In the last 20 years in particular, Islamophobia has assumed such negative connotations and perceptions and pervaded everyday life of global citizens and Muslims, per se so much that the United Nations has been forced to take notice of the same and has declared 15 March as the International Day to Combat Islamophobia. In a way, it shows the seriousness of the issue and its negative impact on such a vast multitude of people that it is now considered a global issue. And the realisation has set in that the global community has to take steps to rectify its negative impact on the second largest religious minority in the world.
One wonders what has led to an increase in Islamophobia across the globe. Not finding any over-the-surface reason for it, one is forced to conjure that perhaps the western world and other religions of the world are afraid of Islam’s concept of Ijtimaiyat or Collectiveness, which is manifest on every Friday at local masjids and annually on the occasion of Hajj.
A false perception prevails that Islam is a monolith religion and every adherent or practitioner of Islam follows what he’s taught through the Holy Quran or by its Ulama. But nothing could be more far away from the truth, than this perception. Followers of Islam follow the five pillars of Islam and the Holy Quran but in every country or region it also assimilates certain local and customary traditions and values. As far as people who portray a negative physical presentation of Islam with overflowing beards, turbans and robes are concerned, it is manifestly a personal choice. Every Muslim is allowed to follow the dress code or physical appearance of his choice, keeping in mind the basic Islamic fundamentals related to personal hygiene and appearance.
Islamophobia, as a convenient attack tool, enables other faiths to belittle or condemn Islam, its followers, their practices and observance and education, without any rational or theoretical basis. In most cases, such attacks are often individually led or negative connotations are individually upheld in absence of any specific or authentic knowledge of Islam and its teachings.
Over the years, Islamophobia has been used as a convenient political tool in addition to an important component of Agenda Setting policies of the political practitioners, as raising the bogey of Islamophobia offers them quick easy wins.
However, to a certain extent, the Muslim community too is responsible for the spread of Islamophobia. One of the identifiable primary reasons for this could be its inertia to handle the bull, heads on. Its religious leaders have also not been very successful in promoting the peace-loving and humane aspects of the religion. In addition, Islamists have to present Islam in its most easily understandable form, not fiddling with its obscurantist form, and prove that it is a religion which could keep pace with modernity along with traditions and religious teachings.
Growth of Islamophobia
Islamophobia has been a controversial concept ever since it first gained popular currency in 1925. One of the main sticking points over the term is whether or not it refers to religion. For both detractors and advocates of the term alike, religion should be or is removed from the meaning of Islamophobia, which is conceived as a form of anti-Muslim racism.
Islam, we might say, is thereby removed from Islamophobia. Yet, in doing so, it falls short on two of its key objectives, i.e., identifying the particular forms of discrimination that Muslims face in society and subsequently providing a positive basis from which to address this discrimination.
According to the existing literature as well as a study of converts to Islam, it is suggested that Islam as a religion is both an important feature of Islamophobia as well as central to the identities of many Muslims, and then it is suggested why and how we should think about including religion into the scope of thinking on Islamophobia and how it is addressed.
Different inferences are given to define Islamophobia, varying from experts to countries. Basically, Islamophobia could be described as the fear, prejudice and hatred of Muslims that leads to provocation, hostility and intolerance by means of threatening, harassment, abuse, incitement and intimidation of Muslims and non-Muslims, both in the online and offline world.
It is motivated by institutional, ideological, political and religious hostility that transcends into structural and cultural racism; it targets the symbols and markers of being a Muslim.
This definition emphasises the link between institutional levels of Islamophobia and manifestations of such attitudes, triggered by the visibility of the victim’s perceived Muslim identity. This approach also interprets Islamophobia as a form of racism, whereby Islamic religion, tradition and culture are seen as a ‘threat’ to the western values.
Oxford English Dictionary defines Islamophobia as “hatred or fear of Islam, especially as a political force; hostility or prejudice towards Muslims”. In the context of this reference, the term Islamophobia was first used in 1976 in the International Journal of Middle East.
