Islamophobia: Historical Narratives and the Making of Discourses

Abstract

Islamophobia, a highly contested term, is a reaction of the Christians and Europe/West towards the distinct religious and cultural identity of Islam and the Muslims. Islamophobia, a term which came into global political usage after the publication of 1997 Runneymede Report Islamophobia; A Challenge/or US All, is often referred in terms of hate speech and fear or 'anti-Muslim prejudice' (Muir and Smith 2004, 1), producing a culture of lack of tolerance and hate towards Muslims in the Western societies. Gottschalk and Greenberg defined Islamophobia as a 'social anxiety towards Islam and Muslim cultures that is largely unexamined by, yet deeply ingrained in, Americans ... [mainly 1 mainstream American culture. This anxiety relies on a sense of otherness, despite many common sources of thought' (Gottschalk and Greenberg 2008). Salman Sayyid explains Islamophobia as a way of 'disciplining Muslims by reference to an antagonistic Western horizon and is used as a 'violent hierarchy' between the idea of the West and Islam (Sayyid 2015,15). The Copenhagen Declaration on Islamophobia calls it a 'demonization of human beings for no other reason than their Muslim faith'. This article is not about the history of Christian-Muslim relations but instead how the image of Islam was constructed out of political needs and purposes to create the anxiety around anything 'Islam' or 'Muslim'. Although, there are different context of Islamophobia in American, European or overall Western culture, the focus here is how history influenced the escalation of violence around Islamophobic events and its utilized at particular moments.