Islamophobia

Islamophobia’s occurrence in any particular country has little do with the presence of Muslim; it is possible to be Islamophobic when there are virtually no Muslim around. This because the lack of Muslims is filled by the surplus of Islamophobic representations. This surplus of representations is now increasingly reliant on the internet. There are many studies reporting on Islamophobia on the internet, classifying the negative representations, the targeted acts of aggressive online behaviour (trolling) against Muslims. These studies are basically taxonomies, and they share this feature with general literature on Islamophobia, which is concerned with reporting instances of Islamophobia empirically with little time spent on its theorisation. Such an understanding of Islamophobia implies that it is simply dismissed as being a matter of prejudice, bias, and closed views. A Critical Muslim Studies understanding of Islamophobia developed initially in the collected volume Thinking Through Islamophobia (2010), and then subsequent publications shift the focus away positivism to decolonial discourse theory. Using decolonial discourse theory, this study will how online Islamophobia is not just a distortion of Islam, or hatred of Muslims but rather it main vectors for denying Muslim political consciousness.

According to some researchers (Hopkins, 2004a; Hopkins & Smith, 2008), there is a perception among certain Muslims that anti-Muslim racism is higher in areas where there is a high density of Muslim residents, such as Glasgow. In contrast, other Muslims may feel that Islamophobia is higher in places with fewer numbers of Muslim residents. Through an investigation of Muslims’ experiences of Islamophobia in major Scottish cities, this paper discusses the influence of the size of Muslim communities in experiencing Islamophobia[1]. It also examines the importance of other possible factors, such as socio-economic status and deprivation on Islamophobia. To this end, the experience and accounts of 33 Muslim participants in major Scottish cities (Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee) were documented and analyzed through qualitative methods. The findings of this paper suggest that Muslims’ individual and social aspects of life play a more important role on Islamophobia, as opposed to the size of their population in a certain area. More precisely, the analysis of Muslims who experienced Islamophobia suggests that Muslims’ identity and visibility, especially racial and religious signifiers such as skin color, beard or hijab, were crucial to their experiences of Islamophobia. [1]. This is compared, in another research (Author, 2015), to the experiences of 10 Muslim participants in small Scottish cities and towns (Falkirk, Dunfermline, East Kilbride and Stirling) where that the number of Muslims living in those areas is less than one percent of the local population (National Records of Scotland, 2013).

Since the 9/11 bombings in New York, and the 7/7 bombings in London, Muslims’ integration in the UK has been under intense scrutiny. Muslim integration, however, has long been a matter of debate in Britain, revolving around the maintenance of Muslims’ distinctive identity and practice. For instance, David Cameron (Cameron, 2011), Britain’s then Prime Minister, announced at the Munich Security Conference that “state multiculturalism” has encouraged “different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream”. In criticizing multiculturalism, most critics mainly refer to Muslims as being less integrated into wider society than people from other minority groups, and Muslims are shown to be disloyal. The complexity of Muslims’ integration and its dependency on different social, structural and cultural factors are, however, mostly less studied. This paper is designed to understand the social and cultural barriers to Muslim integration. In doing so, it aims to explore Muslims’ integrational strategies to deal with these barriers. Findings of this paper draw on research that involved 43 semi-structured interviews with Muslims across Scotland’s major cities and small towns.

Islamophobia is defined as a closed-minded hatred, fear or prejudice toward Islam and Muslims that result in discrimination, marginalization, and oppression. This phenomenon was strengthened after September 11 marked a watershed in the history of America. In the wake of 9/11, Islamophobia was promulgated in a plethora of textual and visual narratives, including novel. This paper studies Islamophobia in Greg Hrbek’s latest novel Not on Fire, But Burning (2015). A close reading of the novel reveals that the novel couples Islam with terrorism and barbarity, and sets forth the Self/Other dichotomy, which is rather cherished in the discourse of Islamophobia. As observed in a long history of Islamophobic rhetoric, Hrbek’s novel depicts that certain people, undoubtedly Muslims, are outside the American system of values, ready to catch America off-guard. With the images the work promotes of Islam and its followers, it is argued that Not on Fire, But Burning reinforces Islamophobia and biased frames of reference on Islam and Muslims.

Based on David Gauntlett’s Web 2.0 approach of media audiences, this article argues that while Islamophobic discourses may be hegemonic in the British media in general, and the online media in particular, counter-Islamophobic ones have real potentials to subvert the anti-Muslims hegemony in contemporary Britain. Online media users, both as producers and consumers of mass-mediated representations, are empowered to blur the boundaries between the real and the virtual spaces in the construction of different conceptions of their own identities as well as of those of the others. To this end, comparatively, the comments of the users of two YouTube videos are analyzed and critically appraised to identify how they prosumed the different representations of Muslim communities of/in Britain. It is suggested that YouTube users contribute, from their respective subject positions, to the construction of diverse conceptualizations of their own identities and those of others as well. Their prosumed representations both entrench and defy a hierarchy of Islamophobic and Islamophallic images of Islam and Muslims in contemporary multicultural Britain.

This article seeks to show the representation of gender and Muslim women in Hollywood cinema with a narrative analysis approach. Thus, using the approach of postcolonial theory in the critique of Orientalism discourse and the construction of gender in Eastern and Muslim women, and liberal feminism, Analyzes the narrative of "In the Land of Blood and Honey" (Angelina Jolie, 2011). This film is one of the most important Hollywood films that has dedicated its main narrative to the representation of a Muslim woman. The findings of this study show that the narrative of this film follows Orientalist gender stereotypes and, well, shows the contrast between the liberal and postcolonial feminist approaches. As the Eastern and Muslim woman is humiliated by both her Western sister and her community. Muslim woman in the narrative of this film; Is also the Orientalist object of American cinema; She is subjected to both sexual and gender clichés and is accused of treason against the world system and is considered worthy of death. Narrative analysis of this film can open new perspectives on postcolonial feminism.