breakdown of trust, of a nation divided against itself (ibid.). Her final folk devil she

18
[31 October1 November, YouGov, n=1,890; The Guardian, 5 November 2002;
http://www.YouGov.com]
19
[810 October, NOP, n=600; Daily Telegraph, 12 October 2001]

36
characterises as a Muslim grand inquisitor who is neither subservient and slave like,
nor a disguised or assimilated threat. Instead, he is upfront, morally superior, openly
aggressive, denying the validity of other cultures, in short a different kind of folk
devil altogether (ibid.).20

Now Werbner is surely right when she maintains that in the current climate Muslims
face an additional hostility made up of an oppositional hegemonic bloc which
includes intellectual elites as well as real violent racists (ibid, 2005: 6, see Meer,
2006: 4352 for examples of this amongst print media public intellectuals), but at the
same time she risks oversimplifying and reducing the logics of racism to discrete
categories. As Modood (2006: 55) reminds us: Bosnian Muslims were ethnically
cleansed by people who were phenotypically, linguistically, and culturally the same
as themselves because they came to be identified as an ethnic or a racial group.
So that in this example Muslims may equally have been witches turned into slaves
and that, moreover, it may not be helpful to characterise Muslims in contemporary
Europe as inquisitor figures when they lack the sorts of discursive authority or
structural power commonly associated with this characterisation, as the Weldon quote
illustrates.

Perhaps the folk devil of a religious primitive or fanatic, combined both with a
cultural alieness and the suspicion of undue influence from a foreign power, is not
unlike that attributed to Jesuits in Elizabethan England, which in any case may be a
more appropriate analogy than that of the Grand Inquisitor in Reconquista Spain. But
whether or not one agrees with this critique, the important point is to recognise the
interactive rather than static relationships between religious and racial antipathy,
which means that religion too can be the basis of racialization. Such relationships are
illustrated in Modoods (2005: 910) description of anti-Semitism as a form of
religious persecution [which] became, over a long, complicated, evolving but
contingent history, not just a form of cultural racism but one with highly systematic
biological formulations. He continues:

[C]enturies before those modern ideas we have come to call racismthe

move from religious antipathy to racism may perhaps be witnessed in
post-Reconquista Spain when Jews and Muslims were forced to convert to
Christianity or be expelled. At this stage, the oppression can perhaps be
characterised as religious. Soon afterward, converted Jews and Muslims
and their offspring began to be suspected of not being true Christian
believers, a doctrine developed amongst some Spaniards that this was
because their old religion was in their blood. [] Centuries later, these
views about race became quite detached from religion and in Nazi and
related doctrines were given a thoroughly scientific-biologic cast and
constitute a paradigmatic and extreme version of modern racism. (ibid.).

Now this should not be read as an endorsement of the view that all racism can be
reduced to a biological racism. Indeed, in the example above modern biological
racism has some roots in pre-modern religious antipathy an argument that is also
made by Rana (2007). As such we should guard against the characterisation of racism
20
Goldberg (2006: 346) describes a similar characterisation in the following manner: Driven by
demagoguery, spurning individuality, spurred on by manic collective excitability. Resisting democracy,
persisting in theocracy, giving in to, if not demanding autocracy.

37
as a form of inherentism or biological determinism, which leaves little space to
conceive the ways in which cultural racism draws upon physical appearance as one
marker, amongst others, but is not solely premised upon conceptions of biology in a
way that ignores religion, culture and so forth. As such, we proceed with the view
that terms such as anti-Muslim sentiment and Islamophobia, as well as anti-Semitism
in fact, should nest in the conceptions of cultural racism and racialization elaborated
above. This is because neat and categorical delineations within terminology are made
implausible by variations in the social phenomena that they seek to describe and
understand, as the empirical survey data referred to earlier demonstrates, so that a
more nimble and absorbent nomenclature is preferred.

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Meer, N. (2006). Get off your knees! Print media public intellectuals and Muslims in
Britain, Journalism Studies, 7, pp: 3559.
Meer, N. and Modood, T., forthcoming (b), The multicultural state were in: Muslims,
multiculture, and the civic-rebalancing of British multiculturalism, Political Studies
(in press).
Meer, N., and Noorani, T. (2008) A sociological comparison of anti-Semitism and anti-
Muslim sentiment in Britain, The Sociological Review, 56 (2), pp: 195-219.
Modood, T. (2005). Multicultural politics: Racism, ethnicity and Muslims in Britain.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

38
Ozanne, W. I. (2006) Review of Confronting Islamophobia in educational practice Barry
van Driel (Ed.), 2004 in Comparative Education, 42,(2), May 2006, p. 283.
Rana, J. (2007) The Story of Islamophobia, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics,
Culture, and Society, 9 (2), pp: 148-162.
Reisigl, M., and Wodak, R. (2001) Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and
Anti-Semitism. London: Routledge.
Richardson, J.E., (2006) On delineating reasonable and unreasonable criticisms of
Muslims. Fifth Estate Online, August 2006. http://www.fifth-estate-
online.co.uk/criticsm/ondelineatingreasonableandunreasonable.html.
Weldon, F. (1989) quoted in Z. Sardar (2004) Desperately Seeking Paradise. London: Granta
Books.
Werbner, P., (2005), Islamophobia: incitement to religious hatred legislating for a new
fear?, Anthropology Today, 21 (1): 59.

The paper draws upon the authors forthcoming article Refutations of racism in the
Muslim question

39
Is the Islam in Islamophobia the same as the Islam in Anti-Islam; Or,
When is it Islamophobia Time?
AbdoolKarim Vakil

to invoke the history of a concept is not to uncover its

elements, but to investigate the principles that cause it
to be usefulor problematic.
Ian Hacking

When can one speak of Islamophobia? In a nutshell, the approach in this paper is to
ask not when the term Islamophobia was coined but what political language was
required for the concept of Islamophobia to be meaningful. If Islamophobia, a la
Runnymede, [was] coined because there [was] a new reality that need[ed] naming,
and, more crucially, so that it [could] be identified and acted against, contra
Runnymede, what is significant is not what it names, which is also not a centuries old
fear and dread of Islam and Muslims (much less the unfounded[ness] of such
hostility), but rather that it names; and in naming, the namer it bespeaks rather than
the named. Quite the opposite of victimhood, then, Islamophobia is about
contestation and the power to set the political vocabulary and legal ground of
recognition and redress. It is about the subjectification of Muslim political
subject(ivitie)s. What is called for, then, is less a history of Islamophobia than its
genealogy. What are the conditions of possibility of the wielding of Islamophobia as
an epistemological machine of war? In cipher: on the one hand, the de-theologisation
of Islam, and de-racing of Racism; on the other, the de-centring of the West and the
forging of a Muslim (Islamist) politics. Laying clues to the cipher is the purpose of
this paper.

1. From the Scourge of God to Akis G-Had

One crucial step which Edward Said emphasised was the restructuring of Orientalism
out of the prison-house of Christian theological categories into secular, historical,
comparatist, classificatory and ultimately civilizational ones a restructuring which
involves both the secularization of categories, but also, their re-habitation by a
reconstructed religious impulse: Abrams Natural Supernaturalism.21 This is not
the place to revisit the secularization/reoccupation debate, but we must remain alert to
its unresolved subsumption here. Moreover, if we carry from Gil Anidjar the
unsettling provocations that it was Hegel who invented the Muslims, or that it is to
the Nazis that we owe the recognition of Islam as the paradigm of religiosity, both
these considerations will considerably caution against a too rushed, or linear,
periodization of what is involved in the process Said was getting at.22

21
Edward Said, Orientalism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003), pp.116-122
22
Gil Anidjar, The Jew, The Arab: A History of the Enemy, Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003, p.133;
Semites: Race, Religion, Literature, Stanford: Stanford UP, 2008, p.19; for a useful introduction to
Anidjars project in his own words, see the Introduction to Semites and the earlier Q&A Asia Source
interview http://www.asiasource.org/news/special_reports/anidjar4.cfm

40
2. Locating the When: Reading BinLaden with D. Quixote
In a eulogy to the late Edward Said, Ania Loomba recalled his answer to the charge
of Orientalisms wilful disregard of the heterogeneities of imperialist conceptions of
the Orient. His answer reiterated the books argument about the enduring deep
structure of Orientalism, and the recurrence of its basic premise; a recurrence which,
for the interview, he illustrated by reference to the re-appropriation of the
civilizational boundary making in Huntingtons Clash of Civilizations its been
there all along, I mean, for hundreds of years, which doesnt mean its the same. 23
In what was intended as a tributary exploration of the legacy of Said to postcolonial
critique, Loomba went on to develop his point in respect of the relation between
racism and colonialism and its repeating and appropriation of images and tropes. As
in both her previous and subsequent work, she did so by drawing on Etienne Balibars
discussion of neo-racism. Two points may be noted. Firstly, as elsewhere, Loomba,
following Balibars lead in tracing the prefiguration of cultural racism to the Spanish
Inquisition, suggests that in this respect it is useful to go back to a consideration of
Renaissance cultural stereotypes, and insists on the articulations between colour and
religion in Renaissance England and wider European imperial circulations, to explore
continuities and discontinuities of the kind a terminological historicism would
foreclose. Second, and more narrowly to the point here, to this Loomba adds that
Balibar is thinking of contemporary anti-Semitism, but also of the rise of
Islamophobia. Now, Balibar, both in the text cited, of 1991, as indeed since, does
refer to Arabophobia (and its confusion of Arabness and Islamicism), but not of
Islamophobia.24

Briefly, three points can be made here. First, that, as the very term and strategy of
postcolonialism and postcolonial critique entails, we eschew linear readings and the
logics of contained periodisations in our approach to problematics such as racism and
Islamophobia. For the project of a more comprehensive exploration of the genealogy
of Islamophobia this means two things: that we do not merely extend back to a
consideration of articulations of the exercise of power, categorization and exclusion
(in the workings of the medieval persecuting society, Renaissance encounters,
conquest and Slavery, Early Modern state formation and Inquisitorial practices,
Enlightenment universalism and imperialism, through to nineteenth century
colonialism and scientific racism), but read them sideways, as a contrapuntal
copresence to reading the contemporary.25 But also, that we do so through different
grids: if, with Loomba, we read race back to, and for, tropologies of difference
(ideologies of otherness in ideas about skin colour, location, religion, rank and

23
Ania Loomba, Remembering Said, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East,
23:1&2 (2003), 12-14; for the original full text of the passage quoted see Edward Said, In
Conversation with Neeladri Bhattacharya, Suvir Kaul, and Ania Loomba [New Delhi, 1997], in
Interventions 1:1 (1998), 81-96: 84.
24
Etienne Balibar Is there a Neoracism, in Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class:
Ambiguous Identities, London: Verso, 1991, pp.17-28, the quoted passage is on p.24
25
the phrase is Ato Quaysons, drawing on Said, in Translations and transnationals: pre- and
postcolonial epilogue to Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages, edited by Ananya
Jahanara and Deanne Williams, Cambridge: CUP, 2005, 253-268 (though, strangely, race is entirely
absent from his discussion).

41
gender)26 in the Balibarian mirror of the naturalisation of culture; with Barnor Hesse,
what we are tRacing in race is, rather, following Fanon, colonial categories and
techniques of social administration as a relationship of governance, and through the
counterposition of this subaltern reading of racism, read for the creolisation of
political formations.27 The difference, for us, can be put thus: with Loomba, race is
opened to encompass the racialisation of religion; with Hesse, via Talal Asad,
religion is itself a product of articulations of governance.

The two other points will come across more clearly in re-citing more fully the passage
from Loombas eulogy to Said:

Etienne Balibar has suggested that we are faced with the resurgence of neo-
racism (or what he calls racism without race) [...] In suggesting this, Balibar is
thinking of contemporary anti-Semitism, but also of the rise of Islamophobia
which since his essay was written, and especially after 9/11, has indeed become a
global phenomenon. The language of such Islamophobia invokes the Crusades,
freezes the Islamic world in a medieval past, and depends upon the recirculation
of a very old repertoir of images, a division between us and them that does
not reflect but seeks to manage a far more complex reality. Of course this
division is not static and today it cannot be mapped onto a simple East-West
binary as some of the most pernicious articulations of anti-Muslim sentiment is
now to be found among Hindu fundamentalists (both in India but also
elsewhere).

The first point concerns Loombas use of Islamophobia. On the one hand, that it is
deployed re-descriptively to designate what Balibar refers by other names or in
different terms; on the other, that Loombas use of the term, the coalescing of the term
in her own work is itself, like the visibilisation of the phenomenon, especially a 9/11
effect.28 If, as I have been arguing, the genealogy of Islamophobia is that of the
legitimacy of speaking the name, the re-description is what matters here. To a
genealogy of Islamophobia, what is at stake is not whether Loomba is faithful to the
spirit, let alone the fact, of Balibars text, but Loombas own use of the term.

The second point pertains to the distabilizing problematisation that her last claim
poses back to Saids opening response. He argued that the basic premiss redeployed
anew repeated the same basic gesture of mapping as ontological distinction of West
and East. Even while repeating this very claim in respect of contemporary
Islamophobias reiteration of anti-Islam(ic) tropes, Loomba throws that mapping out
of joint with the claim that a Hindu fundamentalist discourse of Islamophobia re-
centres the lines of battle onto different histories, narratives, symbols and
geographies. Two possible responses can be suggested: one, Indian nationalist and

26
See particularly chapters 1 Vocabularies of Race and 2 Religion, Culture, and Racial Difference
in Ania Loomba, Shakespeare, Race and Colonialism, Oxford: OUP, 2002
27
See the interview with Barnor Hesse by Patricia A. Lott, New Directions in African Diasporic
Thought, in The Diaspora (Spring 2003), pp.6-7 for the quotations, and Hesse, Im/plausible
Deniability: racisms conceptual double bind, Social Identities 10:1 (2004), 9-29 for development.
28
absent from Colonialism/Postcolonialism, London: Routledge, 1998, but present in its 2nd edition
2005 (p.217); absent from Ania Loomba, Delicious Traffick: Alterity and Exchange on Early
Modern Stages, Shakespeare Survey 52 (1999), reprinted as Delicious Traffick: Racial and
religious difference on early modern stages, in Shakespeare and Race, ed. by Catherine M.S.
Alexander and Stanley Wells, Cambridge: CUP, 2000, but present in the 2002 Shakespeare book which
otherwise recycles the same points and references (including Balibar).

42
Hindutva Islamophobia, while not reducible to it, were, particularly in their historical
narratives, grafted onto British colonial historiography of India. 29 But, second,
nevertheless, the argument does opens up to a necessary location of Islamophobia.
Here, a tentative answer advanced by the organisers of this Symposium is a four fold
siting of the structures of Islamophobia: western plutocracies, Muslimistan, and the
Islamicate and the non-Islamicate Most of the World.

3. The Beginning of History and the first Islamophobe

Returning, yet again, to the question of the legitimacy of speaking the name of
Islamophobia, we come now to a different prospection: first uses of the term
Islamophobia. First use, to paraphrase Bernard Bernasconi, depends on what one
takes to be significant about the concept and whether one believes what defines the
moment it is introduced is the first usage of the word in the required sense or the
definition that secures its status and influence.30 Clearly, whatever weight may be
attached to claims by some (such as Zaki Badawi, and Fuad Nahdi 31) to having coined
the term, the case that may be made for the possible influence of Edward Saids use of
the term in print in 1985 (in three different print contexts reaching, crucially, both an
academic and an activist anti-racist readership)32, or its by now conventionally cited
first use in wider readership media in 199133, it remains the case that what secured its
status in the present usage was its adoption by the Runnymede Trust Commission on
British Muslims and Islamophobia, in its title and terms of reference, in 1996, and,
especially, in its Report, the following year.

On this, four points. First, while the Commissions use of the term secured its
international currency, the term emerged among Muslims. As the Commissions
Chair, Gordon Conway (whose personal dislike for the ugly word was several times
publicly expressed) acknowledges in his Forward to the Report, the Commission did
not coin the term Islamophobia. It was already in use among sectors of the Muslim
community.34

29
See Amalendu Misras discussion of The legacy of British Historiography in Identity and
Religion: Foundations of anti-Islamism in India, New Delhi: Sage, 2004, 189-229 for an overview of
the texts and topics; and Patrick Wolfe, Can the Muslim Speak?, History and Theory 41 (2002), 367-
380: 374 for a concise statement of the point and the way it continues to structure the terms of such
critical interventions as Spivaks, with whose Critique of Postcolonial Reason Wolf is here concerned;
for how the colonial categories connect with the related extensive debate on the construction of
communalism and Hindu-Muslim conflict in India, see Peter Gottschalk, A category difference:
Communal identity in British epistemologies, in Religion and Violence in South Asia: Theory and
Practice, edited by John R. Hinnells and Richard King, London: Routledge, 2007, 195-210.
30
Robert Bernasconi, Who Invented the Concept of Race? Kants Role in the Enlightenment
Construction of Race, in Robert Bernasconi ed., Race, Oxford: Blackwell, 2001, p.11.
31
See Oral Evidence to the Select Committee on Religious Offences in England and Wales (Vol II,
Session 2002-2003, p.182 (23rd October 2002); I am indebted to Jamil Sherif for this reference.
32
Edward Said, Orientalism Reconsidered, Cultural Critique 1 (Fall 1985), 89-107: 99; Race & Class
27:2 (Autumn 1985), l-l5; Europe and Its Others, ed. by Francis Barker et al, Colchester: University of
Essex, 1985, pp. 14-27. For a sceptical take on Saids twinning of Islamophobia and Antisemitism
(which, moreover, pits anti-semitism on the Zionist lines of a transhistorical hatred) as a rhetorical
flourish with strategic intent, see James Pasto, Islams Strange Secret Sharer: Orientalism, Judaism,
and the Jewish Question, Comparative Studies in Society and History 40:3 (1998), 437-474: 472.
33
The conventionally cited reference, following the OED, being an article in the US magazine Insight
of 4 February 1991.
34
Gordon Conway, Foreword, in Islamophobia a Challenge for us all, The Runnymede Trust, 1997,
p.iii; In the Introduction to the Report (p.1), it is stated that the word was coined in the late 1980s.

