Islamophobia:
Meaning, Manifestations, Causes
http://www.MuslimsToday.com/EN/Contents.aspx?AID=4269
Mustafa Abu Sway
A discussion and condemnation of Islamophobia.
“Muslims could change their world and overcome the tyranny
of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim discrimination, just as slavery
was abolished”1
Islamophobia consists of violence against Muslims in the form
of physical assaults, verbal abuse, and the vandalizing of
property, especially of Islamic institutions including mosques,
Islamic schools and Muslim cemeteries. Islamophobia also includes
discrimination in employment — where Muslims are faced with
unequal opportunities —discrimination in the provision of health
services, exclusion from managerial positions and jobs of high
responsibility; and exclusion from political and governmental
posts. Ultimately, Islamophobia also comprises prejudice in the
media, literature, and everyday conversation.2
Let us consider the following examples:
* A mosque in the French city of Carpentras in the
Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region came under Molotov cocktail
attack on Friday, November 11, [2005] during the weekly Friday
prayer.3
* Twelve drawings depicting Prophet Muhammad in different
settings appeared in Denmark’s largest circulation daily
Jyllands-Posten on September 30, [2005]. In one of the drawings,
Prophet Muhammad appeared with a turban shaped like a bomb
strapped to his head.
* Police arrested two people, apparently a Jewish pimp and a
prostitute, on the Friday night of August 26 [2005] on suspicion
that they were responsible for a pig’s head dressed in a
keffiyeh and inscribed with the nickname “the Prophet Muhammad”
being thrown into the yard of Tel Aviv’s Hassan Beik Mosque.4
* The U.S. military detailed on Friday, June 3, 2005, five
cases in which jailers at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, had desecrated copies of the Holy Qur’an, including one
incident that had occurred as recently as March. Brigadier
General Jay Hood, commander of the Guantanamo prison who headed
the inquiry, said the inquiry had confirmed five cases of
desecration.
* “Did you hear about the Muslim virgin desperate to lose it?
It wasn’t really the sex she was interested in; she just didn’t
want to [f**k] a suicide bomber when she died.” The British
journalist Julie Burchill’s “favorite joke of the moment,” in
“What Allah Wants, Allah Gets” as reprinted in the Israeli
daily, Haaretz (September 24, 2005)
Who Are the Islamophobes?
The countries where these offensive and troubling Islamophobic
examples took place are France, Denmark, Israel, and the U.S.
Other examples in the article include Germany, Sri Lanka and the
UK. The list fails to reflect the fact that Islamophobic incidents
exist in every country where there is a Muslim minority.
Islamophobia-Watch.com has documented Islamophobic entries under
the name of these additional countries: Australia, Austria,
Belgium, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain.
In addition, the perpetrators could be categorized as either
individual civilians or officials, including military. There is a
problem about determining the Islamophobe in the last example
given above; is it only the author, Julie Burchill? How far could
Haaretz itself be held responsible for the Islamophobic content?
(The original responsibility, in this case, does not pertain to
Haaretz but to Burchill herself and The Times. In both dailies,
however, the piece was printed verbatim, without asterisks to
replace the “f” word. The comments on the article were no less
Islamophobic. The question here arises regarding Haaretz’s
editorial choice.)
Seventy-Two Vrigins?
Julie Burchill was reminded of the “joke” after she noted that
“Palestinian cretins felt it entirely necessary to murder innocent
Israelis in order to have an orgy in heaven with 72 virgins.”
While I can take issue with several points in this venomous
statement, I would like to highlight the problem of the “72
virgins” construct and its place in the Islamic worldview. It is a
matter of fact that the “72 virgins” construct does not exist
either in the Qur’an or in the most authentic of the Hadith
compendia.
