Paste your essay in here…State-promoted Islamophobia gained much of its notoriety and support in Western Europe post-World War II during the decades of migration of workers from the Middle East (Turkey and North African colonies) to Europe. This occurred following the decolonization of former European colonies. These workers that aided in the re-industrialization and reconstruction of Europe were often exploited and endured harsh working conditions. This resistance against Turkey and Islam extends to the Balkans regions and reflects much of Western Europe’s history of hostility toward the East. Europeans viewed these job seekers who migrated from these Muslim majority countries as inferior because they were assumed to be unassimilable Others. This historical group of migrants allowed an unsettled relationship to be established between the East and the West and thus influenced Western opinions of Muslims as a group. Although Islamophobia came about in the 20th century, this prejudice toward Muslims prevails in the West today. Islamophobia exists in both implicit and explicit forms, ranging from stares in public to systemic racial profiling. The essay issue being researched is the modern oversimplification of Muslim identity in the West.
In order to analyze this subject, the methodology used must be understood. To begin, Islamophobia, broadly, is the prejudice against Muslims or Islam. While this prejudice largely exists in the West, it is important to denote “the West” as North America and Europe. The Middle East and southern Asia are also significant geographic areas to note. The Middle East is defined by North Africa and western Asia, whereas southern Asia is referring to the Indian subcontinent, ranging from Pakistan to Bhutan. The term “Others(s)” is used in this paper, as well as in other studies to describe Muslims in the West to illustrate how the West distinguished themselves from Muslims. In terms of understanding the psychology behind Islamophobia, it is necessary to define the following terms. For one, the schema is the organized mental representation of knowledge. Schema theory explains how people develop simple ideas into complex ones. Moreover, secondary sources that include statistics, historical evidence, as well as modern accounts of Islamophobia were used for this analysis. A historical approach was used to analyze these sources. Primary sources, in the form of political cartoons, and a movie were also investigated. This methodology leads to the exploration of the claim for this analysis. Islamophobia in the West stems from the oversimplification of Muslim identity through cultural racism toward those of Asian descent.
Islamophobia background:
Islamophobia is a relatively newer concept that scholars have begun to study. The British think tank, Runnymede Trust published Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All in 1997 following the increased animosity toward British Muslims following the Rushdie affair (1998) and the first Gulf War (1990-91). Due to the alienation of British Muslims and their religious practices during the time period, the writers of the report intended for a call for inclusion of British Muslims in British culture. The report defined Islamophobia as an “unfounded hostility towards Islam… [and therefore] fear or dislike of all or most Muslims.” Because scholars had not conducted much research on Islamophobia before this publication, the Runnymede report introduced analysis of Islamophobia in the West. Thus, people began to acknowledge Islamophobia as a social phenomenon challenging Muslims in Western nations. Similar to most social frameworks, Islamophobia is an ideological and political construct that is deeply ingrained in the subconscious of the majority of Americans. This allows for Islamophobia to grow widespread and to remain in the psyche of Americans because of the difficulty of unlearning what is ingrained in the psyche. Islamophobia has become normalized through Western culture. As defined by the Runnymede Report, the term “Islamophobia” suggests that Islamophobia is a critique or fear of Islam; however, scholars have come to believe that Islamophobia is rather a fear of Muslims, or what the image of Muslims that the West has fabricated over time. Academic Fred Halliday argues that the term “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.” The “Other” group “is not a faith or culture, but a people.” Islamophobia is no longer a critique of the fundamentals of Islam, but an attack on Muslims, or what the West has stereotyped the Muslim people to be. This allows for Islamophobes to architect the image of Islam as a stagnant religion that only belongs to a specific group of people, rather than a fluid religion. Some scholars have labeled Islamophobia as cultural racism: a form of racism based on religious beliefs, cultural traditions, and ethnic backgrounds. Islamophobes, therefore, view Muslims as religiously and culturally inferior. This mode of research supports the idea that Islamophobia is in combat of a group of people, rather than a religion. It also exemplifies how Islamophobes are able to view Muslims as a foreign and unassimilable group. Throughout this analysis, I will be examining Islamophobia through the lense of cultural racism.