43
Second, and reinforcing the point, Muslim mobilization around the term (as even
cursory perusal of the British Muslims Monthly Survey reveals) was immediate and
widespread finding expression in media monitoring, seminars, Muslim media features
on the Report, and the visibility of the term by ordinary Muslims to describe and
denounce incidents and patterns of discrimination.35

Third, the repertoire of dismissive and critical responses to Islamophobia can also be
discerned in the immediate responses to the Consultation Paper and the Report: as
exemplified by the Reverend Dr. Patrick Sookhdeos repeated charge that it fails to
distinguish between race and religion, and that it will be deployed to stifle
legitimate criticism against Islam and Middle Eastern governments; Fay Weldon,
who in a replay of her Rushdie affair polemics reduces the issue to fundamentalisms
decontextualised of relations of power and racism and sees the Reports thrust as
paving the way to stifling reasonable criticism; and Polly Toynbees In Defence of
Islamophobia which, in addition to separating religion entirely from race, equates
Religiophobia with rationality itself.36

Lastly, while the dynamic set off by consultations and fact-finding missions of the
Commissions working group, the publication of the Report, and its reception,
contributed positively and enormously to framing the realities of Muslim life through
the concept of Islamophobia, the conceptualisation of Islamophobia itself, was, and
has remained (as a number of constructive sympathetic critiques have already
advanced, and this Symposium is intended to address) undertheorised. 37 One such
weakness, concerns the formulation and conceptualisation of phobic views as
closed views. It should be noted, of course, that the Commission itself moved to
strengthen areas of weakness of the original 1997 Report in its second incarnation,
now for the Uniting Britain Trust and under the Chairmanship of Richard Stone. Thus
besides confronting the new realities of the post 9/11 and war on terror contexts and
climate of Islamophobia (which includes acknowledging that combating
Islamophobia within Britain necessarily involves engaging with the neo-conservative
views of world affairs), the 2004 Report explicitly considers the notions of
Institutional Islamophobia, and anti-Muslim racism, problematising the objections,
particularly from the liberal left, centred on a distinction between race and religion.
But discussion of these is minimal, and ultimately without consequence to its
conceptualisation of Islamophobia or its workings which remains tied to the

35
See the BMMS, vols IV and V for 1996 and 1997: examples include, the Muslim News launch of
media monitoring in September 1996; a public meeting organised by the Wycombe Race Equality
Council in March 97; a seminar on Islamophobia - its features and dangers organised by the Indian
Muslim Federation and the London Borough of Waltham Forest in May; a Q-News exclusive on the
Reports findings ahead of its publication in October 1997; the conference Islamophobia the oldest
hatred, organised by the Muslim Parliament on 19 October which brought together Muslim leaders
from across Europe to discuss the problem of Islamophobia; and the founding of the Islamic Human
Rights Committee by the Muslim Parliament that year, to pursue cases of Islamophobic discrimination.
36
Weldon, cited in the Independent on Sunday (02.03.97) [which should be read with Sacred Cows: A
portrait of Britain, post-Rushdie, pre-Utopia, London: Chatto & Windus, 1989]; Dr Patrick Sookhdeo
in Church Times, (28.02.97), and the New Christian Herald (22.03.97); Polly Toynbee, In defence of
Islamophobia Independent (23.10.97): BMSS, vol. V (1997).
37
See for example Chris Allens The first decade of Islamophobia, 2007.

44
dichotomy of open and closed views and the bedrock of reasoned and blind hatred
against all of Islam.38

It is generally accepted that the international currency of the term Islamophobia was
established by the Runnymede Trust and debates in Britain; from here, it entered other
national contexts and debates, both re-shaping and being shaped by its deployment in
particular configurations of power, and was adopted by international monitoring
bodies. This raises some minor and some important questions which it is largely
beyond the scope of this paper to deal with. One concerns the sense in which the
various transliterations of the term into other languages (e.g. islamophobie in French,
islamofobia in Spanish, Islamofobya in Turkish) come to re-articulate existing
mobilisations of community activisms and anti-racist struggles and alliances (whose
previous rallying terminology reflected both the vernacular anti-Muslim/Islamic and
racist vocabularies, and colonial categories, and the layered terrain of national
political, anti-immigrant, anti-clerical histories, and, not least, Muslim public
voices39), with debates and agendas sited from the British context. And whether,
neologism aside, in each context such reclustering through and around the
Runnymede concept and agenda represent a move forward for Muslims. Another,
returns us to the core of the argument here. It is not, nominalistically, the term
Islamophobia per se that has been argued for here, but the meaning it relationally
configures in tension with the terms, and conceptions, it is privileged over and against
(xenophobia, racism, intolerance, anti-Islam, anti-Muslimism, etc), and specifically
so, in respect of the performative, and the enunciator it legitimates. In the British
context, this work is, today, done by the term Islamophobia; but elsewhere, it may
be done by different words. Conversely, the mere fact of the same word elsewhere or
at other times, does not mean it does the same work.

Actually, the term Islamophobia was first used in print in French (islamophobie) in
the last days of the first World War and in its immediate aftermath. Several points are
significant in respect of this first use. Firstly, the term is used by its authors, tienne
Dinet and Sliman Ben Ibrahim, twice, and consistently, in two complementary works:
a biography of the Prophet (on which Dinet had been involved since around the time
of his taking the Shahada and the name Nasr-ed-din, in 1913), published in 1918, and
again in a companion essay, conceived and announced at the same time, but
concluded in 1921. Second, both authors were Muslims, and the works assume an
explicit Islamicate register. It is from a desire to produce a specifically Muslim
perspective, free of Orientalist distortions, that La Vie de Mohammed, Prophte
dAllah (The Life of Muhammad, The Prophet of Allah, significantly dated as
completed 27th Ramadan 1334/ 28 July 1916) results.40 And it is in the course of
confronting such orientalist distortions, of delegitimating the claims of critical

38
Islamophobia: issues, challenges and action. A Report by the Commission on British Muslims and
Islamophobia, Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books, 2004
39
Vincent Geissers mapping of the French case, structured by French Republican laicism and
fractured by the traumas of the two Algerian complexes, the colonial war and the Islamist civil war,
featuring prominent walk-on parts for the moderate, enlightened, arabophile but islamophobe,
native informant Muslim islamophobes, or Muslim facilitators of Islamophobia, whose rabid
islamistophobia gives manifest expression to latent Islamophobia, is a good example; see Geisser, La
nouvelle islamophobie, Paris: La Decouverte, 2003.
40
E. Dinet and El Hadj Sliman Ben Ibrahim, La Vie de Mohammed Prophte dAllah [Paris: Piazza,
1918], G.P. Maisonneuve, 1937; English translation as The Life of Mohammed, The Prophet of Allah,
Paris: Paris Book Club, 1918.

45
erudition and scholarly neutrality of such authors by exposing at work rather a wilful
negation of the Islamic perspective the transcendence of the Quranic revelation and
prophetic mission, no less than the islamicate traditional corpus that the term
Islamophobia is employed. Thirdly, the term, first employed in the Preface to La Vie,
consubstantiates and is informed by the critique of such orientalist perspectives
fleshed out in the essays of the 1921 companion piece, LOrient Vu de LOccident
(The Orient Seen from the West)41. It is but provocatively that Dinet and Slimans
Critical Essay has been compared, for its sainte colre (righteous anger), to Saids
Orientalism42, and it would be preposterous to suggest any comparisons in their
respective critiques of Orientalism, but a critique of a textual Orientalism
(lorientalisme qui travaille exclusivement sur le cadavre), it is. And (for all that it
embodies a belated ethnographic Orientalism of its own) not only does Dinet and
Sliman Ben Ibrahims work write and paint back to Western Orientalist
representations, it articulates these in an avowed and wider frame of political
representation of Muslims, in connection with both Muslim loyalty and sacrifice in
the cause of the Great War (and besides practical assistance, and advocacy on behalf
of convalescing Muslims and Islamic funerary observances for the dead, La Vie was
dedicated A la mmoire des musulmans morts pour la France43). And this advocacy,
and the politicisation of the frustration over the French failure to recognise and
translate recognition of Muslim sacrifices into parity of citizenship, while never
leading to sympathy for the independendist cause, found (mostly private but
passionate) expression in criticism of Frances colonial relation to Algeria.44
Considered together with Dinets understanding of the ummatic dimension of Islam,
dramatically represented (in terms of religious fraternity but not without political
overtones45) in the culmination of the pilgrimage rites on the plain of Arafat, the
coining of Islamophobia acquires a deeper resonance.

Lastly, two further things should be noted. Such is the compelling consistency and
fullness of Dinet and Slimans use of the term Islamophobia that in her study of Dinet,
his biographer, Denise Brahimi, comes to use it herself. And does so, not merely to
describe what she plainly sees as the ideological standpoint of the project of La Vie de

41
E. Dinnet and Sliman Ben Ibrahim, LOrient Vu de LOccident: Essai critique, Paris: Piazza-
Geuthner, n.d. [but text dated as completed, again significantly, 28 Dhul Hijja 1339/ 2 September
1921]. The 1918 English translation of The Life translates that works reference to this forthcoming
pamphlet under the English title of The East Seen from the West, but I have here used Orient as more
in keeping with its explicit critique of Orientalism. The reference, concerning Lammens, is in
justification of its need to expose quel degr daberration lIslamophobie pouvait conduire un
savant, (p.26).
42
Franois Poillon, Les deux vies dtienne Dinet, peintre en Islam. LAlgrie et lheritage colonial,
Paris: Balland, 1997, p.122.
43
A patriotic dedication which the English translation, literally reinscribes and re-sites as: This work is
dedicated by the author and his collaborator to the Memory of the Valiant Moslem Soldiers particularly
those of France and England who, in the Sacred Cause of Right, Justice and Humanity have piously
sacrificed their lives in the Great War of the Nations.
44
In one biographer's words, Dinet est vritablement ulcerr de lingratitude dont la France fait
preuve visvis des musulmans qui se sont battu pour elle, Denise Brahimi, La Vie et loeuvre de
Etienne Dinet, Paris: ACR, 1984, p.140.
45
Quoth the Prophet: The Moslems are as one body: the pain in any single limb gives rise to fever
and insomnia in the whole of the frame. On the Arafa, Islam has nothing to fear from enemy spies; it
can make good its losses and prepare its future. Despite its disasters, it is more alive than ever!. My
reading of Dinets discussion of the decline of Islam is considerably at odds with Ruth Rodeds in her
stimulating critique of Dinet and Slimans gendered representations in the Life of the Prophet in
Arabica 49:3 (2002), 325-359.

46
Mahommed, which, in characterising it as de rcuser la fausse science islamophobe et
lerudition she may be said to be merely paraphrasing their own words, but, more
significantly, in her description of Dinet at the end of his life, and of his politicised
understanding of Islamophobic colonial relations, she has made it her own.46

Second, though when the book was translated into English that same year of 1918, in
the English translation islamophobie is rendered as feelings inimical to Islam, and
thus failed to make it into English from the French, the first use in print in English is,
arguably, of francophone inspiration, but what is of interest, is its diametrically
opposite deployment from Dinet and Slimans. It occurs in the context of an article
by the Egyptian Dominican islamicist (with long missionary experience in Algeria)
Georges Chahati Anawati, engaging the work of Gustav von Grunebaum. What is of
interest here, is that his use of the term recalls that by Dinet and Sliman, and its
meaning, but inverted: it names not the fanatic orientalist assault on the Islamic
corpus, such as that by Lammens which Dinet denounced, but the Muslim interdiction
of legitimate orientalist scholarly textual critique, for what makes the task difficult,
perhaps impossible, for a non-Muslim is that he is compelled, under penalty of being
accused of Islamophobia, to admire the Koran in its totality and to guard against
implying the smallest criticism of the text's literary value. 47

While, between them, Dinet and Slimans and Anawatis uses of the term already
configure the current battles over the (il)legitimacy of the concept; for all that, neither
prefigures the contemporary meaning which interests us here. To reiterate, what
interests us, therefore, is neither the historical use of the term, or its nominalistic
usage, but its deployment in terms of a particular genealogy, one which bespeakes a
Muslim making.

Not, then, when is it legitimate to speak of islamophobia, but when is it legitimate to

speak of Islamophobia? That is the question.48

46
Brahimi, La Vie et loeuvre, p.138, and p.154: the latter reads: Sur le plan politique, nous savons
dej qu la fin de sa vie, il na pas dillusions. Il a pu se rendre compte, ds son retour Alger, que
lislamophobie y rgnait avec virolence.
47
C.G. Anawati, Dialogue with Gustave E. von Grunebaum, International Journal of Middle East
Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Jan., 1976), 123-128: p.124.
48
See the contribution to a working bibliography on this question included in this booklet.

47
The unbearable whiteness of seeing: moderated Muslims,
(in)/visibilities and Islamophobia
D Tyrer

Who is a Muslim, and how this knowledge fits within our received schemas for
racialised classification, is a complex problem. To identify oneself as a Muslim
involves rejecting ascribed racialised markers of difference, placing 'race' 'under
erasure' (after Hall, 2000) and, by disrupting the language of 'race', also interrupting
the strategies of white governmentality (see Hesse, 1997) as they are routinely applied
in the construction of subjectivities of the governed. These challenges to 'race' are
highlighted by some of the detail surrounding the shooting of Jean Charles de
Menezes in 2005. Pugliese (2006, cited in Vaughan-Williams 2007) describes a
regime of visuality based on racial profiling which led to the mistaken identification
of de Menezes as an Asian by both police and eye witnesses interviewed on TV.
This mistaken identification is further complicated by another mistaken identification,
for, as Vaughan-Williams (2007: 180) notes, he had in fact initially been identified as
IC1 [white]. 'Race' provides us with a language for classifying and ordering subjects
that cannot reconcile these various, oppositional, markers of phenotypal difference.
The tension posed by these misidentifications only makes sense if we step outside the
language of 'race' and recognise the more fundamental misidentification they overlie:
de Menezes was actually misidentified as a Muslim, a category that disrupts the logics
of racialised ascriptions.

The emergence of Muslim identities over the past two decades may have disrupted the
normative grammar of 'race', but it has met with attempts to recentre 'race' which have
involved rendering Muslims invisible, usually on the grounds that Muslims jolly well
ought to accept their rightful places within a system of racial classification. This has
often been manifested in the failure to recognise Islamophobia in existing legislation
on racism (Meer 2007: 114), and in the hostility Muslims have often faced when
seeking to correct this state of affairs (see, for example, Toynbee 2005). Some persist
in highlighting as apparently scandalous that to be a Muslim is to exercise an agency
not normally available to those who have obediently accepted their ascribed racial
classification, and that this question of 'choice' should preclude them from legal
protection against Islamophobia (see, for example, interesting discussions by Meer
2008 and Modood 2005: 16; 58). At other times, this invisibility of Muslims has
given way to a hyper-visibility (as 'extremists', 'fundamentalists',...) when all other
attempts at explaining away the persistence of Muslim identities and recentring
normative grammars of 'race' have failed.

In this paper, I am concerned with a more recent development to this process, in

which these binary logics of in-/hyper- visibility appear increasingly supplanted by
both an increasing resignation to/recognition of Muslim identities, accompanied by

48
'softer' modes of visibility characterised most notably by the official discourse of
Muslim moderacy. This can superficially be held to signal a significant improvement
since it finally entails formal recognition of Muslims. Crucially, this recognition
ostensibly frees us from previously dominant binary logics such as in-/hyper-
visibility, or monolithic 'Muslim' other/white civil society. For example, Abbas (2007:
440) writes of 'gains' such as 'positive engagement', with 'the nation-state making its
moves through the empowerment and incorporation of a burgeoning professional, and
more importantly, what is regarded as a moderate, middle class of Muslims'. Since
state recognition of the 'moderate Muslim' is heralded as such a positive development,
it is with this question that I am concerned in this paper. In exploring the position of
the figure of the moderate Muslim vis-a-vis Islamophobia, I am not writing about an
ontic entity, but rather of the hegemonic constitution of this particulary type of
subject.

Much of the controversy surrounding Islamophobia has been bound up in questions of

the visibility, and subsequent recognition by the state, of Muslims qua Muslims.
Attempts to deny the visibility of Muslims raise another, more basic, question: is the
visibility of racialised groups based on characteristics internal to those groups?
Recognition of the social construction of 'race' and, indeed, of the contingency of all
identities, forces us to recognise that the visibility of groups is also contingent. For
example, writing about Germany, Yalin-Heckman (1998: 168) notes 'Migrants are
perceived... as Muslims in certain contexts and instances... at certain moments of
political and historical developments than others'. As Kipnis notes (1993: 110),
visibility is 'a complex system of permission and prohibition, of presence and
absence, punctuated alternately by apparitions and hysterical blindnesses'. Drawing
from Schmitt's (2007: 26) observation that 'the specific political distinction to which
political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy', I
further contend that visibility is a political practice fundamentally bound up with the
exercise of power (see also Brighenti 2007: 324). A series of fairly self-evident binary
logics (such as 'race', class, gender...) underpinned the repertoires for visibility that
were central to the regimes of power through which subjectivities were produced
(along the lines of these very binarisms) in disciplinary societies (Lazzarato 2006:
174).