Tahir Abbas gives its definition as: Islamophobia is the alarming and fear of Islam and Muslims. In an international context the awareness of non-Muslims related to Muslims and Islam has been portrayed in a very negative sense. To represent Islam and Muslims in media is conflict, ignorant, barbaric, intolerant maddened terrorist, religious zealots and distorted images are still portrayed to internationally.
Dinet & Ibrahim, who used the word Islamophobia for the first time in 1925, are of the view that the issue of Islamophobia was not created to represent unelaborated and insufficient awareness and knowledge towards Muslims and Islam, which was also an assault by false reports. Intentionally represented, Islam and Muslims were portrayed as an extremist, terrorist and backward in customs and belief, and also the teaching and message of Islam related to religion were purposefully misinterpreted by media at the international level. Both scholars did not consider it essential to give a definition of Islamophobia, but their formula put forward that they pair it as a struggle to “do away with Islam altogether.”
Ashraf Kunnummal, Post-doctoral Fellow at Johannesburg Institute of Advance Studies at University of Johannesburg, South Africa, says that the definition of Islamophobia is often heterogeneous and diffuse, without a coherent and unified essence. A contingent position on Islamophobia that is valid in one context may not be useful in another context. The only consensus among the competing definitions of Islamophobia is that Islamophobia does exist. The geo-political and discursive context plays a determinative role in the definition of Islamophobia. However, a majority of the debates around the definition of global Islamophobia have happened in the context of what Salman Sayyid described as a “Western plutocracy.”
Efforts to define Islamophobia in the context of countries such as India, where Muslims are counted as minorities, are quite limited in number and scope. In his paper, Islamophobia Studies in India: Problems and Prospects,he analyses the problem of Islamophobia in India by looking at the impasse in the emergence of Islamophobia in the context of dominant approaches on nationalism and communalism and also propose new ways to look at the problem of Islamophobia in India by taking into consideration the bio-political turn of state and mass desire of Islamophobia.
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) describes Islamophobia as a combination of hate, fear, and prejudice against Islam, against Muslims, as well as against anything associated with the religion, such as Masjids, Islamic Centres, Holy Qur’an, Hijab, etc. It also constitutes hatred, stigmatisation, racism and discrimination in daily life, in Media, at workplace, in political sphere, etc.
OIC says that it rests in the mind and it reflects in attitudes, and could be manifested through violent actions, such as burning masjids, vandalising properties, abusing women wearing scarves, veils and hijab, or insulting the Prophet or sacred symbols of Islam. That is more or less, how Islamophobia is identifiable, how it manifests, which can be seen not only from incidents, but also through perspectives, statements, behaviour, and gestures.
During the last two decades in particular, Islamophobia kept growing in some parts of the world, through intensive campaigns and public discourses disseminating fear of Islam, and through a significant number of incidents targeting Muslims, masjids, Islamic attires, and most-revered Islamic figures.
Ashraf Kunnummal says that the global proliferation of Islamophobia offers an array of competing resistances and hermeneutical exercises from multiple contexts of Muslims. While Islamophobia proliferates through various facets of the Muslim subject – based on gender, caste, sexuality, religion, race, minority, majority, class, nation, etc., Muslims from differing contexts are forced to reckon with these multifaceted and competing definitions because of the globalisation of the Muslim question. Thus Muslims cannot refuse to engage with a range of different voices or points of view about Islamophobia, even if only some of them appear relevant to the local contexts of a section of Muslims. Though there may be privileged contexts over others, the globalism of Islamophobia cannot be settled in a single and obvious meaning. It exceeds the particularities of the context it proliferates because of its interminable connection to colonialism, modernity, and racism and the world made in its wake. In short, Islamophobia is a phenomenon that was made planetary through modern colonial racist structures with the active collaboration of national elites, who imposed multiple modes of subaltern consensus in the local context.
(to be concluded)