As a person who attends the mosque on a regular basis and has
listened to hundreds of Friday sermons, mostly at Al-Aqsa Mosque
in Jerusalem, but also in the U.S., Europe, Africa and South-East
Asia, I cannot recall even one instance when this construct was
mentioned in the mosque. The same applies to the Islamic academic
institutions where I taught over the years. As it is in
non-Islamic literature rather than in Islamic books that this
construct appears, it prompted me to carry out some research
regarding the topic. I tracked it to a book by a 9th century
Muslim scholar, Al-Tabarani, in his Mu‘jam. The conclusion is that
this construct does not form part of the Islamic faith, but tends
to be often misused by Islamophobes for their twisted reasons.
Incidents on the Rise
The examples mentioned above depicting Islamophobia fail to
show that Islamophobic incidents are on the rise. Statistics,
however, indicate a 200-percent rise in certain places in Europe.
The Times notes that in France
[t]he number of hate crimes, most notably against Jews and
against Arabs of North African origin, nearly doubled last year,
to 1,565 from 833 a year earlier, according to a report to the
government by the National Consultative Commission for Human
Rights… Acts against people of North African origin totaled 595 in
2004, up from 232 in 2003.5
This rise could be attributed to the growing number of
Islamophobes and Islamophobic institutions, and the normalization
of hostility towards Islam. The ease with which information
travels in the age of globalization takes the Islamophobic act
from its local context to the international arena, thus creating
an impression that there is a universal Islamophobic ethos that
haunts Muslims.
By drawing attention to the above-mentioned examples, I simply
hope that the reader will get a sense of the tragic state of
Islamophobia. The content is offensive, not only to Muslims, but
to any ethical person. The intensity with which Islamophobia is
spreading poses a real danger not only to Muslim minorities, but
also threatens the social fabric wherever they live.
Individual versus Institutionalized
The perpetrators range from Islamophobic individuals acting “on
their own” to institutionalized Islamophobic policies. But, are
individual Islamophobes really “on their own”? The answer is, in
one sense, Yes. As long as they are not fulfilling governmental
orders or institutional plans, then they are “on their own.” On
the other hand, those individuals are bombarded by the biased
media, which are yoked to the centers of power, with stereotypical
images of Muslims; they listen to right-wing, xenophobic
politicians who reinforce those stereotypes and call for the
expulsion of Muslims, and they read post-Cold War scenarios that
portray Islam as the new enemy that replaced Communism — the green
menace in place of the red. The list of possible influences could
include school curricula, exclusivist theological worldviews that
neither accommodate nor engage the “other.” Sometimes the line
between individual and institutional Islamophobia gets blurred.
The following example migh clarify the point:
Forty-eight-year-old Kamal Raza Butt, a Pakistani man who is
visiting friends and family in Nottingham [UK], is set upon by a
gang of white youths. He is allegedly called “Taliban” and then
punched to the ground and later dies in hospital. Two 16-year-old
youths are charged with manslaughter, seven others are freed on
bail pending further inquiries.6
Did the mob act on the spur of the moment? The incident is
presented in the media without questioning the motives. The wider
context within which the role of the UK in Afghanistan and Iraq,
the July 7th attacks in London, and the attacks in Nottingham
could be seen as interconnected was not addressed. What motivated
the Nottingham attack remains unclear. One thing is certain: if
the roots of Islamophobia are not addressed, the problem will
persist.
Institutionalized Islamophobia, on the other hand, reflects
governmental laws or policies. As an example let us consider the
case of extreme secularism in France. It was used to pave the road
for an Islamophobic law7 which prohibits the display of religious
symbols, effectively targeting and banning the wearing of
headscarves by Muslim schoolgirls. If one accepts the right to
display crosses and yarmulkes while denying a Muslim girl the
right to wear her hijab (headscarf), then this position is
Islamophobic. It reflects the inability of France to celebrate
multiculturalism and to see Islam as a positive force that could
contribute to the welfare of the society. Rather than
accommodating its own Muslim citizens and integrating them into
the society according to a multicultural paradigm for coexistence,
France opted for an extreme and fundamentalist notion of
secularism —proof of a loss of the French ethos that once was
based on liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality,
fraternity).
The Case of the Hijab
Islamophobic policies target the hijab as a symbol of Islam.