These modes of visibility were bound up with the deployment of the racial frontier
overseas, and the normative racial grammar of the modern project surfaces in the
normative oppositional classifications of 'race' and its ethnic cognates used to describe
Muslims (e.g. 'Asian') while repressing auto-identification as 'Muslim'. This grammar
also underpins the tension of the in-/hyper- visibilities of Muslim subjects who
interrupt these processes.

Visibility works rather differently in a control society; Brighenti (2007, p.339) notes
that visibility functions as a strategic resource for regulation... or selectivity... or
both. To function as such, visibility works in control societies to be centrally
concerned with marking, and depoliticising, of boundaries. This question is one of
subjectification and the struggles over the terms of recognition (e.g. as Muslims)
concerned with ratifying, or contesting, these boundaries as they are interpellated into
state practices. The recent visibility of Muslims as legitimated political actors works
rather differently than previous modes of rendering Muslims in-/hyper- visible for two
reasons. First, the notion of being a 'moderate Muslim' refers not to a pre-given point

49
on a spectrum of political beliefs, but rather to a qualified Muslimness; a muted
alterity which identifies the indeterminate positioning of Muslims in terms of
'traditional' schemas for racial classification. Second, as a result of this, the idea of
'moderate' Muslim superficially appears to sit outside the traditional broad, binary
logics of modern 'race'. That is to say, we are no longer speaking about broad racial
categories, but referring to an emergent range of other binarisms which disagreggate
these sweeping markers of difference and recode them into a range of more specific,
cultural and behavioural binary distintions.

This development reflects wider transformation. The apparently increased porosity of

borders shifts the emphasis from 'race' as empire to struggles over the meanings of
'race' as nation (Hesse 1997), and postcoloniality brings with it the dislocating effects
of a decentring of the west (Sayyid 1997), and it becomes increasingly clear that the
regime of confinement which has characterised the modern-era disciplinary society
is threatened by the proliferation of differences which occurs (Lazzarato 2006, 177)
but which can no longer be held beyond the margins nor contained through the
traditional systems for classifying difference and subjectifying the governed. 'Race', in
other words, is under erasure, and an alternative language for classifying differences
previously contained in the modern language of 'race' is required by the neo-liberal
state, linked to new assemblages of power. In this context, the emergence of new
racism is one means of recuperating 'race' that can look beyond the modern logics of
colonial era-racism, through its resignification in cultural terms. The changing nature
of Islamophobia forms another instance; for, rather than denying the persistence of
Muslim identities based on appeals to older notions of biological 'race', Muslims are
now rendered visible and recognised, but on the terms of racism (i.e. as though a
discretely ethnicised group see, for example, Kundnani 2007: 126). Central to this
new visibility of Muslims is a move beyond the previous tension of in-/hyper-
visibility; now the emphasis is instead on different intensities or registers of visibility.
As Sayyid (2004) notes, racism works through the alternate ascriptions of exoticised
and banalised characteristics to racialised groups.

One instance of this can be seen in the radical (exotic) differentiation of Muslims (as
'extremists') and their relative dedifferentiation (banalisation as 'moderates') during
the ongoing state of exception that is 'the war on terror'. In my paper, I argue that this
is more than just a development to the ways in which Muslim claims are dealt with,
but actually marks a key way in which what Hesse terms white governmentality
(1997) is supplanted with white control in a neo-liberal control society. This radical
differentiation/de-differentiation of differences follows the logics outlined by Hardt
and Negri (2000: 195), who argue that the fetishisation of difference by imperial
racism ... integrates others within its order and then orchestrates those differences in a
system of control. Marking difference in radically relativistic terms and rendering it
hypervisible (the 'extremist') in order to consolidate control is a way of marking the
excess of the racialised other; dedifferentiating the other (the 'moderate') is a
technique which seeks to identify that excess and subject the other to the crushing
objecthood (Hesse 1997) of white governmentality. What differs between the
techniques of discipline and those of contemporary control are the registers through
which racialised difference is constructed and the ways in which power is exercised;
the linear power of a disciplinary society replaced with the constant, unending
processes of modulation: this isn't a zero-sum game analogous to Foucault's
understanding of racism as the annihilation of a people but rather a constant, fluid

50
process of control through modulation as Muslims are rendered hypervisible, then de-
differentiated in a repetitive, non-linear fashion.

The distinction is born out in other ways; for example the assimilationism and
integrationism of disciplinary societies based on a familiar array of institutions
(schooling, labour market, criminal justice system...) based on repression into a
predictable range of biologised racial dualisms (black/white, host/immigrant...) are
replaced with the endless modulation of community cohesion and its battles for hearts
and minds, in which institutions such as public opinion are central and the old racial
binarisms are recoded into superficially less dichotomous cultural terms (e.g. through
cultural redefinition of citizenship, etc). Most importantly, the old binarisms are
replaced with a new range of binarisms. This process is still about 'race', but
superficially 'race' seems not to figure. This is because Muslims continue to disrupt
traditional racial logics. It is no longer even about host/settler distinctions, since the
emphasis is increasingly on 'homegrown threats' and 'Britishness'. Crucially, the
concern is no longer straightforwardly Muslim/non-Muslim, since even within terms
of engagement which problematise all Muslim identities, distinctions are made
between Muslims.

This increasing recognition of the differentiation of Muslims appears momentarily as

a rather shambolic array of vaguely defined floating signifiers, but in fact is the
continual coding of new binarisms (see, for example, Jackson 2006), albeit both
'dramatic' and banal. These new binarisms proliferate to such an extent that they
create an impression of the elision of old racial dualisms. In fact, they merely rework
these in cultural terms, superseding them with a new range of binarisms around which
notions of Muslimness are stratified through the constant modulation of Muslim
identities (homegrown/foreign; moderate/extremist; youth/community leader; etc).
Clough (2003: 360) notes that control does not direct itself at 'subjects whose
behaviour expresses internalized social norms; rather, control aims at a never-ending
modulation of moods, capacities, affects, potentialities, assmbled in... bodies of data
and information'. This rhizomatic control manifests in the tensions increasingly facing
Muslims; for example the trope of having to 'negotiate a tenuous path between being a
good Muslim community member and/or being a good citizen' (Spalek and
Imtoual 2007: 185) surfaces in various forms in the literature (e.g. Lyon 2004: 86-7).

The figure of the moderate Muslim emerges from the roadshows, consultations,
roundtables, not as a sign of reducing Islamophobia but as one of the twin registers of
contemporary Islamophobia: radical differentiation and de-differentiation. This
totemic figure has become a central figure in the 'war on terror' both as an example of
good conduct to Muslims and as an implied reward (through the patronage and
'incorporation', as Abbas 2007 puts it, awaiting the middle-class moderates). That the
focus on the 'moderate' is held up not as a register of Islamophobia but rather as
supposed evidence of an improvement is partly a function of the faulty logics of
dominant definitions of Islamophobia, which reify the distinction between legitimate
and illegitimate criticisms of Muslims and Islam (see, for example, Runnymede Trust
1997). In turn this logic legitimises the scrunity under which Muslims are placed. It
also finds resonance in governments' emphases upon 'legitimate' and 'illegitimate'
Islam (Jackson 2006: 13; Lyon 2005: 80; Spalek and Imtoual 2007: 186). Most
importantly, the relative, normative category of 'moderate' extends control by
celebrating the fantasies of violent excess central to the radical differentiation of

51
Muslims by dint of the tethering of 'moderate' to 'extremist'.

Accordint to Volpi (2007: 462), the process consists of the simultaneous disciplining
of a moderate constituency in the [Muslim] community... These methods of
governance are also meant to strengthen the legitimacy of the security policies of the
state vis- -vis the target community. To Haddad and Golson (2007), this is linked to
contemporary ways in which the racial frontier is reworked in cultural terms and
deployed at home, within a strategy primarily concerned with redefining Muslim
identities in clearly normative terms that have been criticised as attempting to make
Muslims more easily governable rather than more 'British'. As such, managing the
distinction between 'extremist' and 'moderate' Muslims is about managing identities
(thus, difference) in a contemporary control society. This process is political, and it
plays a key role in subjectivation; the idea of the 'moderate Muslim' refers not to a
given point on a spectrum of beliefs, but to an attempt to erase the political itself by
qualifying Muslimness and muting alterity which locks Muslims into the rhizomatic
cycle of radical differentiation/dedifferentiation. The figure of the 'moderate(d)
Muslim' is not evidence of success in challenging Islamophobia but rather, another
register of Islamophobia. It reveals the sophistication of the assemblages of power to
which racialised minorities are subjected in control societies and the extent to which
Islamophobia forms the defining racism of our times.

References
Abbas, T (2007), 'Ethno-Religious Identities and Islamic Political Radicalism in the UK: A
Case Study', Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 27: 3, pp.429-442
Brighanti, A (207), 'Visibility: A Category for the Social Sciences', Current Sociology, 55,
pp.323-342
Clough, P T (2003), 'Affect and Control: Rethinking the Body Beyond Sex and Gender',
Feminist Theory, 4: 3, pp. 359-364
Haddad, Y Z, & Golson, T (2007), 'Overhauling Islam: Representation, Construction and
Cooption of Moderate Islam in Western Europe', Journal of Church and State, 49:
3, pp.487-516
Hall, S (2000), 'Conclusion: the Multi-Cultural Question', in ed. Hesse, B (2000), Un/settled
Multiculturalisms: Diasporas, Entanglements, Transruptions, London: Zed Books
Hardt, M & Negri, A (2000), Empire, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press
Hesse, b (1997), 'White Governmentality: Urbanism, Nationalism, Racism', in eds.
Westwood, S & Williams, J (1997), Imagining Cities: Scripts, Signs, Memory,
London: Routledge, pp.85-102
Jackson, R (2006), 'Religion, Politics and Terrorism: A Critical Analysis of Narratives of
Islamic Terrorism', University of Manchester Centre for International Politics
Working Paper Series, No. 21, October 2006
Kipnis, L (1993), 'Looks Good on Paper: Marxism and Feminism in a Postmodern World', in
Kipnis, L (1993), Ecstasy unlimited: on sex, capital, gender, and aesthetics, pp.101-
116, London: University of Minnesota Press
Kundnani, A (2007), The End of Tolerance: Racism in 21st Century Britain, London: Pluto
Lazzarato, M (2006), 'The Concepts of Life and the Living in the Societies of Control', in eds.
Fugslang, M and Srensen, B M, Deleuze and the Social, Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, pp.171-190
Lyon, S (2005), 'In the Shadow of September 11: Multiculturalism and Identity Politics', in
ed. Abbas, T (2005), Muslim Britain: Communities Under Pressure, London: Zed
Books, pp.78-91

52
Meer, N (2007), 'Less equal than others', Index on Censorship, 36:2, pp.114-118
Meer, N (2008), 'The politics of voluntary and involuntary identities: are Muslims in Britain
an ethnic, racial or religious minority?', Patterns of Prejudice, 42: 1, pp.61-81
Modood, T (2005), Multicultural Politics: racism, Ethnicity and Muslims in Britain,
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
Pugliese, J (2006), 'Asymmetries of Terror: Visual Regimes of Racial Profiling and the
Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in the Context of the War in Iraq, borderlands
ejournal 5, 1 2006, cited in Vaughan-Williams (2007)
Runnymede Trust (1997), Islamophobia: a challenge for us all, London: Runnymede Trust
Sayyid, B S (1997), A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism,
London: Zed Books
Sayyid, S (2004), 'Slippery People: the immigrant imaginary and the grammar of colours', in
eds. Law, I, Phillips, D & Turney, L (2004), Institutional Racism in Higher
Education, Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books
Schmitt, C (2007), The Concept of the Political, London: The University of Chicago Press
Spalek, B & Imtoual, A (2007), 'Muslim Communties and Counter-Terror Responses: Hard
Approaches to Community Engagement in the UK and Australia', Journal of Muslim
Minority Affairs, 27: 2, pp. 185-202
Toynbee, P (2005), 'My right to offend a fool', The Guardian, 10th June 2005
Vaughan-Williams (2007), 'The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes: New Border Politics?',
Alternatives 32, pp.177-195
Volpi, F (2007), 'Constructing the 'Ummah' in European Security: Between Exit, Voice and
Loyalty', Government and Opposition, 42: 3, pp.451-470
Yalin-Heckmann, L (1998), 'Growing Up as a Muslim in Germany: Religious Socialization
Among Turkish Migrant Families[, in eds. Vertovec, S & Rogers, A (1998), Muslim
European Youth reproducing ethnicity, religion, culture, Aldershot: Ashgate,
pp.167-191

53
Islamophobia and the Law
Samia Bano

To question whether the law situates Islamophobia and if so whether a legal critique
provides us with a clearer conceptual understanding of Islamophobia

The recent controversy surrounding the comments made by the Archbishop of

Canterbury on civil and religious law in England reflect the current consensus among
many western commentators that Islam and its legal principles (Sharia) threaten the
very foundations upon which western democratic societies are built. Liberal
commentators were quick, for example, to point to the consequences of demands
made by Muslims for the introduction of parallel legal systems into English Law. It
was claimed that the consequences of this imposed Islamism threatened not only the
social and legal foundations of liberal legality but also threatened the Enlightenment
values democracy, reason, equality, autonomy and individual choice upon which
western legal systems are based. Underlying this argument was also the claim that
Islamic law was unreasonable and patriarchal whereas western law was both secular
and egalitarian. Unsurprisingly perhaps these tensions were expressed via the site of
gender and gender relations and the subordinating affect Islam has upon Muslim
women. Western women were presented as enlightened and bearers of liberal legal
ideals such as equality and non-discrimination and the Muslim female subject was
presented as the other, a victim to cultural and religious practices and thus in
violation of her human rights. Law thus became the site upon which constructions of
Muslims as the Other took shape, where internal traditions of dissent within Islam
were sidelined and deemed anathema to western intellectual thought and reason.
Subsequently at present the dominant view of Islamic legal tradition and human rights
is presented as incompatible, in opposition and at best producing an uneasy tension49.
Indeed the very idea of Islam as embodying the universalism of human rights, justice
and equality as discussed in mainstream multicultural and political theory, seems at
odds with its presentation as a culturally relativist ideology which emphasizes the
impossibility of individual free will, consent and reason. I suggest that the current
totalizing of Islam is not only dangerous in its explicit Islamophobic tone but that the
relationship between religious legal practice and rights and faith and freedom and
democracy and equality are a lot more complex than the integrated/separated
trajectories currently presented. This (preliminary) paper puts forward some
questions/ ideas to consider whether a legal critique provides us with a conceptual
understanding of Islamophobia.

49
This is not of course to underestimate the wealth of literature challenging such interpretations. See
for example Abduallahi (1987), Ali-Sadar (2001), Mayer (1999).

54
So why a Legal critique? What is the Law?
In Britain Church and state are firmly established which has led to vociferous debates
on the privileged status of the Church of England and its dominance in the law-
making process. Furthermore the Church alone is protected from expressions of
contempt for its beliefs. The common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous
libel limit free speech only when the Church of England is the subject. Over the past
25 years this has led to increased calls for a clear separation between religion and the
State which it is argued would lead to more inclusive citizenship for all groups in
society.

At the most fundamental level it has been argued that the liberal legal framework
operates to maintain the existing social and political order, consolidating the power of
the state and operating as a closed and autonomous system of rules, norms and
regulation. More recently scholars have critiqued such positivist postulations of law
challenging the 3 key modernist claims of law: individual rationality as the single
source of values; the formal or abstract universalism of the law, and the centrality of
state justice. This critique informs us that the law must be understood as a specific,
historical and socio-political practice which operates in a social field of complexity,
fragmentation and conflict and thus law can only ever be understood as a specific
form of historically constituted sociality. Furthermore and perhaps most importantly
at the heart of these debates lie questions of justice, citizenship and rights. It is of
course beyond the remit of this (preliminary) paper to recount the interesting
theoretical and jurisprudential debates on what we precisely mean by law and, state
and legal relations. What becomes clear however is the fact that this move towards a
sociology of law coupled with a postmodern idea of law and legal relations has
increasingly focused on questions of immigration, cultural diversity, integration and
the management of ethnic difference. Legal scholars such as Prakash Shah (2005,
2006) and Werner Menski (1998, 2005) draw upon the concept of legal pluralism to
reevaluate the concept of law in a culturally diverse, plural society (Shah 2005:1)
and explore the relation between cultural diversity, legal pluralism and state response
to conflicts generated by the settled diasporic communities and their continued
practice of cultural/ religious norms and values. This body of literature conceptualizes
contemporary legal conflict as a clash between systems of law (both formal and
informal). In particular it is the family and wider kin groups that are presented as the two
key sites upon which such legal conflicts are based.

This critical reassessment not only challenges the ontological premises which frame the
formalist definitions of law but also explores the relation between law, religious identity
and the move from individual notions of identity towards a communitarian identity. Thus
a critical legal approach to the study of law provides us with the conceptual tools with
which to critique the relationship between law and Islamophobia.