Brown skin connotation with Muslims:
Islam is heavily stereotyped as one of two ways: either exclusively Arab or as south Asian, essentially people with brown skin The West, specifically the United States, has designated Muslims as a monolithic collection of people. When the authors of Islamophobia: Making Muslims the Enemy, asked a group of Americans what words arise when they think of “Islam” or “Muslims,” the places most thought of in relation to these two words were nations in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran. For many Americans, the words “Islam” and “Muslims” have become closely associated with Arab culture. Furthermore, if one were to ask an American which nations have the most Muslims, most would reply with Middle Eastern countries, yet only 20 percent of all Muslims in the world are Arab. This is because Muslims are often stereotyped as being Arab, or originating from the Middle East. Although Arabs are a minor racial demographic of Muslim people, Arabs are still depicted as the forefront of the Muslim people. This leads to the assumption that Islam as a religion is constricted to Arabs. There are also other cardinal depictions of Muslims as brown or south Asian. In light of this, Sikhs are often mistaken as Muslims and are subject to hate crimes: a topic that will be discussed later in the essay. Both the Middle East and southern Asia will be referred to in this analysis. Both of these groups do not possess many similarities other than the fact that in the US, Islamophobia groups them together and makes them targets of discrimination. Pursuing this further, it is important to note that Arabs follow religions such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism and other faiths. However, South Asians claim Sikhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and other religions as well. Overall, due to these cultural stereotypes as Middle Easterners and South Asians as Muslims allows for much of Islamophobia to target these groups of people, whether or not they identify with Islam.
Origins of Orientalism
Following the Enlightenment period, the relationship between the Occident (the West) and the Orient (the East) helped establish a history of cultural superiority against Arab culture and values. Edward Said describes Orientalism in his essay, Orientalism. Said proposed that the “Orient” was built by the West and existed solely for the West. The West was the standard of measurement in the world, and Orientalism was “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.” Orientalism exemplified an “us” juxtaposed against “them,” psychological disposition that allows for the distinction between “in groups” and “out groups.” Referring to their depictions in literature, Said described “Oriental” persons as “inveterate liars… ‘lethargic and suspicious’ and in everything [they] oppose the clarity, directness, and nobility of the Anglo-Saxon race.” Orientalism portrayed the Orient as inferior to the West and the West as the finer region with a superior race of people and ideology. Said writes, if “the Orient is irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, ‘different,’” then “the European is rational, virtuous, mature, normal.’” The oppressive tone the West held over the Orient contributed to the West’s superiority complex over the Orient. This establishes the West as the cultural standard of the world. If a nation or region does not hold similar Western values, that region is therefore culturally inferior to the West. However, Said states in his essay, “Orientalism… is not the same as Islamophobia. It has paved the way for it and, indeed, perhaps Islamophobia is the heir to Orientalism. In the 1990s, Islamophobia began replacing Orientalism as the primary target of this manufactured “Otherness.”” Although Orientalism and Islamophobia differ, Orientalism represents significant historical context that illustrates the relationship between the West and the East. During the 1980s and 1990s, the focus on “Arabs” as the Other group began to transform to “Muslims” in the West.
Orientalism paved the way for Islamophobia
Immigrant and Muslim categories overlap in Western Europe in a way that Islam is seen as foreign. In the UK and France, Muslim populations began arriving in the middle of the 20th century largely from former colonies. This increase in migration led to a predominantly South Asian ethnicity in the UK and a North African ethnicity in France. In Germany, the influx of “guest workers” during the postwar economic boom, mainly from Turkey, began the Muslim community. In the Netherlands, immigration of guest workers led to a majority Moroccan and Turkish population of Muslims. The immigration of different Muslim populations to these Western countries, allowed for natives from these nations to begin to associate these immigrant population with Muslims. This is similar to the situation in the United States, where Americans often think of Muslims as Arabs. These racial groups are often symbolized as representations of Muslim people. In France, scholars study Muslims as immigrant populations, rather than Muslims. Because of this, scholars do not commonly use the term “Islamophobia” to study this form of discrimination. Many scholars believe Islamophobia is “imprecisely applied to very diverse phenomena, ranging from xenophobia to anti-terrorism.” Because Muslims in Western nations are often associated with immigrant populations, it can be beneficial to study Islamophobia through this framework. Islamophobia, in this case, is a form of xenophobia: a fear of the unknown. After 9/11, however, in much of the Western world, attention shifted from ethnicity to religion (Arab or South Asian became Muslim). Fear translated in the West and influenced American perceptions of Muslims. The thought process of Islamophobia reflected the idea that, as explained by Andrew Shryock in Islamophobia/Islamophilia, “there are too many of them [Muslims] in my proximity or ‘my’ country,” which is similar to neo-nazi’s fear that “‘we’ will become like ‘them’ and the ‘White’ race will no longer exist.” This reflects the logic of racism and explains how Islam can be commonly viewed as foreign in the West. Author Myfanwy Franks discerns that wearing hijab can be viewed as “very un-British.” She observed this when one white Muslim woman told Franks that when wearing a hijab on a train in the UK, she was asked by another woman where she was from, she “felt almost obliged to claim to be foreign.” In this case, “very un-British” can be translated as not “white” enough and foreign in relation to the UK. Researcher Kate Zebiri also conducted interviews between 2005 and 2006 of British Muslim converts. A white English woman, wearing hijab, revealed to Zebiri that she was once told to “go back to [her] tent” and called a “bloody Arab.” The English woman was perceived as an Arab because she wore hijab, despite her European physical features. This illustrates how Islam is racialized as a religion.