The specific government that adopts the banning of the hijab
reflects deep-seated antagonism toward Islam. The sad fact is that
many countries are following suit. In Germany, the ban on hijab is
slated to take effect in August 2006. “Female and male teachers
are not allowed to express any worldviews or any religious beliefs
which could disturb or endanger the peace at school … That’s why
we want to forbid [female] Muslim teachers at state schools from
wearing headscarves,” said North Rhine-Westphalia schools minister
Barbara Sommer.8
The ban on hijab has also spread to South Asia were two Muslim
teachers were suspended from their work at a government school in
Badulla in north-east Sri Lanka earlier this year because they
wear the hijab. In addition, S. Satchchitanandan, the provincial
minister for Tamil education, ordered that the government-run
school be renamed the Hindu Girls School — The Tamils are
predominantly Hindus, while the Sinhalese are Budhhists. The
school has more than 200 Muslim girl students.9
It is virtually impossible to narrate all the distressing
incidents involving the hijab, but if I had the chance to add a
picture of a woman with her head covered to help the reader
understand the Islamophobic nature of the ban of hijab, I would
have used that of the late Mother Theresa, the Roman Catholic nun
and founder of the Sisters of Charity. She was modestly dressed
with her head covered with a headdress, a hijab if you will!
Pseudo-Political Correctness, Pseudo-Scholars
Another type of institutional negative role is the
constitutional and legal structures behind which Islamophobes can
hide. Attacking Islam and Muslims takes place in the name of the
freedom of _expression_, which is protected by the First Amendment
in the United States. This legal structure allows Islamophobic
institutions and neo-con pundits who are driven by an irrational
fear of Islam and Muslims to malign Muslim leaders and to smear
mainstream Muslim organizations. At times, it is calculated
Islamophobic statements that are systematically stated in some
U.S. media to keep the society polarized and to prevent Muslims
from being at home in their own countries. When some right-wing
Christian preachers like Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham and Pat
Robertson made defamatory statements about Islam,10 none of them
was held accountable; it is not possible to try them and win
according to U.S. law.
One can contrast this with what happened to their Evangelical
colleagues in another part of the world. A state tribunal in
Australia [Dec. 17th, 2004] found two Evangelical Christian
pastors who conducted a church seminar on Islam guilty of inciting
hatred against Muslims. Daniel Nalliah and Daniel Scott of Catch
the Fire Ministries were tried under Victoria’s new race and
religion hate laws after the Islamic Council of Victoria filed
legal action, charging Scott called Muslims demons, liars and
terrorists.11
This trial is good news; people of conscience should help
create race and religion hate laws in all countries. An alliance
between the various communities is needed to combat all forms of
hate crimes, including Islamophobia which should be criminalized.
In addition, the vilification of Muslims takes place at the
hand of pseudo-scholars of Islam who abuse the freedom that the
First Amendment grants them. A good example is the case of Daniel
Pipes. He began a recent article, “Islamophobia?” in the New York
Sun (October 25, 2005), with the following statement:
An Islamist group named Hizb-ut-Tahrir seeks to bring the world
under Islamic law and advocates suicide attacks against Israelis.
Facing proscription in Great Britain, it opened a clandestine
front operation at British universities called “Stop
Islamophobia.”12
Any true scholar of Islamic movements knows that Hizb-ut-Tahrir
never advocated suicide attacks against anyone; they are strictly
speaking a political movement. They are criticized for their
aggressiveness in promoting their political views and — yes — they
are criticized for not participating in resisting the Israeli
occupation. They do call for the reinstitution of the Caliphate
(i.e. a pan-Islamic polity) system that existed until 1924, a
matter which should be left entirely to Muslims to sort out
amongst themselves. To outlaw Hizb-ut-Tahrir in Britain would be a
clear Islamophobic act and a true violation of the freedom of
_expression_.
Such type of Islamophobic pseudo-scholars hide behind
politically correct statements to the effect that they do not have
a problem with moderate Islam, or with moderate Muslim
intellectuals. This was an argument Pipes used on al-Jazeerah TV
channel’s Open Forum on May 28, 2005. When asked to mention one
moderate Muslim, Pipes named two intellectuals, one from the Sudan
and one from Egypt, both of them long dead. Is the message here
that there are no moderate Muslims alive, or that moderate Islam
is dead?