Religious diversity and English Law

The plural nature of British society reflected by high levels of social, cultural and
religious diversity and its impact on the English legal system has been extensively
documented over the past twenty years, by anthropologists, sociologists and legal
scholars. The debate over the nature of this interaction is characterized by a clash of a
given set of values, identity and interest claims by state law and the demands of
minority religious communities.

55
Exemptions/ Accommodation of Religious practices into English law:
Motorcycle Crash Helmets (religious Exemption) Act 1976
Places of Worship Registration Act 1855
Shop Act 1950
Slaughterhouses Act 1979
The Divorce (Religious Marriages) Act 2002

Legal Protection and new legislative changes:

The European Convention on Human Rights upholds freedom of thought, conscience
and religion and this was enshrined in the Human Rights Act 1998 but only applies
directly to public bodies.

The Race Directive (2000/43/EC) and EC Equal Treatment Framework Directive

(2000/78/EC) which aimed to harmonise race equality legislation across the EU has
also been incorporated into English law. The Race Relations Act 1976 (Amendment)
Regulations 2003 which implemented provisions of the Race Directive, cover
discrimination on the on the grounds of nationality and colour.

The Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003 made it illegal to

discriminate against people in employment and vocational training on the basis of
their religion and belief. The Equality Act 2006 widened the scope to include the
provision of goods, facilities and services, education, the use and disposal of
premises, and the exercise of public functions. The religious discrimination
regulations give protection against discrimination on the grounds of any religion,
religious belief or philosophical belief in a similar way to existing sex discrimination
and race discrimination laws. The Equality Act 2006 widened this to specifically
protect lack of belief as well.

The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 creates an offence of inciting (or
stirring up) hatred against a person on the grounds of their religion.

Conflicts in the area of family law

In relation to family law matters there is extremely interesting caselaw relating
to the validity of Islamic marriage, polygamous divorce, custody, and
circumcision to name but a few areas of conflict.50

Criminal jurisdiction
The impact of anti-terrorist measures on Muslim communities. Hazel Blears, the
minister responsible for counter-terrorism, said that Muslims will have to accept as a
"reality" that they will be stopped and searched by the police more often than the rest
of the public.51

The Joint Committee on Human Rights comprising MPs and peers in August 2004
stated that We also note there is mounting evidence the powers under the Terrorism

50
See for example: Adjudication Officer v Bath I.F.C.R 419 (2001); AM v AM (Divorce: Jurisdiction:
Validity of marriage) (2001) 2 F.L.R 6 (2001); Ghandi v Patel (2001) 1. F.L.R 603
Sheikh v Sheikh 2005 Fam LR 7 2005 G.W.D 11-183 WL 297404
51
The Guardian, Wednesday March 2 2005

56
Act (2000) are being used disproportionately against members of the Muslim
community.

The Counter Terrorism Bill 2007/08: extension of detention without charge to 42

days- unfairly targets Muslims?

Locating Islamophobia in the Legal Sphere?

Concerning Muslim interaction with state law and the conflicts presented by Islamic
religious practice in the public sphere it is noteworthy that recent caselaw has been
constructed around the discourse of a crisis of multiculturalism and the failure of
Muslims to integrate into British society. For example the recent two high profile
cases seem to best illustrate this conflict between Islamic religious practice and public
space both involving Islamic dress code for Muslim women and the use of the
Human Rights Act 1998 and in doing so illustrating the view that although Muslims
are unable to integrate into British society are still nevertheless willing to utilise state
law legislation to lay claims for religious rights. 52 In Begum v Denbigh High School
Governors (2007)53 the House of Lords ruled that the exclusion of a Sabina Begum
for her unwillingness to comply with school uniform requirements was not in
violation of Article 9 of Human Rights Act 1998. In the Azmi v Kirklees (2007) 54
case a Muslim woman who worked as a school teaching assistant refused to follow an
instruction not to wear a full-face veil when in class with pupils assisting a male
teacher. She had been suspended and brought claims for direct and indirect religious
discrimination and harassment on the ground of religion or belief. Again the appeal
had been dismissed as the tribunal found no indirect discrimination and it was held
that the local councils ways of achieving its aim was reasonable and deemed
proportionate. These cases illustrate not only the specific claims for recognition made
under the HRA 1998 but also the social practices that underlie these claims and how
they relate to law.

Some (preliminary) thoughts

Do these tensions between law, politics and piety provide us with a conceptual
understanding of Islamophobia?

A legal critique of state law relations and how it manages relations between
religious freedom, the accommodation of religious practice and tolerance with
the fundamental questions of individual rights, liberty and responsibility and
protection (increasingly from terrorism) illustrates how the law operates to
produce certain outcomes. It maintains and upholds a specific vision of
multicultural Britain- where increasingly Islam is presented as a threat.

The judgements in the Begum and Azmi cases emphasise the defence of
individual autonomy and the protection of Muslim women (being compelled
to conform to traditional religious dress). The agency of Muslim women is
ignored and Islam is presented as a problem. For example Baroness Hale
52
The use of Human Rights Act 1998 includes 3 key areas: Article 8 Right to private and family Life,
Article 9 Freedom of thought, conscience and religion and Article 12 Right to marry.
53
1 A. C 100 (2006) UKHL 15HL.
54
WL 1058367

57
 discusses the issue of consent and choice in Islam in relation to the decision
making capacity of young Muslim women.

The veiled Muslim woman has become a focal point for questions of freedom,
social cohesion and the management of minority communities into Britain.
This raises increased anxiety over the integration of (British!) Muslims into
British society.

A critical reading of law, state and power demonstrates the ways in which law
is underpinned by a specific moral subjectivity which give rise to specific
understandings of Islam and Islamic legal practice. The law upholds what is
presented as the problematic character of Islam and in this way can provide a
conceptual understanding of what we understand as Islamophobia.

Western commentators and legal scholars now discuss at length the limits of
religious practice and belief and many query the need to accommodate and
respect cultural and religious diversity in western societies at all. Islam is
deemed incompatible with modern individual liberal conceptions of law which
conflict with modernist legal forms. This is validated by judicial authority in
Europe. The Grand Chamber of the ECHR in Leyla Sahin v Turkey (2005)
endorsed a version of secularism that has the ban on the hijab as a condition
for guaranteeing equality, liberty and democracy in Turkey.

58
Investigating Islamophobia within learning environments

Serena Hussain

This paper looks at two empirical studies with the objective of understanding
experiences of young Muslims in London specifically and England wide. Fieldwork
conducted for both projects produced accounts and discussion of Islamophobia55
amongst participants and those involved in regulating the research.

The paper focuses on three areas:

1) The methodological approaches employed by these projects and the
application of Islamophobia as a subject matter whether explicit, implicit,
unnamed as a topic under investigation
2) Reactions to Islamophobia being placed on the research agenda of research
participants and those involved in the research (advisory panel, officials
through which access to participants was reached teachers, student support
etc.)
3) Reported experiences of Islamophobia and discussion of findings

Introduction to the projects, their research aims and methodology

Islam at Universities in England56: was commissioned by Bill Rammell, (Minister for

Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education). The review comprised of
fieldwork with stakeholders, academic staff and Muslim organisations involved in
facilitating learning on Islam. In addition a student study was produced in order to
gauge the opinion of Muslim students57.

The purpose of the study was:

To investigate the views of Muslim students towards Islamic Studies

courses in universities in England.
To explore the general understanding of chaplaincy by students and its
role in University life.

Neither of these terms of reference explicitly or implicitly refers to Islamophobia, nor

were they intended to investigate students experiences of discrimination. However,
as will be seen during the discussion of the research findings, both, and particularly

55
Islamophobia is defined here as an unfounded hostility towards Islam and the unfair
discrimination against Muslim individuals and communities taken from the Runnymede Trusts
Islamophobia a challenge for us all (1997)
56
Siddiqui, A (2007) Islam at Universities in England: meeting the needs and Investing in the future,
Department of Education and Skills
57
Hussain, S (2007) The Student Study Report, Appendix G, in Siddiqui, A, Islam at Universities in
England: meeting the needs and Investing in the future, Department of Education and Skills

59
the second point generated a significant amount of discussion on Muslim specific
discrimination. The initial planned methodology to be employed for collecting
information from students was the use of a survey, designed and developed for this
purpose. There were however three questions in the questionnaire that allowed
students to raise issues of discrimination. These asked:

Have you met the student welfare officer or any other staff of the University
in relation to your religious/ spiritual needs? Yes No

If yes can you describe your experience of their dealings with you?
[Sensitivities of your faith, cultural issues etc.] Open ended question

Please feel free to comment on any aspect of university life which you feel
should be highlighted here e.g. general provision in the university, Islamic
society, or career advise. Open ended question

The advisory committee for the research decided against the use of a questionnaire as
the primary research tool, due to a poor pilot response. Issues connected with student
suspicion and lack of willingness for students to complete the questionnaires rendered
this methodological approach problematic. Instead a qualitative approach was opted
for and focus groups were chosen in the hope of generating richer data than
questionnaires.

Focus groups were conducted with Muslim students at the following universities:
Durham, Cambridge, York, Nottingham, Warwick, Huddersfield, Hertfordshire and
East London. Students were contacted via student societies and through academic
departments. Students were given information sheets, which some societies and
academics were willing to distribute directly to their members. Other universities,
such as the University of East London, needed approval from their own relevant
ethics committees before doing so. In terms of numbers of students recruited, the most
successful route was through the university Islamic society.

The three broad research questions discussed during the focus group were:

What type of Information is available to you about Islam at your University?

There are provisions for chaplaincy at most universities in England. What is
your perception of chaplaincy?

Are there links between the resident Muslim community in [the town/city
where the university is located] and the Muslim student body at your
university?

Experiences of Muslims students in further and higher education in London58: was

commissioned by the Greater London Authority, as a result of consultations Mayor,
Ken Livingstone, had conducted with Londons Muslim community.

58
http://www.opm.co.uk/muslim/index.html

60
The purpose of the study was to:

Examine the diverse experiences of Muslim students in Further and Higher

Education in London
Marshal available statistical and research evidence on Muslim students
Produce qualitative and quantitative evidence about Muslims student
experiences in London and
Identify strategies and approaches which can address the challenges faced by
Londons Muslim learners such as discrimination and Islamophobia

This study essentially focussed on experiences of Muslim student discrimination and

therefore the study explicitly broached the subject of Islamophobia. An online survey
was used to collect data from students across London. All Higher and Further
education institutions received a letter from the Mayors Office informing them about
and endorsing the study. Student services were also contacted by the researcher,
requesting their cooperation with forwarding an email to their students with a link to
the survey, as well as distributing printed versions of the questionnaire.

The mixed method approach also involved qualitative fieldwork in the form of 6
focus groups conducted with Muslim students who were under represented as survey
respondents (disabled, female, those in further education, refugees and those from
Turkish Speaking Communities) as well as interviews conducted with stakeholders.
There were 672 valid survey responses.

Application of Islamophobia within the projects research agendas

Of the two studies described above only one explicitly set out to investigate student
experiences of Islamophobia. Both studies however generated discussion on the
subject by the research participants and provided accounts of anti Muslim
discrimination or Muslim specific discrimination, which were recognised as valid
research findings and included/noted in reports produced.

Islam at Universities in England

Over twenty universities were contacted to take part in the study through students
societies, such as the Islamic society or through contacting course leaders and
academics teaching Islamic studies and Islam related courses (such as Middle Eastern
studies, Islam and Education, Islamic Law and Middle Eastern studies, Islamic
Feminist Legal Theory). During the initial contact phase, the general response of
University staff was neutral with the exception of two universities who took part in
the study and actively encouraged their Muslim students involvement. Both
universities were post 1992 universities, and these universities generally had more
involvement in recruitment and sanctioning the study. As the majority of participants,
however, were recruited via Muslim gatekeepers - namely Islamic Society
representatives - the contact with university staff was minimal.

There was a higher level of reluctance on the part of students to become involved in
the study than expected by the researcher. Further inquiry found that this was mainly
due to suspicion related to alleged reports of University staff being asked to spy on
Muslim students. None of the students who took part in the study were asked directly
about the issue of spying or whether they felt marginalised either within society or at

61
university, yet these topics were raised in some of the focus groups, despite not being
issues that the researcher set out to investigate.

Analysis of transcripts showed that approximately 65% of students involved in the

study made references to anti Muslim sentiment, although it should be noted that this
was not necessarily to do with personal experiences of Islamophobia or experiences
within learning environments, but rather reference to rhetoric on Muslims more
generally (within the media, the government etc.) which were perceived as being
motivated by prejudice. Therefore the topic of Islamophobia was placed on the
research agenda by Muslim students themselves.

The majority of accounts and discussion regarding anti Muslim experiences within
formal education took place when discussing the second theme on chaplaincy which
often prompted debate on various issues regarding care needs and Muslim students
support. There were some examples of how the students felt their concerns regarding
faith issues were not fully appreciated by members of staff. There were also examples
of where students had been picked out by staff because of their faith.

A topic that was raised by students at over half of universities was the issue of
universities spying on Muslim students and Islamic societies. This was seen as an area
of concern and anxiety by some students; others saw it as an example of the
marginalisation of Muslims in Britain. Therefore although the study had not set out to
investigate Muslim discrimination, most students who did take part in the study used
it as an opportunity to raise some of the very concerns surrounding Muslim
discrimination that deterred others from participating.

Experiences of Muslims students in further and higher education in London

When initiating correspondence with staff and student representatives in order to gain
their help with distributing the survey, most institutions were extremely cooperative
and understood why the research was focusing on this particular group of students.

However, there were some institutions that were initially hesitant and apprehensive
about being involved. Some misunderstood what was meant by Islamophobia, and
thought that rather than referring to Muslim specific discrimination, the researchers
were referring to radicalisation, creating yet more suspicion of spying on students.

A more common issue we encountered with institutions was hostility to the idea of
focusing on this particular group of students, for example one member of staff said
'well why isn't this survey being done for Jewish students or students from Israel?'
The need for inclusivity and treating all students the same was an issue that was raised
in many of the stakeholder interviews, particularly around meeting Muslim students
needs as opposed to issues around tackling discrimination.

Another example of this was during discussion of initial findings during an advisory
board meeting where an independent advisor asked why the question

Do you feel that your university/school/college accommodates your needs as

a Muslim student?

62
required the word Muslim and why the question shouldnt simply be asked to all
students.

Throughout all strands of the research most people (whether Muslim or non Muslim,
student or staff) approached the topic in two ways - firstly, either by saying that the
research should not be focusing on Muslim students only and that this was counter-
productive to the stated aims of the research. Those with this opinion tended not to
fully understand what Islamophobia is or why it is an issue and instead thought that
Muslims were unfairly being singled out due to government fears of radicalisation
and/or terrorism. This first view was more common amongst the stakeholders
interviewed but there were Muslim students who also stated similar opinions in their
survey responses. For example, one respondent wrote, Stop highlighting Muslim
students as if they are a special group there are many other groups on the campus
and with all this attention towards Muslims it actually isolates us against other
students.

The second common approach was an understanding of why the research was being
undertaken due to an awareness of Muslim specific discrimination.

Experiences of Islamophobia within learning environments

Building on an overview of key findings and accounts of Islamophobia from the two
studies, discussion will take up the questions of what the category of Islamophobia
brings to doing research with Muslim students, whether Islamophobia is an
inevitable topic of discussion when investigating Muslim experiences in current
political climates more generally, whether the term has become operationalized in that
researchers and research participants intuitively know what it means and can
categorise experiences of discrimination as Islamophobia rather than other forms of
discrimination, and how important a consistent and clear understanding of
Islamophobia is for research design and choosing methodological approaches prior to
such studies.

63
Internal Consistency, Reliability and Construct Validity of the
Attitude Toward Muslim Proximity Index (AMPI):
A measure of social distance
Adrian Brockett, Andrew Village, Leslie J. Francis

Introduction
There has been a widespread and long-term interest among sociologists regarding the
relationships between groups of different ethnic or religious backgrounds that co-exist
in the same societies. In Western societies this interest includes studies of attitudes of
the majority toward minorities, such as whites toward African-Americans in the USA
(Bogardus 1928; Hughes and Tuch 2003; Johnson and Marini 1998; Westie 1953),
indigenous European populations towards immigrants (McLaren 2003; Pettigrew et
al. 1997; Pettigrew and Meertens 1995; Stephan, Ybarra, and Bachman 1999) and
those from a predominantly Christian background toward Jews or Muslims (Duriez
and Hutsebaut 2000; Eisinga, Billiet, and Felling 1999; Jacobson 1998). Such studies
generally rely on measures that attempt to operationalize an underlying attitude of
prejudice, fear or loathing linked to concepts such as racism and Islamophobia.

A recognized way of operationalizing such constructs involves identifying items that

typify stereotypes found among the majority population being investigated. In a study
of religion and racism among undergraduates in Belgium, for example, Duriez and
Hutsebaut (2000) used a range of items considered to be related to specific fears about
immigrants in that country, such as: Guest workers come here to exploit our social
security, Guest workers endanger the employment of Belgians and In some
neighborhoods, government is doing more for immigrants than for the Belgians who
live there. An advantage of such measures is that they are relevant to the attitudes of
the majority group under study, and may therefore be said to have high face validity.
In addition, they enable assessment of the relative importance of different personal
and contextual factors that might contribute to the overall attitude toward the
outgroup.