Consequences of cultural racism
People are subject to Islamophobia through racial profiling. US government officials, representatives, and media figures supported racial profiling and mass internment as solutions to “Islamic extremism” post-9/11. The Immigration and the Department of Justice requested the presence of 8,000 documented Muslims, mostly from Arab countries, for interviews. These “interviews” resulted in the expulsion of thousands of these foreigners. The US government targeted people that had migrated from Arab nations, specifically. Therefore, the Immigration and the Department of Justice often assumed that the immigrants were Muslim and associated with terrorism since they were Arab. Profiling in US airports is another example of discrimination against Muslims that is often defended on the basis of the belief that it is possible to identify a Muslim based on outward appearance, including skin color. In reference to airport security procedures, Sam Harris, a philosopher and critic of Islam, says, “We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it.” The only way to profile people who “could conceivably be Muslim” is to do so through racial profiling. It is difficult to target an ideology, such as Islam, because of its discreteness; however, it is possible to target people based on their physical characteristics, which are explicit. Many Muslims are not identifiable physically, unless they wear hijab; however, that it is only a small portion of a large demographic. Therefore, airport security guards exhibit cultural racism toward those of South Asian and Arab descent in order to identify Muslims. The West engages in racial profiling against those that fit the Western characterization of Muslim people.
Non-Muslims are often mistaken as Muslims and are subject to Islamophobia due to the West’s racialized image of Muslims. Four days after the September 11 attacks, Balbir Singh Sodhi was killed by Frank Roque in Mesa, Arizona. Sodhi was Sikh and subsequently wore a turban. Before the murder, Roque told customers at a bar that he planned on killing “the ragheads” behind the terrorist attacks in New York. Roque mistook Sodhi as a Muslim because of Roque’s misconception of how Muslims should physically appear. The media televised Al-Qaeda, a terrorist group based in the Middle East with members that often wore turbans and had dark features, as responsible for the attacks. This may have influenced Roque’s perception of Muslims and allowed Roque to interpret Sodhi’s turban along with his brown skin as an indication of a follower of Islam, thus indicating Roque’s racialized perception of Muslim people. Likewise, Chaldean churches and mosques are both vandalized and receive similar variations of Islamophobia hate mail. Chaldean people originate from North Mesopotamia and follow Catholicism. Although the outside of their churches presents visible crosses, an indication of Christianity, Chaldeans are subject to Islamophobia due to the conflation of race and religion in the West. Chaldean Catholics have migrated from the Middle East, and therefore have Arab features. In this case, their ideologies were overlooked despite their physical characteristics. Non-Muslims are mistaken as Muslims due to the hyper-racialization that exists in American society.
Conversely, the West does not immediately recognize African and black Muslims as representatives of Islam because they are not Arab nor south Asian. Researcher Kate Zebiri conducted interviews between 2005 and 2006 with British Muslim converts. The interviewees were to report the discrimination that they had faced. A black man found that when he wore the qamis, a traditional gown in Islam, people assumed that his clothing was African rather than Islamic. Although he faced racial discrimination, he did not believe he had faced any discrimination based on his Islamic faith. This illustrates the idea of the way in which much of the West believes Islam is stagnant or monolithic. Muslims in the West are stereotyped as originating from the Middle East or South Asia. Because the interviewee did not appear to be from either region, those around him assumed his Islamic clothing was in fact, not in relation to Islam. For this reason, the man did not face any identifiable Islamophobia, despite his Muslim identity. The West utilizes an oversimplified stereotype of Muslim people in order to identify Muslims.