It is unfortunate that President Bush went on to nominate Pipes
to the board of the renowned United States Institute of Peace,
against the will of the Congress.
Islamophobia and the Palestinian Question
While the Palestinian people comprises Jews [Samaritans],
Christians and mostly Muslims, a consistently Islamophobic
propaganda is being used against the Palestinian people to prevent
them from ending the Israeli occupation.
One of the organizations that systematically use crude and vile
Islamophobic statements is the Israel Hasbara Committee [an
unofficial non-governmental organization]. Their website features
hundreds of Islamophobic articles that aim ultimately at
discrediting the Palestinians and their just cause. One of the
Israel Hasbara Committee’s featured writers, Michael Anbar, paints
an Islamophobic picture of the Palestinian leadership, in which
[t]he PLO follows an Islamist policy similar to al-Qaeda. Very
much like bin Laden and the Iranian Ayatollahs, Yasser Arafat
openly calls for Jihad against Israel and the West, a holy war
that nominally obligates all Muslims worldwide to kill infidels,
Jews in particular.13
In a different article, and in what seems to be a slip of the
tongue, the Israel Hasbara Committee revealed its true character
through the following statement:
War is dirty, whether it is on the battlefield or in the
propaganda world. It is time to use the weapon of relentless
repetition.14
Only enemies of peace would continue to be against an end to
the Israeli occupation. To be against the establishment of a
Palestinian state could be described as an essentially
Islamophobic position.
Concluding Remarks
Though the Islamophobic examples used in this article are
contemporary, Islamophobia itself is not new. The Crusades and,
later on, the Inquisition in Spain reflect a very problematic
historical relationship with Jews and Muslims. The Catholic Church
in its Nostra Aetate15 has called for tolerance and fellowship
among peoples of all faiths. How much of the old hatred has it
been able to eradicate as it celebrates its 40th year?
As with the advent of any new terminology that describes a
specific phenomenon, it takes time to connect both. The phenomenon
that Islamophobia describes is not uncommon, and is as old as
Islam itself. The case of Islamophobia is just like that of
anti-Semitism,16 where discrimination against and the persecution
of the Jews took place for many centuries before the term
“anti-Semitism” was coined.
I would argue that Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are rooted in
xenophobic Eurocentrism which was and still is a barrier in
fostering a multicultural world not dominated by nationalism and
national interests. Other paradigms should replace the existing
world order which has already caused so much destruction at the
turn of the 21st century in Islamic lands.
I would like to conclude this article by quoting excerpts from
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s address to the Department of
Public Information (DPI) seminar, “Confronting Islamophobia:
Education for Tolerance and Understanding,” in New York, December
7th, 2004:
An honest look at Islamophobia must also acknowledge the policy
context. The historical experience of Muslims includes colonialism
and domination by the West, either direct or indirect. Resentment
is fed by the unresolved conflicts in the Middle East, by the
situation in Chechnya, and by atrocities committed against Muslims
in the former Yugoslavia. The reaction to such events can be
visceral, bringing an almost personal sense of affront. But we
should remember that these are political reactions — disagreements
with specific policies. All too often, they are mistaken for an
Islamic reaction against Western values, sparking an anti-Islamic
backlash…
…[I]slamophobia is at once a deeply personal issue for Muslims,
a matter of great importance to anyone concerned about upholding
universal values, and a question with implications for
international harmony and peace. We should not underestimate the
resentment and sense of injustice felt by members of one of the
world’s great religions, cultures and civilizations. And we must
make the re-establishment of trust among people of different
faiths and cultures our highest priority. Otherwise,
discrimination will continue to taint many innocent lives, and
distrust might make it impossible to move ahead with our ambitious
international agenda of peace, security and development.17
Posted March 30, 2006, Palestine - Israel Journal
http://www.pij.org/details.php?id=342