There are, however, some disadvantages in using such scales. First, they may be
overly specific to particular groups and their interactions. This means that scales may
not be generalizable across different populations, or even within the same population
over time. A measure constructed to assess attitudes of whites toward Afro-
Caribbeans in Britain, for example, may not be easily compared with a measure
constructed to assess attitudes of whites toward Muslims in Britain; measures used in
Britain may not work if applied elsewhere in Europe; and measures developed in
response to a particular context, event or crisis might be incomprehensible to later
generations. Field (2007) found that British opinion polls between 1988 and 2006
concerned with negative attitudes toward Muslims (Islamophobia) drew on
stereotypes and were often conducted in response to particular events or crisis.
Although Field was able to identify some trends, comparison was hindered by the way
that items in questionnaires tended to reflect particular preoccupations at the time
when the questionnaires were constructed.

64
A second problem with attitude scales developed in relation to specific interactions is
that they sometimes require a fairly sophisticated and detailed knowledge of the
outgroup. An example of this sort of instrument is provided by a measure of attitude
toward Islam developed for use among school children by Smith and Kay (2000).
This instrument was designed for use among children who were expected to have
been taught about Islam, and consequently many items drew on particular Islamic
beliefs or practices. Typical items included: I respect Moslems who try to follow the
Five Pillars of Islam, I like the Moslem idea of only eating halal meat and I admire
the moral beliefs of Islam. Children who had not been taught about these aspects of
Islam, or who had been exposed to such teaching but who had not retained the
knowledge, would find these items difficult to answer. In this case, neutral answers
(such as a not certain response) may betoken lack of understanding, rather than a
particular attitudinal stance.

A third problem with using items relating to specific aspects of an inter-group

relationship is that they may measure matters of fact or legitimate belief, rather than
indicators of underlying prejudice. A respondent who agrees that immigrants should
learn the language of their adopted country, for example, might be drawing on a
genuine concern that incomers might find integration more difficult if they do not
make the effort to learn the local language, rather than a cultural arrogance demanding
that outsiders conform to the majority convention.

In the measurement of discrimination or prejudice social psychologists have widely

used the concept of social distance (Bogardus 1928, 1959; Ethington 2007). This
concept is conceived of as a mixture of physical and spatial proximity and more
metaphorical understandings of distance relating to differences in social class or
social location. The underlying theory assumes that prejudice is related to how
closely people are likely to want to relate to members of an outgroup. Researchers
measure levels of prejudice by creating items that specify different levels of spatial
(e.g. living in the same area, eating in the same restaurant, encountering headscarves,
etc.) or social (e.g. attending the same school, being related by marriage, etc.)
proximity. Summated scales are then created on the assumption that low tolerance of
proximity equates with underlying discrimination, prejudice or fear of the outgroup in
question. Social distance has been used in this way to assess prejudice associated with
race (Bogardus 1928; Westie 1953), mental illness (Angermeyer and Matschinger
1997; Brockman and D'Arcy 1978; Corrigan, Edwards, Green, Thwart, and Perm
2001) and religion (Brinkerhoff and Jacob 1994). Although the concept of distance
has sometimes been used entirely metaphorically rather than spatially, there are good
reasons for including an element of spatial proximity in such scales (Ethington 2007).
Spatial distance may be a direct way of examining the extent of irrational fear or
prejudice towards a racial or religious outgroup.

This study reports on the development of a social distance scale to measure attitude
toward Muslims that should be generalizable across different populations. Likert-type
items (Likert 1932) were used to create a summated rating scale that was tested for
internal consistency reliability and construct validity among predominantly white
teenage pupils in two areas of Britain specifically selected because of their different
proportions of Muslims in the local population.

65
Method
Sample. Questionnaires were administered by class teachers during normal school
activities to pupils between the ages of 14 and 18 years during 2003 and 2004 within
two areas of northern England, Blackburn and Kirklees (N = 719) and York (N =
1514), as part of a wider study into attitude toward Muslims and Islam (Brockett et al
2007). All pupils were assured of anonymity and confidentiality, and given the
opportunity to opt out of the survey. Response rates were high, and nearly all pupils
agreed to complete the questionnaire. The catchment area of the Blackburn and
Kirklees schools included a higher proportion of Muslims than that of the York
schools in 2001 the Muslim populations of Blackburn, Kirklees and York were
19.4%, 10.12% and 0.58% respectively with higher figures for the under 18s
(National Statistics) and this was reflected in the respondents in this study, which
included 23% Muslims in Blackburn and Kirklees and less than 1% in York. Analyses
reported in the present paper were confined to respondents who classed their religion
as Christian or none (490 in Blackburn and Kirklees and 1287 in York).

Measures. A number of items were included in the questionnaire to assess attitude

toward having Muslims in some sort of proximity to the respondent (Table 1). Items
were introduced with the words How would you feel about and responses were
scored from 1 (= very pleased) to 5 (= very unhappy). Of these items, five referred to
spatial proximity (having Muslims living next door, in the same street, in the next
street, or elsewhere in the town, and encountering the wearing of headscarves by
pupils in school) and one to social proximity (having a Muslim marry into the family).

Other items included in the questionnaire were designed to assess correlates (and
hence construct validity) of the proximity items: I agree with the views of the British
National Party (BNP) (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree); Muslims should
adopt Western culture when living in the UK (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly
agree); Do you have any Muslim friends? (0= no, 1 = yes); Do you know any
Muslims? (0 = no, 1 = yes).

Data analysis. Items were initially subject to exploratory factor analysis using
principle components extraction and an eigenvalue of 1 for component selection.
Reliability analysis was based on Cronbachs method (Cronbach 1951) and items
added to, or removed from the scale, to maximize the value of alpha. The selected
item scores were summed to create the Attitude toward Muslim Proximity Index
(AMPI).

Results
Principle components analysis of the six items of the AMPI identified a single factor,
which accounted for 58% of the variance. Item rest-of-test correlations (ranging
from .48 to .72) and the Cronbachs alpha coefficient ( = .81) indicated a scale with
good internal consistency reliability (Table 1).

66
Table 1. Scale properties of the Attitude toward Muslim Proximity Index (AMPI)
Mean SD IRC

How you feel about Muslims living in your city? 2.68 1.20 .64

How you feel about Muslims living in the next street? 3.10 0.45 .62

How you feel about Muslims living in your street? 3.14 0.51 .71

How you feel about Muslims living next door? 3.23 0.63 .72

How would you feel about a close relative marrying a

Muslim person? 3.27 0.92 .56

Would you mind if girls in your school/college wore a

headscarf? 1.42 0.81 .48
Note. N = 1777. IRC =Item-Rest Correlation

Construct validity of the AMPI was investigated by comparing the correlation

coefficients between the total scale score and the four items presented in Table 2. In
view of the different proportions of Muslims living in the two communities, the
correlations were calculated separately for pupils in Blackburn and Kirklees and those
in York.

Higher scale scores were associated with agreement with the views of the BNP and
with agreement that Muslims in the UK should adopt Western culture; and lower
scale scores were associated with knowing Muslims and with having Muslim friends.
These correlations support the view that the scale is a measure of prejudice against
Muslims.

Table 2. Construct validity of the Attitude toward Muslim Proximity Index (AMPI)
AMPI

BK YK

I agree with the views of the BNP .35*** .25***

Muslims should adopt Western culture .24*** .35***

Know Muslims -.13** -.11***

Have Muslims friends -.14** -.17***

Note. Table reports bivariate Pearson correlation coefficients. BK= Blackburn and
Kirklees; YK = York. **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.

AMPI scores were significantly higher in Blackburn and Kirklees (Mean (SE) = 18.4
0.2. n = 490) than in York (16.2 0.1, n = 1287; t = 159.5, p < 0.001), and this was
reflected in the endorsement of individual items in the scale (Table 3). For each of the

67
 six items, the proportion of pupils who chose the very unhappy or unhappy
categories was significantly higher in Blackburn and Kirklees than in York.

Pupils in Blackburn and Kirklees were also more likely than those in York to agree
with the views of the BNP and agree that Muslims should adopt Western culture when
living in the UK. At the same time, pupils in Blackburn and Kirklees were twice as
likely to know Muslims or to have Muslim friends compared to pupils in York (Table
3), clearly reflecting the considerably higher proportion of Muslims among the
Blackburn and Kirklees community compared with the community in York. The
greater contact with Muslims in Blackburn and Kirklees was not, however, reflected
in more tolerant overall attitudes toward Muslims among non-Muslims within that
community. Although knowing Muslims or having Muslim friends reduced prejudice
within areas the absolute measures of prejudice were higher in Blackburn and
Kirklees than in York (Table 3).

Table 3. Responses to items in the AMPI and its correlates

BK YK
N = 551 1412
% % 2
How do you feel about: 1
Muslims living in your city? 37 14 118.7***
Muslims living in the next street? 20 6 79.1***
Muslims living in your street? 27 9 89.5***
Muslims living next door? 38 16 103.0***
A close relative marrying a Muslim person? 41 24 58.2***
Girls in your school wearing a headscarf? 31 15 66.1***

I agree with the views of the British National Party (BNP)2 14 5 39.6***
Muslims should adopt Western culture when living in the UK2 41 25 48.2***

Do you know any Muslims?3 79 41 222.4***

Do you have any Muslim friends?3 63 27 211.2***
Note: BK= Blackburn and Kirklees; YK = York; ***p < 0.001.
1
Items in the AMPI; endorsement reported on sum of very unhappy or unhappy
2
Correlates with AMPI; item endorsement reported on sum of agree strongly or
agree.
3
Item endorsement reported as yes response.

68
Discussion
The six items in the AMPI formed an internally reliable scale with an acceptably high
Cronbachs alpha of .81. The item related to the wearing of the hijab was the least
well correlated with the overall scale, representing as it does a slightly different way
of measuring fear of proximity. However, its inclusion slightly increased reliability
and extended the construct into different modes of proximity. The other items
generally showed an expected pattern of increasing unhappiness with increasing
proximity of contact. An exception was attitude toward Muslims living in the same
city, where responses were slightly more negative than expected from the items that
referred to Muslims living in specific spatial proximity to the respondent. It may be
that this reflects the nature of immigrant settlement in Britain, which has been much
higher in some areas than others. Rejection of Muslims living in your city may
reflect unease with the idea of the community having a large proportion of mainly
poorly-integrated immigrants. For the other items there was an incremental increase
in scores from the item referring to Muslims living in the next street through to
Muslims marrying into the family, which was the most negatively rated item. These
scores suggest that a mixture of daily social contact, spatial proximity and social
proximity may be useful items in a social distance scale of this sort.

The positive correlations with agreement with BNP policies are in line with the
argument that the scale measures prejudice and irrational fear of Muslims. Whatever
the policies of the BNP, the party is widely perceived to be anti-immigration and anti-
Muslim and to draw its followers from those who hold prejudiced or phobic attitudes
toward Muslims. The positive correlation with the belief that Muslims should adopt
Western culture when living in the UK probably also taps into this fear of outgroup
difference, though this belief might not necessarily be driven by religious prejudice.

The levels of knowing Muslims and having Muslims friends in the two study areas
reflect the very different opportunities of meeting Muslims in the two communities.
Nonetheless, in both areas, those who knew or had befriended Muslims were likely to
have lower scores on the AMPI. This ties in with many studies that have shown that
prejudice is lower among those who have close contact with the outgroup (Alexander
and Link 2003; Corrigan et al. 2001; Pettigrew 1998; Pettigrew and Tropp 2006), and
again confirms the validity of the AMPI as a measure of social distance related to
religious prejudice.

Results from other parts of the questionnaire suggest that knowledge of Muslim
practices among the white populations was generally low (Brockett et al 2007), so a
scale of prejudice based on aspects of Islam or Muslim culture might have
confounded racism with ignorance of the outgroup. Where religion and race are
closely associated it is not easy to separate out which is the cause of the prejudice and
more detailed research is required. However, we believe the current measure
indicates a way of measuring a general attitude toward a minority group that taps into
irrational fear or prejudice and that is not dependent on detailed knowledge of the
religious beliefs or practices of Muslims. As such it may be a useful measure of
attitude toward Muslims, or Islamophobia, that could be employed across different
communities and over time. It should also be possible to convert it fairly easily into a
scale related to different ethnic or religious groups.

69
ARE UNICORNS MUSLIM?
S. Sayyid

I
There is an epistolary short story by Woody Allen about a game of postal chess which
culminates with both players simultaneously declaring checkmate (1966:26). This
simultaneous declaration is the product of an increasingly acrimonious
correspondence, in which the two protagonists reel off chess moves without any
serious consideration given to what the other player said his move was; the crescendo
is reached when it becomes apparent that the two chess boards no longer match a
single chess game, but rather that there are two games being played out under the
illusion by both players that they are in fact playing the same game.

This short story seems to me to capture something of the form of the debate generated
by the formation and circulation of the concept of Islamophobia. Islamophobia has
entered into the general field of discursivity as an essentially contested concept. It
cannot establish an isomorphic relationship between itself and the phenomenon that it
is supposed to marshal, and there seems to be a degree of confusion as to what kinds
of experiences Islamophobia is supposed to delimit. Are the various security
measures passed in the wake of the war on terror Islamophobic? Would the
American gulag be as much a signifier of Islamophobia as various discriminatory
practices outlined in the original Runnymede report? At the same time there are
vigorous attempts to discredit Islamophobia as an act of shameless appeasement to
some of the most reactionary forces in the contemporary world. It would seem that
most protagonists of Islamophobia assume that they are playing the same language
game when in fact a number of distinct language games are being played. This partly
accounts for the relatively rapid circulation of the category. What this proliferation of
language games leaves uncertain is what work the concept of Islamophobia is actually
doing. It is in order to address this question that I want to consider the relationship
between unicorns and being Muslim. What follows is an ontological interpretation of
Muslimness and the being of unicorns; this requires abandoning the primacy of ontic
studies that posit an essence that underpins (and predetermines) any subsequent
investigation (Thomson, 2007). Before I can articulate this interpretation, it is
important to deal with a number of common objections to the category of
Islamophobia.

II
Too much energy is spent in trying to use etymological discussion of Islamophobia as
a means of discovering its true kernel. It is argued that it is not Islam per se which is
the target of discriminatory practices but Muslims, and that by using the term
Islamophobia in the effort to protect Muslims we have conceded a cover that
prevents legitimate and necessary condemnation of many unsavoury Islamic practices.
This set of arguments rests upon making a sharp distinction between race and

70
religion a distinction that is often inflected through discussions about the cultural
and biological forms of racism. And upon the generalized assumption that racial
identity is a matter of fate while religious identification is a matter of will.

It can be shown without too much difficulty that so-called cultural and biological
racisms are not as distinct as is often presented. Races were never entirely
biologically determined but rather socially and politically produced. Bodies were
marked simultanenously as religion, culture, history, and territories. These markings
were used to group socially fabricated distinctions between Europeaness and non-
Europeaness.

The critique of Islam takes place as the source of extreme Muslim behaviour, rather
than in nuances of theological disputation. In other words, Islam is implicated not
because it is a religion but because it is seen as accounting for the behaviour of
Muslims. Attempts to separate Muslims as bearers of discriminatory practices, from
Islam as legitimate object of criticism, fail to take into account that this critique takes
place in the context of the regulation of Muslims and the patrolling of the hierarchy
between Europeaness and non Europeaness.

As for the difference between will and fate this has already been forcefully dealt with
and there is no need to rehearse those arguments again (see Modood, 2007).

There is, however, a general point that the meaning of a term is a matter of its use
rather than the application of an etymological rule. For the same reason that anti-
Semitism has come to denote not exclusionary practices against all Semitic language
speakers as such, but specifically against those of Jewish heritage, Islamophobias
meaning cannot be reduced to an etymological essence. Islamophobias inexactitude
is not necessarily a sign of its conceptual weakness, but a recognition of its
overdetermined nature and the contested terrain it has to operate in.

If Islamophobia cannot be set aside because of its difficulty of terminological

framing, can it be dismissed on the grounds that categories like racism and
Orientalism, already do the work that Islamophobia is supposed to do? What is it that
is distinctive about Islamophobia that allows it to operate as an independent concept?

There is a strong temptation by many well meaning Muslims to locate Islamophobia

transhistorically, to see in every moment of Islamicate history where Muslims are
marginalized or excluded as instance of Islamophobia. The first Islamophobes would
be found among the Meccan aristocracy who opposed the Prophet making life for him
and his early followers so unbearable that they had to leave Mecca. Such an
interpretation of Islamophobia (similar to perennialist accounts of anti-Semitism
which see its as the longest hatred and include all actions taken against those who
are retrospectively and often unproblematically described as Jews, including those
initiated by Egyptians, Babylonians, Selucids, Romans) fail to pay due attention to
the very different contexts in which antagonism to Islam and Muslims emerge.

The distinctivness of Islamophobia has to be related to the contemporary

developments in the world. Islamophobia relates to the presence of Muslims qua
Muslims in the contemporary world. As such it is structured by a postcolonial and
post-Caliphate logic. The postcolonial logic raises doubts about the future of the

71
world as being decipherable as an upscale version of Western history. The narrative
of Plato-to-NATO that underwrites the destiny of the West seems to be interrupted
and its ignoble beginnings exposed in relation to an Islamicate counter-narrative.
This Islamicate counter-narrative takes its bearing from the post-Caliphate universe in
which demands for justice in Muslimistan (and subsequently the entire Ummah) take
forms in which moments of the institutionalization of the social become contested.
The conflict between Kemalists and Islamists generates an ever-widening calling of
Muslims as Muslims, and the recruitment into the ranks of Islamicate counter-
narrators of an ever growing number of elements and demands.

At the heart of Islamophobia is not the prevalence of closed rather than open views
of Islam but rather the maintenance of the violent hierarchy between the idea of the
West (and all that it can be articulated to represent) and Islam (and all that it can be
articulated to represent). This colonial hierarchy has many homologies with the
hierarchy that constitutes racism itself, that is, the difference between Europeanesss
(note not Europeans per se) and Non-Europeaness (Hesse, 2007). The emergence of
Islamophobia can be understood as a response to attempts to erode the West and Non-
West framework. As such, Islamophobia manifests itself in a variety of debates:
multiculturalism, national and international security, literature, feminism

III
Despite the multiple sites of enunciation (and contestation) of Islamophobia, there has
been little work done on Islamophobia in relationship to unicorns. It is this lacuna
that I wish to address in the remaining section of this paper. There is, of course, a
sense in which Muslims living in the time of the war on terror and unicorns face many
similar challenges, as I hope to show, and therefore a number of insights can be
gained by answering the question whether unicorns are Muslim. The answer that I
wish to outline, however, is not theological. Thus an argument that all Gods
creatures submit to God and therefore they are Muslims will not be elaborated here
(there is also the complication that unicorns represent not creation but rather sub-
creation). Rather I want to reverse the question and proceed from there. Before I do
that, however, I think it is important to say a few things about the ontological status of
Muslims.

It is often argued that being a Muslim is one of potentially many forms of

identification that an individual may take up (to what extent that take-up is a matter
of will or fate as we have seen is open to dispute). It is further argued that the focus
on Muslim identity erases the diversity within Muslim communities. Thus, an
assertion of Muslim identification often elicits the response that this is a
homogenizing and totalizing label which privileges one identity option or subject
position over others. It also privileges a religious form of identification over other
potentially more meaningful subject positions such as those offered by gender, class,
nationality, Muslim identifications are considered to be superficial because they
are religious. This denial of Muslims as meaningful category is not simply an
epistemological exercise or academic enterprise, though it takes the form of such
mere intellectual pursuits, but rather involves forging a framework which
systematically excludes and violates Muslim agency. The polemical nature of the
argument is often disavowed by deployment of a form of sociological reasoning
which presents itself simply as the description of the world as it is. The difficulty,

72
however, is not necessarily with Muslim identities but rather with conventional
wisdoms inability to understand the nature of political identity. Political identities
are central to any form of politics. These political identities can in principle be
constructed around any set of social demands. The mobilization of Muslims as
Muslims is an ersatz form of mobilization, and Muslim identity is no less authentic
than other forms of political identification. This belief that Muslims are like unicorns,
fictive creatures to be found in myths and symbols but otherwise absent from the
world, this refusal to acknowledge Muslim identity as being a proper form of political
identification, is perhaps one of the hallmarks of Islamophobia.

As for the question of whether unicorns are Muslim, going on what has been
discussed above the answer can only be

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Talking Back Muslim: A Selected Bibliography on Islamophobia
A selection of readings and references good to think with, through and against
compiled by A. Vakil

Only if somebody has a dream, and a voice to

describe that dream, does what looked like nature
begin to look like culture, what looked like fate begin
to look like a moral abomination. For until then only
the language of the oppressor is available, and most
oppressors have had the wit to teach the oppressed a
language in which the oppressed will sound crazy
even to themselvesif they describe themselves as
oppressed.
Richard Rorty

only a fool would think it was enough to point to this

misty mantle of illusion in order to destroy the world
that counts as essential, so called reality! Only as
creators can we destroy! But we should also not
forget this: creating new names and assessments and
apparent truths is eventually enough to create new
things.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The question is, said Humpty Dumpty, which is to

be master thats all.

Edward Said, Orientalism, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978

Ziauddin Sardar, The Future of Muslim Civilization, London: Croom Helm, 1979
ruptured the Westcentric complacency of modernization theory as teleology which deemed the
very idea of a Future of Muslim Civilization or Islamic Futures oxymoronic concepts.
Should be read in context of:
The Muslim Institute for Reserach and Planning, Draft Prospectus, London, 1974
http://www.salaam.co.uk/knowledge/musliminstitute.pdf

Iqbal Asaria, No Third World for Us We are Muslim, Crescent (August 15, 1980), and The
Embassy take over triggered a Cultural Revolution (Crescent International (October 1,
1980)
reprinted in Issues in the Islamic Movement 1980-1981, ed. by Kalim Siddiqui, London: Open
Press, 1982, pp.28-35 and 63-69
Conceives the Islamic Movement as unravelling of Three worlds epistemology and geopolitics
which imprisions Third World in developmentalism and mimicry; defines its aim as the
liberation of the mustazaffin (oppressed people); the freedom to implement an unadulterated
version of Islam, which requires as its precondition undoing geopolitical hegemony of the
super-powers. Nov 4 1979 Tehran Embassy take over names the revolutionary break of what
Kalim Siddiqui will call the big bang effect of the Islamic Revolution.

Edward Said, Covering Islam: How the media and the experts determine how we see the rest of the
world, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981

74
Talal Asad, The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam, Washington D.C.: Centre for Contemporary Arab
Studies-GeorgeTown University, 1986
pathbreaking conceptualisation of Islam as a discursive tradition which builds on his (1983)
critique of the Geertzian anthropological category of religion

Tariq Modood, Goodbye Alabama: notes for a new anti-racism, The Guardian 22 May 1989
republished in Modood Not Easy Being British, 1992, pp.79-83. Modoods first post-Rushdie
print intervention merging differentiation of Asian identity out of Blackness with still tentative
but specifically Muslim religious identity by reference to communal faith dimension of ethnicity

Tariq Modood, Religious Anger and Minority Rights, Political Quarterly 60:3 (July 1989), 280-84
adds critique of liberal-lefts blinkered view of religion to Modoods ongoing critique of the
dominant dual-race model and post-Rushdie Muslim assertiveness

Tariq Modood, British Asian Muslims and the Rushdie Affair, Political Quarterly 61:2 (April 1990),
143-160
Modoods earliest substantial synthesis of his developing critique with the emerging threads
which will be developed into a full fledged politics of difference and recognition argument for an
equality sensitive to power differentials and group identity in papers and articles from 92 to 96,
with the analysis of the economic dimension strengthened from 91; part of a PQ dossier on the
Resurgence of Religion

Talal Asad, Multiculturalism and British Identity in the Wake of the Rushdie Affair, Politics and Society 18:4
(1990), 455-480
reading of Rushdie affair as symptom of British postimperial crisis

[Kalim Siddiqui], The Muslim Manifesto a strategy for survival, London: The Muslim Institute, 1990
http://www.muslimparliament.org.uk/MuslimManifesto.pdf
blueprint for a Muslim political standpoint in Britain but integrated in the global Islamic
movement; see also Mohammed 1996

John Eade, The Political Articulation of Community and the Islamisation of Space in London, in
Rohit Barot ed., Religion and Ethnicity: Minorities and social change in the Metropolis,
Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1993, pp.26-42

S. Sayyid, Sign O Times: Kaffirs and Infidels Fighting the Ninth Crusade, in Ernesto Laclau ed.,
The Making of Political Identities, London: Verso, 1994, pp.264-286
first outline of thesis advanced in Sayyids 1997 A Fundamental Fear

Jan Neverdeen Pieterse, Unpacking the West: How European is Europe?, in Ali Rattansi and Sallie
Westwood eds., Racism, Modernity, Identity: On the Western Front, Cambridge: Polity Press,
1994, pp.129-149

Jahangir Mohammed, The Home Office Strategy for Islam and Muslims in Britain. A discussion paper,
London: The Muslim Parliament of Great Britain The Open Press, 1996
an early critique of the (post)colonial governance of a domesticated Islam and disciplining
Muslims through discourse of moderation and representation

Bobby S. Sayyid, A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism, London: Zed
Books, 1997

Islamophobia its features and dangers. A consultation paper, Commission on British Muslims and
Islamophobia, The Runnymede Trust, February 1997

75
Islamophobia a challenge for us all. Report of the Runnymede Trust Commission on British Muslims
and Islamophobia (Chaired by Prof. Gordon Conway), The Runnymede Trust, 1997
Summary: http://www.runnymedetrust.org/uploads/publications/pdfs/islamophobia.pdf

Michael Banton, Islamophobia: a critical analysis, Dialogue (December 1998)

Amir Ali, Islamophobia in America, paper to the Second Annual Conference Islam in America,
Chicago, Illinois, 3-5 July 1998
http://www.ilaam.net/PDF/Islamophobia.pdf
frames Islamophobia and Muslim responses to it in terms of organised anti-Islam promoters of
Islamophobia (covered in Alis paper to 1997 Conference on Islam in America) and Muslim
contributors to Islamophobia (pseudo-Islamic cults and Muslims at the Margin) (covered in this paper),
addressed by means of policing the theological boundaries of true Islam and true Muslims.

Fred Halliday, Islamophobia Reconsidered, Ethnic & Racial Studies, 22: 5 (September 1999), 892-
902.

Malcolm D. Brown Orientalism and Resistance to Orientalism: Muslim Identities in Contemporary

Western Europe in Sasha Roseneil and Julie Seymour eds., Practising Identities: Power and
Resistance, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999, pp.180-198

Peter G. Mandaville and Bobby S. Sayyid, Bobby S. Sayyids A Fundamental Fear: A dialogical
review, Global Society 13:2 (1999), 207-217

Max Silverman and Nira Yuval-Davis, Jews, Arabs and the theorisation of Racism in Britain and
France, in Avtar Brah et al eds., Thinking identities : ethnicity, racism, and culture, New
York: St Martins Press, 1999, pp.25-48

Talal Asad, Religion, Nation State, Secularism, in Peter Van der Veer and Hartmut Lehman eds.,
Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1999, pp.178-196

S. Sayyid, Beyond Westphalia: Nations and Diasporas the case of the Muslim Umma in Barnor
Hesse ed., Unsettling Multiculturalism. London: Zed Books, 2000, pp.33-50

Talal Asad, Muslims and European Identity: Can Europe represent Islam?, in Elizabeth Hallam and
Brian V. Street eds., Cultural Encounters: Representing otherness, London: Routledge, 2000,
pp.11-27

Malcolm D. Brown, Conceptualizing Racism and Islamophobia in Jessica Ter Wal and Maykel
Verkuyten eds., Comparative Perspectives on Racism, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, pp. 73-90

Christopher Allen, Islamophobia: Western Perceptions of Islam in the contemporary World,

dissertation, University of Wolverhampton, June 2001

Christopher Allen, Islamophobia in the Media Since September 11th, FAIR, September 2001
http://www.fairuk.org/docs/Islamophobia-in-the-Media-since-911-ChristopherAllen.pdf

Anti-Islamic Reactions Within the European Union after the recent acts of terror against the USA. A
collection of country reports from RAXEN National Focus Points, Vienna, EUMC, October
2001:
http://fra.europa.eu/fra/material/pub/anti-islam/Report-041001.pdf

Anti-Islamic Reactions in the EU after the terrorist acts against the USA. A collection of country
reports from Raxen National Focal Points, Second Report (25 September-19 October),
EUMC, 2001:

76
 http://fra.europa.eu/fra/material/pub/anti-islam/Nat-Report-291101.pdf

Chris Allen and Jorgen S. Nielsen, Summary Report on Islamophobia in the EU15 after 11 September
2001. Vienna: European Monitoring Centre for Racism and Xenophobia, May 2002
http://fra.europa.eu/fra/material/pub/anti-islam/Synthesis-report_en.pdf

Susan M. Akram and Kevin R. Johnson, Race, Civil Rights and Immigration Law after September 11,
2001: The targeting of Arabs and Muslims, NYU Annual Survey of American Law 58:3
(2002), 295-355:
http://www.law.nyu.edu/pubs/annualsurvey/documents/58%20N.Y.U.%20Ann.%20Surv.%20Am.%20L.%20295%20(2002).pdf

Liz Fekete, Racism: the hidden costs of September 11, London: IRR, 2002

Azru Merali and Massoud Shadjareh, Islamophobia - The New Crusade, Wembley: IHRC, 2002

L. Sheridan, E. Blaauw, R. Gillet and F.W. Winkel, Discrimination and implicit Racism on the Basis
of Religion and Ethnicity: Effects of the events of September 11 on five religious and seven
ethnic groups, unpublished research, University of Leicester, 2002
Summarised in: Michael Connolly ed., Townshend-Smith on Discrimination Law: Text, Cases
and Materials, London: RoutledgeCavendish, 2004, pp.19-20

Elizabeth Poole, Reporting Islam: Media Representations of British Muslims, London: I. B. Tauris,
2002

Rinela Cere, Islamophobia and the Media in Italy, Feminist Media Studies, 2:1 (March 2002), 133-
136

Rana Kabbani, Bible of the Muslim haters, The Guardian 11.6.2002

Muneer Ahmad, Homeland Insecurities: Racial Violence the day after September 11, Social Text 72,
vol. 20:3 (Fall 2002), 101-115
see expanded argument in Ahmad Rage Shared by Law (2004)

Steven Vertovec, Islamophobia and Muslim Recognition in Britain, in Muslims in the West: From
sojourners to citizens, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp.19-35

Lorraine Sheridan, Religious Discrimination: The new racism, in The Quest for Sanity: Reflections
on September 11 and the aftermath, London: MCB, 2002, pp.86-93

Christopher Allen, Islamophobia in the EU post September 11, in The Quest for Sanity: Reflections
on September 11 and the aftermath, London: MCB, 2002, pp.136-143

Robert Miles and Malcolm Brown, Racism, 2nd ed., London: Routledge, 2003

David Tyrer, Institutionalised Islamophobia in British Universities, PhD Thesis (Sociology), University
of Salford, 2003

Elizabeth Poole, Islamophobia, in Ellis Cashmore ed., Encyclopedia of Race and Ethnic Studies,
London: Routledge, 2003

Fernne Brenan, Punishing Islamophobic Hostility: Are any lessons to be learnt from racially hostile
crimes?, Journal of Civil Liberties 8:1 (2003), 28-50
also from: http://www.lawfile.org.uk/Racial%20Crimes.htm

Rachel A. D. Bloul, Islamophobia and Anti-Discrimination Laws: Ethno-religion as a legal category in

the UK and Australia, National Europe Centre Paper 78
http://www.anu.edu.au/NEC/Archive/bloul_paper.pdf

77
Hisham Aidi, Let Us Be Moors: Islam, Race and "Connected Histories", Middle East Report Online
229 (Winter 2003): International Justice, Local Injustices
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer229/229_aidi.html

Neil MacMaster, Islamophobia in France and the Algerian Problem, in Emran Qureshi and Michael
Sells eds., The New Crusades: Constructing the Enemy Within, New York: Columbia U.P.,
2003, pp.288-313

Vincent Geisser, La nouvelle islamophobie, Paris: La Decouverte, 2003

S. Sayyid, Muslims in Britain: Towards a political agenda, in Mohammad Siddique Seddon et al eds.,
British Muslims: Loyalty and Belonging, Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 2003, pp.87-94

Tariq Modood, Muslims and the Politics of Difference, Political Quarterly 74:1 (2003), 100-115

Mouvement contre le Racisme et pour lAmiti enre les Peuples (MRAP), Racisme anti-arabe:
nouvelle volution, August 6, 2003
www.mrap.asso.fr/dossiers/doc-94.pdf

Xavier Ternisien, Du Racisme anti-arabe lIslamophobie, Le Monde, 10 October 2003

Islamophobie, ProChoix 26-27 (Autumn 2003)

http://www.prochoix.org/pdf/prochoix26-27.pdf
special issue on Islamophobia from uncompromising French Republican laic feminist
perspective settling accounts with Xavier Ternisien, rejecting his argument (reporting on
MRAP) of an evolution from anti-Arab racism to islamophobia, and Vincent Geissers thesis
of New Islamophobia; includes article by Irshad Manji and several attacks on Tariq Ramadan.
Includes:
Caroline Fourest and Fiametta Venner, Islamophobie?, 13-16
Main article by the journals founders which claims that the term was first coined by Iranian
Mullahs in 1979 by which to label women who refused to wear to veil as evil Muslims, and
revived by Islamists to silence feminists and liberals.

Christopher Allen, Emerging from the Fog: Islamophobia in the Wake of 9/11, Islamica magazine 10
(Winter 2003), pp.25-31

David Cole, The New McCarthyism: Repeating History in the War on Terrorism, in Harvard Civil
Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 38: 1 (Winter 2003), 1-30
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/crcl/vol38_1/cole.pdf

Laurent Bonnefoy, Public Institutions and Islam: A new stigmatization?, ISIM Newsletter 13
(December 2003), 22

Stefano Allievi, 'Islamofobia? Nuove forme di definizione e stigmatizzazione dell'alterit', Razzismo e

Modernit, 2 (2003), 3-30

Jrgen Leibold and Steffen Khnel, Islamophobie: Sensible Aufmerksamkeit fr spannungsreiche

Anzeichen, in Wilhelm Heitmeyer ed., Deutsche Zustnde, Folge 2, Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 2003, pp. 100-119.

Jasmin Zine, Dealing With September 12th: The Challenge of Anti-Islamophobia Education, Orbit
33:3 (2003) special issue: Anti-Racism Practices and Inclusive Schooling, ed. by George S
Sefa Dei and Njoki Wane:
http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/orbit/anti-racism_sample.html

Manifesto Contra la Islamofobia, Madrid: Fundacin de Cultura Islmica, 2003

The Fight Against Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Bringing Communities Together. A Summary of
three Round Table Meetings, Brussels-Vienna: EC-EUMC, Fall 2003:
http://fra.europa.eu/fra/material/pub/RT3/Report-RT3-en.pdf

78
 see especially Part 2: Manifestations of Islamophobia in Europe, comprising country,
regional and Europe wide overviews and analysis of Islamophobia and combating
Islamophobia

John E. Richardson, (Mis)Representing Islam: The racism and rhetoric of British broadsheet
newspapers, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2004
See ch.1 for discussion of conceptualisations and contestations over of Islamophobia

Yasin Aktay, Who Needs a Moderate Islam?, paper presented to the Moderation in Islam Colloquium
University of Utah Middle East Centre, 21-22 February, 2004:
http://www.muslimstan.net/?q=node/16

Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, The Cold War, and the Roots of Terror,
New York: Pantheon, 2004

S. Sayyid, Slippery People: The immigrant imaginary and the grammar of colours, in Ian Law et al
eds., Institutional Racism in Higher Education, Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books, 2004,
pp.149-159

Engseng Ho, Empire Through Diasporic Eyes: A view from the Other Boat, in John Tirman ed., The
Maze of Fear: Security and Migration after 9/11, New York: The New Press, 2004, pp.17-44

Dimitri Shumsky, Post-Zionist orientalism? Orientalist discourse and Islamophobia among the
Russian-speaking intelligentsia in Israel, Social Identities 10:1 (January 2004), 83-99

Nazir Ahmed, Islamophobia and Antisemitism, European Judaism, 37: 1 (January 2004), 124-127

Gabriele Marranci, Multiculturalism, Islam and the clash of civilisations theory: rethinking
Islamophobia, Culture and Religion 5:1 (March 2004), 105-117

Rachel Guglielmo, Human Rights in the Accession Process: Roma and Muslims in an Enlarging EU,
in Gabriel N. Toggenburg ed., Minority Protection and the Enlarged European Union: The
Way Forward, Budapest: EURAC, 2004, pp.37-58

Islamophobia: issues, challenges and action. A Report by the Commission on British Muslims and
Islamophobia (Chaired by Dr Richard Stone), London: Uniting Britain Trust-Stoke on Trent:
Trentham Books, 2004
http://www.insted.co.uk/islambook.pdf

Neo-orientalism and Islamophobia: post 9/11, special issue of American Journal of Islamic Social
Sciences, 21:3 (Summer 2004), ed. by Katherine Bullock:
http://rnb.uin.googlepages.com/v21n3summer2004.pdf
includes:
Katherine Bullock, Editorial, i-iv
Christopher Allen, Justifying Islamophobia: A post 9/11 Consideration of the European
Union and British Contexts, 1-25
Tahir Abbas, After 9/11: British South Asian Muslims, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, and
the State, 26-38
Jasmin Zine, Anti-Islamophobia Education as Transformative Pedagogy: Reflections from
the Educational Frontlines, 110-119

Liz Fekete, Anti-Muslim Racism and the European Security State, Race & Class 46:1 (July 2004), 3-
29

Max Farrar, Social Movements and the Struggle Over Race, in Malcolm J. Todd and Gary Taylor
eds., Democracy and Participation: Popular protest and new social movements, London:
Merlin Press
see in particular discussion of unravelling of inclusive Blackness post-Rushdie sealed in
social science discourse by Modood

79
 http://www.maxfarrar.org.uk/docs/StruggleOverRaceMerlin1.pdf

Alexander Verkhovsky, Who is the Enemy Now?: Islamophobia and antisemitism among Russian
Orthodox Nationalists before and after September 11, Patterns of Prejudice, 32:2 (2004), 127-
143

Muneer I. Ahmad, A Rage Shared by Law: Post-September 11 Racial Violence as Crimes of Passion,
California Law Review, 92:5 (October 2004), 1259-1330
proposes usefulness of category of Muslim-looking (in which looking, not Muslim, is the
operative word ) as a new racial construct of targeted violence; explores its configuration
under a logic of fungibility at the convergence and complicity of goverment profiling and state
sponsored violence, on the one hand, and individual hate crime and its psychological
motivations on the other; claims best addressed through legal framework of crime of passion

David Tyrer, The Others: Extremism and intolerance on campus and the spectre of Islamic
fundamentalism, in Ian Law et al eds., Institutional Racism in Higher Education, stoke on
Trent: Trentham Books, 2004, pp.35-48

Barry van Driel ed., Confronting Islamophobia in Educational Practice, Stoke on Trent: Trentham
Books, 2004
includes:
Lorraine Sheridan, Islamophobia before and after September 11th 2001, 163-176

Islamophobia and its Consequences on Young People. A Seminar Report, ed. by Ingrid Ramberg,
Budapest: Council of Europe, 2004
http://eycb.coe.int/eycbwwwroot/HRE/eng/documents/Islamophobia%20report/Islamophobia%20final%20ENG.pdf
includes:
Franois SantAngelo, The Council of Europe and the Work Against Islamophobia: Existing
instruments and standards, 29-35
Vincent Geisser, Islamophobia in Europe: From the Christian anti-Muslim prejudice to a
modern form of racism, 36-47

Rapport d'tape du CCIF en France 2003/2004, Collectif Contre lIslamophobie en France, October
2004:
http://www.islamophobie.net/dev/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=27&Itemid=42

Jessica Alves dos Santos Batista, Racisme et Islamophobie dans les publications du Vlaams Blok
Bruxelles: Lislamophobie atelle remplac le concept de lingalit des races?, Degree
Dissertation in Political Science-International Relations, Free University of Brussels, 2004:
http://www.blokwatch.be/media/2004JessicaIslamophobie.PDF

Margaret Chon and Donna E. Arzt, Walking While Muslim, Law and Contemporary Problems, 68
(2004-2005), 215-254
http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?68+Law+&+Contemp.+Probs.+215+(spring+2005
Explores the racialisation of Muslim as a category in the context of post 9/11 terror-
profiling of religion, rendered obscure by the architecture of current national and
international anti-discrimination law, through the historical parallel of the Japanese American
experience post 12/7 (Pearl Harbour)

Tariq Modood, Multicultural Politics: Racism, Ethnicity and Muslims in Britain, Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2005
See Introduction: Racism, Asian Muslims, and the Politics of Difference, pp.1-23

Muslims in the UK: Policies for Engaged Citizens, ed. by Tufyal Choudhury, EU Monitoring and
Advocacy ProgrammeOpen Society Institute, 2005
Ch. 1: Discrimination, Equality and Community Cohesion (based on draft report by Maleiha
Malik), 43-99
http://www.eumap.org/topics/minority/reports/britishmuslims/sections/equality/6_Equality.pdf

80
Derek McGhee, Faith Hate in post 9/11 UK, in Intolerant Britain?: hate, citizenship, and difference,
Maidenhead: McGraw-HillOpen University Press, 2005, pp.92-117

Muzzamil Quraishi, Colonialism, Criminalized Tribes and Islamophobia, ch.3 of Muslims and Crime:
A Comparative Perspective, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005, pp.48-63
draws on Tayyab Mahmuds work to explore how institutionalised identity manipulations
used by the British during colonial rule in India have influenced the current terrain of post-
colonialism.

Chris Allen, Endemically European or a European Epidemic? Islamophobia in the post 9/11 Europe,
in Ron Geaves et al eds., Islam & the West post 9/11, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004, pp.130-145

Chris Allen, From Race to Religion: The new face of discrimination, in Tahir Abbas ed., Muslims in
Britain: Communities under pressure, London: Zed Books, 2005, pp.49-65

Ali Rattansi, On Being and not Being Brown/Black-British: Racism, Class, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in
post-Imperial Britain (with Postscript 2004: The Politics of Longing and (Un)Belonging, Fear,
and Loathing), in Jo-Anne Lee and John Lutz eds., Situating Race and Racisms in Space,
Time, and Theory: Critical Essays for Activists and Scholars, Montreal: McGill-Queens U.P.,
2005, pp.46-76

Ali Rattansi, The Uses of Racialization: The time-spaces and subject-objects of the raced body, in
Karim Murji and John Solomos eds., Racialization: Studies in theory and practice, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005, pp.271-301
Claims to highlight a hitherto neglected aspect of the concept of Islamophobia, its tendency
to pathologise, which results in essentialised and dehistoricised analyses

Gran Larsson, The impact of global conflicts on local contexts: Muslims in Sweden after 9/11 the
rise of Islamophobia, or new possibilities?, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 16:1
(January 2005), 29-42

Kenan Malik, Islamophobia Myth, Prospect (February 2005), 28-31

Pnina Werbner, Islamophobia: incitement to religious hatred legislating for a new fear?,
Anthropology Today, 21:1 (February 2005): 59.
see reply by Brian Street, AT Oct 2005

Jrg Stolz, Explaining Islamophobia: A Test of four Theories Based on the Case of a Swiss City,
Schweizerische Zeitschrift fr Soziologie/ Swiss Journal of Sociology, 31: 3, 2005, 547-566
according to the abstract: a new definition of Islamophobia is proposed, as well as practical
solutions to frequent epistemological problems [...] it is found that islamophobia can be
accounted for by a traditionalist world-view which in turn is caused by rapid social change

Intolerance and Discrimination against Muslims in the EU Developments since September 11, Report,
Helsinki: International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF), March 2005

Mehmet Aydin, Fighting Intolerance and Discrimination against Muslims: facilitating integration and
respecting Cultural difference, OSCE Conference on Anti-Semitism and on Other Forms of
Intolerance, Cordoba, 8-9 June 2005:
http://www.osce.org/documents/cio/2005/06/15051_en.pdf
Imam Dr Abduljalil Sajid, Islamophobia: A new word for an old fear, OSCE Conference on Anti-
Semitism and on Other Forms of Intolerance, Cordoba, 8-9 June 2005:
http://www.osce.org/documents/cio/2005/06/15198_en.pdf
a patchwork of examples and proposals by an insider to the UK process, with useful
compilation of references in over 100 pages of Appendices

Haleh Afshar, Rob Aitken and Myfanwy Franks, Feminisms, Islamophobia and Identities, Political
Studies, Volume 53: 2 (June 2005), 262-283

Paul A. Silverstein, Islam, Bodily Practice, and Social Reproduction, in Algeria in France:
Transpolitics, Race and Nation, Indiana: Indiana U.P., 2005, pp.121-150

81
Thomas Deltombe, LIslam Imaginaire: La construction mdiatique de lislamophobie en France,
1975-2005, Paris: La Dcouverte, 2005

Jasbir K. Puar On Torture: Abu Ghraib, Radical History Review 93 (Fall 2005), 13-38
see in particular: The Production of the Muslim Body

Nassim Mobasher, The Production of the Muslim Race, Hot Coals, posted 15 November 2005:
http://hotcoals.org/?p=30

Lori Peek, Becoming Muslim: the development of a Muslim religious identity, Sociology of Religion
66:3 (2005), 215-242
describes the impact of September 11th as producing a third stage of religious identity
development (religion as ascribed, chosen, and declared identity) among a sample of Muslim
university students, in response to the crisis.

Matti Bunzl, Between Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Some Thoughts on the New Europe,
American Ethnologist, Vol. 32, No. 4. (November 2005), 499-508
includes responses from:
Esra zyrek, The politics of cultural unification, secularism, and the place of Islam in the
new Europe, 509-512
Andre Gingrich, Anthropological analyses of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in Europe,
513-515
Jonathan Boyarin, Discerning the ghosts and the interest of the living, 516-18
Karen Brodkin, Xenophobia, the state, and capitalism, 519-20
Dominic Boyer, Welcome to the new Europe, 521-23
John Bowen, Commentary on Bunzl, 524-25
Nina Glick Schiller, Racialized nations, evangelizing Christianity, police states, and imperial
power: Missing in action in Bunzls new Europe, 526-532
Matti Bunzl, Rejoinder: Methods and politics, 533-37
see also Bunzl 2007

Brian Street, Islamophobia and Racism: A response to Pnina Werbner, Anthropology Today 21:5
(October 2005), 21.

Yahya Birt, Muslims and the Politics of Race and Faith in Britain and Europe, The Muslim World
Book Review 26:1 (2005), 6-19

The impact of 7 July 2005 London bomb attacks on Muslim Communities in the EU, EUMC,
November 2005:
http://fra.europa.eu/fra/material/pub/London/London-Bomb-attacks-EN.pdf

Jocelyne Cesari ed., Securitization and Religious Divides in Europe. Muslims in Western Europe After
9/11: Why the term Islamophobia is more a predicament than an explanation, 2006
http://www.euro-islam.info/PDFs/ChallengeProjectReport.pdf%20-
4.pdf
comprising a general Introduction and 6 country reports:
Jocelyn Cesari, The Use of the Term Islamophobia in Western Societies, 5-48
Chris Allen, UK, 49-99
Marcel Maussen, The Netherlands, 100-142
advances three arguments against use of term Islamophobia in favour of anti-Muslim
sentiment; among them the claim that it embeds research on anti-Muslim discourse within [a
neo-Marxist] research tradition of ideology critique, see pp.100-103
Yasemin Karakasoglu at al, Germany, 143-194
Alexandre Caeiro, France, 195-226
Jos Mara Ortuo Aix, Spain, -300
rejects concept of Islamophobia as entailing too narrow and less relevant a focus for the
analysis of complex layering of historical, socio-economic and political contexts of the Spanish
case (quite why this makes for exceptionality in the Spanish case is not entirely clear)

82
 Mirna Liguori, Italy, 301-323

Muslims in the European Union: Discrimination and Islamophobia, EUMC, 2006

http://www.eumc.at/eumc/material/pub/muslim/Manifestations_EN.pdf

Tufyal Choudhury et al, Perceptions of Discrimination and Islamophobia. Voices from members of
Muslim Communities in the European Union, EUMU, 2006
http://eumc.europa.eu/eumc/material/pub/muslim/Perceptions_EN.pdf

The Annual Report on the Situation Regarding Racism and Xenophobia in the Member States of the
EU, EUMC, 2006:
http://fra.europa.eu/fra/material/pub/ar06/AR06-P2-EN.pdf
see section 6.3.3: The Muslim Communities

Collectif contre lislamophobie en France: deux annes, quel bilan?, Collectif Contre lIslamophobie en
France, March 2006
http://www.islamophobie.net/communiques/bilan_ccif_2003_2005.pdf
Two year report covering the period 2003-2005

Choudhury, Cyra Akila, Terrorists & Muslims: The Construction, Performance and Regulation of
Muslim Identities in the Post-9/11 United States, Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, 7:3
(April 2006):
http://ssrn.com/abstract=939812
examines the phantasmatic nature of the discursive figures the Believer, the Terrorist and the
Moderate through genealogical readings of Muslim identities as external state and internal
community regulatory constructions and perfomances

S. Sayyid, Islam and Knowledge, Theory, Culture & Society 23: 2/3 (May 2006), 177-79

Barnor Hesse and S. Sayyid, Narrating the Postcolonial Political and the Immigrant Imaginary, in N.
Ali et al eds., A Postcolonial People: South Asians in Britain, London: Hurst, 2006, pp.13-31

Ferruh Yilmaz, Ethnicized Ontologies: From Foreign Worker to Muslim Immigrant: How Danish
public discourse moved to the right through the question of immigration, PhD Dissertation,
University of California San Diego, 2006
http://communication.ucsd.edu/fyilmaz/dissertation.pdf

Assifa Hussain and William M. Miller, Multicultural Nationalism: Islamophobia, Anglophobia, and
Devolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006

Ziad Abu-Zayyad and Hillel Schenker, Islamophobia and Anti-semitism, Markus Wiener Publishers,
2006

Elizabeth Poole and John E. Richardson eds., Muslims and the News Media, London: I. B. Tauris,
2006

Christopher John Allen, Islamophobia : contested concept in the public space, PhD Thesis (Theology),
University of Birmingham, 2006

A. Sivanandan, Race, Terror and Civil Society, Race & Class 47:3 (January 2006), 1-8

Lorraine Sheridan, Islamophobia pre and post September 11th 2001, Journal of Interpersonal
Violence, 21:3 (March 2006), 317-336

Nick Hopkins and Vered Kahani-Hopkins, Minority group members' theories of intergroup contact: A
case study of British Muslims' conceptualizations of Islamophobia and social change, British
Journal of Social Psychology, 45: 2 (June 2006), 245-264

Matt Carr, You are now entering Eurabia, Race & Class 48:1 (July 2006), 1-22

Aki Nawaz/ Fun Da Mental All is War Manifesto, August 2006

83
 http://www.dicklaurentisdead.com/fun-da-mental/alliswar_info.html

Jeffrey Kaplan, Islamophobia in America?: September 11 and Islamophobic hate crime, Terrorism
and Political Violence 18 (2006), 1-33

Jasmin Zine, Unveiled Sentiments: Gendered Islamophobia and Experiences of Veiling among
Muslim Girls in a Canadian Islamic School, Equity Excellence in Education 39:3 (August
2006), 239-252

John E. Richardson, On delineating reasonable and unreasonable criticisms of Muslims, Fifth

Estate Online (August 2006):
http://www.fifth-estate-online.co.uk/criticsm/ondelineatingreasonableandunreasonable.html

Paul Weller, Addressing Religious Discrimination and Islamophobia: Muslims and Liberal
Democracies. The Case of the United Kingdom, Journal of Islamic Studies, 17: 3 (September
2006), 295-325

Jonathan Birt, Good Imam, Bad Imam, Muslim World, 96:4 (October 2006), 687-705

Saba Mahmood, Secularism, Hermeneutics and Empire: The Politics of Islamic Reformation, Public
Culture, 18:2 (2006), 323-347
http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/anth/mahmood.secularism.pdf

David Keane, Addressing the Aggravated Meeting Points of Race and Religion, University of
Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender & Class, 6 (2006), 367-406

Steven George Salaita, Beyond Orientalism and Islamophobia: 9/11, Anti-Arab Racism, and the
Mythos of National Pride, CR: The New Centennial Review, 6: 2 (Fall 2006), 245-266
Argues for use of anti-Arab racism as a corrective to or even a replacement for Orientalism
or Islamophobia in analysis of media discourse, the first on pragmatic grounds, the second
on philosophical grounds, for precluding a localized analysis of discrete interethnic
encounters.

Moustafa Bayoumi, Racing Religion, CR: The New Centennial Review, 6: 2 (Fall 2006), 267-293
focuses on the Bush Administrations Special Registration programme as a political and
bureaucratic policy that created a race out of a religion, i.e. turned Islam into a Race, setting
it into the longer 20th century history of shifts in the racialization of religion and play of
political determination in both state exclusionary policies and legal rulings on immigration

Nada Elia, Islamophobia and the Privileging of Arab American Women, NWSA [National
Womens Studies Association] Journal 18:3 (Fall 2006): Feminist Perspectives on Peace and
War: Before and After 9/11, pp.155-161

I. D. Tyrer, Islamophobia for Absolute Beginners, The Muslim News, no. 204, 28 April 2006/ 1 Rabi
al-Akhar 1427

Jonas Otterbeck and Pieter Bevelander, Islamofobi - en studie av begreppet, ungdomars attityder och
unga muslimers utsatthet, Stockholm: Forum for Levanda Historia, 2006
http://www.levandehistoria.se/Islamofobi
Islamophobia. English Summary:
http://www.levandehistoria.se/files/islamophobia_englishsummary.pdf
provides a summary in English (pp.3-7) of ch.2 of the Swedish Report which attempts a
critical review of the meaning, conceptual compass and alternatives to Islamophobia and
evaluation of its usefulness. Alludes and draws on Ake Sanders attempt to develop a more
robust concept and definition of Islamophobia with legal purchase than the Runnymede
Trusts, along the lines of sexual harassment.

Gargi Bhattacharyya, Wars on our doorstep Islamicising race and militarising everyday life, in
Alana Lentin and Ronin Lentin eds., Race and State, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press,
2006, pp.131-151.

84
Nasar Meer, Get off your knees! Print media public intellectuals and Muslims in Britain,
Journalism Studies, 7:1 (2006), 3559.
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/2004779677-56257079/content~content=a741570380~db=all~order=page

Yahya Birt, Notes on Islamophobia, Musings on the Britannic Crescent, posted 31 December 2006:
http://www.yahyabirt.com/?p=48

Jrgen Leibold and Steffen Khnel, Islamophobie. Differenzierung tut Not, in Wilhelm Heitmeyer
ed., Deutsche Zustnde, folge 4, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2006, pp. 135-155.

Shehla Khan, Muslims!, in N. Ali et al eds., A Postcolonial People, London: Hurst, 2006, pp.182-187

Report on Racism and Xenophobia in the Member States of the EU, European Union Agency for
Fundamental Rights (FAR), 2007
Focuses on implementation of Racial Equality Directive; Despite references to Muslims in
sections 5.5 Social Groups most vulnerable to racial discrimination, and 6.1.3 on the Danish
Cartoons Controversy, there is no discussion of Islamophobia

ISHR Summary Report on the Updated Report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Cotemporary Forms
of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, 2007
http://www.ishr.ch/hrm/council/reports_in_short/summaries_pdfs/sum_sixth_session_2007/sr_racism_defamation_religion.pdf
On Doudou Dines alert to rising Islamophobia in the West, see interview:
http://www.humanrights-geneva.info/article.php3?id_article=2206

Mohamed Nimer ed., Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism: Causes and Remedies, Beltsville, Md:
Amana Books, 2007

Tariq Modood, Multiculturalism: A Civic Idea, Oxford: Polity Press, 2007

Steffen Khnel and Jrgen Leibold Islamophobie in der Deutschen Bevolkerung: Ein neues Phanomen
oder nur ein Neuer Name? Ergebnisse von Bevolkerungsumfragen zur Gruppenbezogenen
Menschenfeindlichkeit 2003 bis 2005 [Islamophobia in Germany: A new phenomenon or just
a new label? Results of population-surveys about group-related adverseness from 2003 to
2005], Soziale Welt 58: sup 17 (2007), 135-154, 450-451
from abstract: argues that Islamophobia is not independent from xenophobic attitudes; it rather
seems to be a specific component of xenophobia. Furthermore there are hints, that the pressure
on Muslims to accept Western ideals, particularly sexual equality, is related to Islamophobic
attitudes, and that Islamophobia is set to rise

Scott Poynting and Victoria Mason, The resistible rise of Islamophobia: Anti-Muslim racism in the
UK and Australia before 11 September 2001, Journal of Sociology 43: 1 (March 2007), 61-
86

Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Islam and Cosmopolitanism, in Ethnicities and Global Multiculture: pants for
an octopus, Lanham, Md: Rowan & Littlefield, 2007, pp.155-175

Joan Wallach Scott, The Politics of the Veil, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007

Junaid Rana, The Story of Islamophobia, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and
Society, 9:2 (April 2007), 148-161

Juan Cole, Islamophobia as a Social Problem, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 41: 1, (June
2007), 3-7

Marcel Maussen, The Governance of Islam in Western Europe: A State of the Art Report, IMISCOE
(Working Papers 16), 2007:
http://www.imiscoe.org/publications/workingpapers/documents/GovernanceofIslam-stateoftheart_000.pdf

85
Yvonne Yazbek Haddad and Tyler Golson, Overhauling Islam: Representation, Construction and
Cooption of Moderate Islam in Western Europe, Journal of Church and State, 49: 3 (June
2007), 487-516

Matti Bunzl, Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Hatreds Old and New in Europe Chicago: Prickly
Paradigm Press, 2007
includes a revised and expanded version of Bunzls 2005 AE article with a new set of responses
and rejoinder:
Matti Bunzl, Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, 1-46
Dan Diner, Reflections on Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, 47-53
Brian Klug, A Contradiction in the New Europe, 54-60
Paul A. Silverstein, Comment on Bunzl, 61-68
Adam Sutcliffe, Power and the Politics of Prejudice, 69-76
Esther Benbassa, Xenophobia, Anti-Semitism, and Racism: Europes Recurring Evils?, 77-
89
Susan Buck Morris, Comment on Bunzl, 90-104
Matti Bunzl, Response, 105-112

Nasar Meer, Less Equal Than Others, Index on Censorship, 36:2 (2007), 114-118

Arun Kundnani, Integrationism: the politics of anti-Muslim racism, Race & Class, 48:4 (April 2007),
24-44

Racism, Liberty and the War on Terror, Race & Class, 48:4 (April 2007), 45-96
Proceedings of 2006 IRR Conference: Key notes by A. Sivanandan and Gareth Pierce, and
diverse contributions to panels and discussion

Basia Spalek and Alia Imtoual, Muslim Communities and Counter-Terror Responses: Hard
approaches to Community engagement in the UK and Australia, Journal of Muslim Minority
Affairs, 27:2 (August 2007), 185-202

Richard Jackson, Constructing Enemies: Islamic Terrorism in Political and Academic Discourse,
Government and Opposition 42:3 (Summer 2007), 394-426
Also as: Religion, Politics and Terrorism: A critical analysis of the narratives of Islamic
Terrorism, University of Manchester Centre for International Politics Working Papers Series
no.21 (October 2006):
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/researchgroups/cip/publications/documents/Jackson_000.pdf

Frdric Volpi, Constructing the Ummah in European Security: Between Exit, Voice and Loyalty,
Government and Opposition 42:3 (Summer 2007), 451-70

Clive C. Field, Islamophobia in Contemporary Britain: The Evidence of the Opinion Polls, 1988
2006, Islam and ChristianMuslim Relations, 18: 4 (October 2007), 447477.

Saied R. Ameli et al, The British Media and Muslim Representation: The ideology of Demonisation,
IHRC (British Muslims Expectations of Government series, 6th report):
http://www.ihrc.org.uk/file/1903718317.pdf

Amir Saeed, Media, Racism and Islamophobia: The Representation of Islam and Muslims in the
Media, Sociology Compass, 1:2 (November 2007), 443-462
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.00039.x

Chris Allen, The Death of Multiculturalism: Blaming and shaming British Muslims, Durham
Anthropology Journal 14:1 (Summer 2007)
http://www.dur.ac.uk/anthropology.journal/vol14/iss1/PDF/allen.pdf

Chris Allen, The First Decade of Islamophobia: 10 Years of the Runnymede Trust Report
Islamophobia: a challenge for us all, 2007

Sabine Riedel, Zwischen "Euro-Islam" und Islamophobie, Internationale Politik, 62: 9 (September
2007), 36-45

86
Qulsoom Inayat, Islamophobia and the Therapeutic Dialogue: Some reflections, Counselling
Psychology Quarterly, 20:3 (September 2007), 287-293

Levent Tezcan, Kultur, Gouvernementalitat der Religion und der Integrationsdiskurs [Culture,
governmentality of religion and the discourse on integration], Sozial Welt, 58: Sup17 (2007),
51-74, 448-449
adopts a Foucauldian governmentality approach to State policies towards Muslim immigrants
and communities. from the abstract: analyzes how Islam - as a reaction to security threats -
becomes an object of political regulation. Argues that governmental inclusion of Islam by
integration policy contributes to transform migrants from Islamic background into Homo
Islamicus with Interfaith dialogue becoming the mode of societal communication with
migrants.

Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Islamophobia: Making Muslims the Enemy, Lanham, Md:
Rowan & Littlefield, 2008
analysis of Islamophobia in American political cartoons

Anne-Marie Fortier, Loving Thy Neighbour and the politics of inter-ethnic propinquity, in
Multicultural Horizons: Diversity and the limits of the civil nation, London: Routledge, 2008,
pp.66-86
reading normative framings of acceptable mixing and the future of Britain in community
cohesion policy through the Cutting Edge TV documentary The Last White Kids

Nasar Meer, The politics of voluntary and involuntary identities: are Muslims in Britain an ethnic,
racial or religious minority?, Patterns of Prejudice, 42: 1 (February 2008), 60-81.

Paul A. Silverstein, The context of antisemitism and Islamophobia in France, Patterns of Prejudice,
42: 1 (February 2008), 1-26.

S. Sayyid, Racism and Islamophobia, Dark Martter (March 2008):

http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2008/03/26/racism-and-islamophobia/
also: Im not a racist but those Muslims...: http://muslimstan.net/?p=98

Cultural Cleansing?, European Race Bulletin 62 (Winter 2008), compiled by Liz Fekete, London, IRR

Nasar Meer and Tehseen Noorani, A sociological comparison of anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim
sentiment in Britain, The Sociological Review, 56: 2 (2008), 195-219.

Ali Behdad, Critical Historicism, American Literary History 20:1/2 (Spring/Summer 2008), 286-299
argues that critical historicist approach to post 9/11 islamophobia requires both overcoming
US and Western European amnesic disavowal of racialised securitization, immigration
controls and colonial histories, and specificity of distinctive histories of racialisation of
different oppressed communities - re Muslims: US reactions to Iranian Embassy hostage crisis,
and distinctiveness of the re-appropriation of past representations in contemporary neo-
Orientalism since the Iranian Revolution
and response:
Susan Koshy, Postcolonial Studies after 9/11: A response to Ali Behdad, 300-303
insists contra Behdad on need for analysis of parallel minoritization, and transnational
disruptions that orientalism or even neo-orientalism are inadequate to conceptualise,
particularly around possibilities of transnational feminism

Sherene H. Razack, Casting Out: The eviction of Muslims from Western Law & Politics, Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, , 2008

Gargi Bhattacharyya, Globalizing Racism and the Myths of the Other in the War on Terror, in
Ronit Lentin ed., Thinking Palestine, London: Zed Books, 2008, pp.46-61

David Tyrer, Fact as MacGuffin: Islamophobia, race and Muslim identities, Ethnic and Racial
Studies, forthcoming

87
Yahya Birt, Islamophobia in the construction of British Muslim identity politics in Peter E. Hopkins
and Richard Gale eds., Muslims in Britain: Race, Place and Identities, Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2008, in press

88
Notes on Contributors
Chris Allen is currently Director of Research & Policy at the Birmingham based Human Rights agency
BRAP, a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Wolverhampton,
and an Associate Lecturer at the Open University. His book, 'Islamophobia' (Ashgate), is forthcoming.

Samia Bano is Lecturer in Law, Reading Law School, University of Reading

Gargi Bhattacharyya is Professor of Sociology and Head of Sociology Group, Aston University. Her
latest book, Dangerous Brown Men: Exploiting Sex, Violence and Feminism in the War on Terror is
being published by Zed Books in June 2008.

Yahya Birt is Commissioning Editor at Kube Publishing, an independent researcher, and a former
Director of City Circle.

Adrian Brockett is Principal Lecturer in the Faculty of Education and Theology at York St John
University. He was for six years Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at Durham University,
including Director of the Middle East Centre.

Liz Fekete is Deputy Director of the Institute of Race Relations, London. A Suitable Enemy:
Islamophobia and xeno-racism in Europe (Pluto Press), will be published in January 2009

The Rev Canon Professor Leslie J. Francis, is Professor of Religions and Education within the
Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit, and Canon Theologian of Bangor Cathedral, Wales

Serena Hussain is a Research Fellow in the School of Geography, University of Leeds. Her Muslims
on the Map: A National Survey of Social Trends in Britain is forthcoming from I.B. Tauris (2008).

Karima Laachir is Lecturer n Cultural Theory at the University of Birmingham. Her first book Beur
Diasporic Literature: Rethinking Identities, Negotiating belonging is in press with Brill.

Gabriele Marranci is Lecturer in the Anthropology of Religion at the School of Divinity, University
of Aberdeen, and the founding editor of the journal Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life
(Springer). His latest book, The Anthropology of Islam (Oxford: Berg, 2008) has just been published.

Nasar Meer, Department of Sociology, and Research Fellow, Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and
Citizenship, University of Bristol

Tariq Modood is Professor of Public Policy, Department of Sociology and Director, Centre for the
Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship, Bristol Institute for Public Affairs, University of Bristol

Amir Saeed is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies, University of
Sunderland

S. Sayyid is Reader in Postcolonial and Racism Studies at the University of Leeds, and Director of the
Centre of Ethnicity and Racism Studies. His publications include A Fundamental Fear (Zed Books,
2nd ed., 2003) and the co-edited collection A Postcolonial People (Hurst, 2006)

David Tyrer is a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Liverpool John Moores University. He is

co-author, with Fauzia Ahmad, of Muslim Women and Higher Education: Identities, Experience, and
Prospects. A Summary Report (Liverpool John Moores University and European Social Fund, 2006)

AbdoolKarim Vakil is Lecturer in Contemporary Portuguese History at Kings College London.

The Revd Dr Andrew Village is Senior Lecturer at York St John University

Hammad Nasar is an independent curator and writer. He is co-founder of the arts organization Green
Cardamom and runs its London gallery. Shezad Dawood is a graduate of the Royal College of Art. A
London based artist he has exhibited in many solo and group shows in the UK and internationally.

89
Shezad Dawoods Nation of Islam a shiny knuckle-duster set regally on a
black velvet cushion is a pithy encapsulation of [the conceptualisation of
Islamophobia proposed for thinking thu in this Symposium]. For the uninitiated, a
knuckle-duster is a weapon of hand-to-hand combat, moulded out of a piece of metal.
It fits around the knuckles and is designed to deliver the force of punches through a
smaller and harder contact area resulting in increased likelihood of fracturing the
victims bones on impact. This particular knuckle-duster is distinctive in that it has a
diamante inscription in Arabic emblazoned on its golden surface Allah.

This work shares its title with the name of the controversial religious movement in the
USA that gained notoriety in the 1950s and early 1960s through its most high profile
recruits, Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X (before they left its fold to join mainstream
Islam). This political Nation of Islam called for a separate nation state for its black
followers, and believed that the offer of integration into white America was a
deceptionintended to prevent black people from realizing that the time in history
has arrived for the separation from the whites of this nation. The knuckle-duster also
recalls the raised fist salute of the Black Panthers, etched in the worlds visual
memory when athletics medal winners John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their
clenched fists during the American national anthem at the 1968 Summer Olympics in
Mexico City.

Dawoods work pushes us to see the parallels between racial oppression in the US in
the middle of the 20th Century and what is happing in the UK (and indeed the Euro-
American world) now. All that seems to have changed is the colour of the oppressed
skin. Brown is the new black. But the quiet menace to Dawoods work one that
hints at the inevitable reaction to unrelenting pressure and a sense of injustice, real or
imagined is balanced by the status of the shiny knuckle duster as a piece of bling
jewellery, both parodied and celebrated in urban youth culture. This neutering of the
clenched fist of resistance by the corruptive influence of conspicuous consumption
sets up opposing readings, and make Dawoods work an object of simultaneous
fascination and repulsion.

adapted from New shades of black by Hammad Nasar, reproduced, with the permission
of the author from the brochure accompanying the exhibition Who are You? Where are you
Really From? at the Whitworth Art Gallery, 2006

Cover image:
Shezad Dawood, Nation of Islam (2004)
Gold and diamant knuckleduster on black velvet cushion
20x 18 x 10cm
reproduced with the permission of the artist

90
91