Media stereotypes
The dehumanization of Arabs in Hollywood has contributed to Islamophobic feelings in the West. Since the 19th century, filmmakers have portrayed Arabs as barbaric, uncivilized religious fanatics and cultural “Others” that encourage the of tormenting Westerners. Jack Shaheen, author of the book Reel Bad Arabs, The TV Arab and Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American Popular Culture, reviewed over 900 feature films, only a few of these films portrayed Arabs as the protagonist. Each of the other films depicted Arab men in a stereotypical manner, usually as villains and womanizing sheikhs. However, these Orientalist devices in films generally did not focus on Muslims or Islam. The fact that a particular villain in a film was Muslim was secondary to the Arab background of the villain. These Orientalist tropes focused on the villains’ “Arabness” as opposed to their religion. These stereotypes of Arabs, such as cultural “Others,” or uncivilized terrorists, represented in films closely reflect stereotypes of Muslim people. This allows for the notion that all Arabs are Muslims to be further solidified in the West. Shaheen argued that viewers internalized these stereotypes through constant repetition. The animated film Aladdin, which was released in 1992 by Disney, also exhibits “racist ideology…in racially coded language and accents” (Giroux 2004:175). The original “Arabian Nights” song included in the film describes the culture of the Middle East in a racist manner. The song is sung with a thick Arab accent and states, “Oh, I come from a land- from a faraway place-…Where they cut off your ear- if they don’t like your face. It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” This emphasis of barbarism is similar to the Orientalist depiction of Arabs as violent and uncivilized. Because Islam has become so closely associated with “Arabness” through the number of films before Aladdin, this particular film allows for another case of repetition of this same barbaric stereotype of Arabs and Muslims to be further ingrained into the Western psyche. An Arab proverb states, “Al tikrar biallem il hmar. By repetition even the donkey learns.” Audiences will apply their interpretations of the films to their knowledge of Muslims generally, especially when there is a common stereotyped depiction of Muslims.
The racialized image of Muslims causes Westerners to mistake other racial groups with Arabs. In February of 2007, political cartoonist Paul Conrad drew a man wearing a ghutra, holding a poppy, and saying “Allah Akbar.” He intended to criticize the Taliban’s support in the cultivation of Afghan opium, because the group’s support contradicts Islam’s guidance against the use of drugs. However, his cartoon misses the mark due to the fact that Afghans do not wear ghutras, Arabs do. Conrad confused Afghans with Arabs, demonstrating how the West oversimplifies Muslims as a monolithic group of people in order to aid in their understanding of Muslims. Consequently, when Westerners use their schemas of the modern stereotype of Muslims, as in this case, this allows for the conflation of race and religion. Political cartoonists also utalize the bodies of Arabs as symbols to characterize Muslims. In another instance, Jeff Danziger portrays the Taliban, who are mostly Pashtun, using Arab symbols. He draws the Taliban men wearing Arab keffiyeh and qamis, opposite from what most Pashtun men wear. Danziger does this in spite of the fact that Pashtun is an Iranian ethnic group who mainly live in Pakistan and Afghanistan. “The underlying presumption is that Pashtun Muslims dress as all Muslims dress-as the stereotyped Arab.” Because the Taliban claims Islam, they are lumped together with all Arabs. In this case, “Arab” has become “Muslim,” and the two identities are used as if they are the same. Since Arabs are stereotyped as terrorists because of cultural racism, Muslims are also depicted as terrorists. In the West, the line between Muslims and Arabs is often blurred.
The depiction of Muslims in political cartoons contributes to Islamophobia and the cultural racism of brown people in the same manner that Orientalist films have shaped Islamophobia as well. Glenn McCoy drew his depiction of the man responsible for the 9/11 hijackings in his cartoon, “There’s been some sort of mix-up…” The turban and unkempt beard in the cartoon do not resemble photographs of the alleged terrorists in newspapers, which displayed the men as bare-headed and cleanly shaven or with trimmed facial hair. McCoy portrayed the stereotyped image of the appearance of a Muslim created by Western racism and Islamophobia. McCoy’s cartoon contributes to the narrative that Muslims are a monolithic group of people that look a specific way. The way in which Westerners depict Muslims is often with stereotypical Arab, or South Asian features, such as brown skin, exaggerated noses, and facial hair. It also adds to the continuous stereotype in the media that Muslim men are hypermasculine and unruly. These culturally racist depictions of Muslims allow for the widespread fear and hostility toward Muslims to grow and further fuel Islamophobia.
Conclusion: The relevance of Islamophobia
Islamophobia is a product of cultural racism that endangers and disadvantages Muslims and non-Muslims who “look Muslim” alike. Although Islamophobic acts in contemporary Western society can be explicit or violent, such as verbal and physical attacks on Muslims or Muslim properties, some can also be subtle as well, which can range from staring to denial of access to goods and services. Since Islamophobia is so ingrained in the Western psyche and normalized, subtle Islamophobic acts can often go unnoticed or unaddressed. However, subtle acts of Islamophobia contribute to this social phenomenon in a similar fashion as hate crimes.
Islamophobia has been on the rise since the 9/11 attacks in the United States. The European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) published the first substantial report after 9/11, titled Summary Report on Islamophobia in the EU after 11 September 2001, discussing acts of discrimination against Muslims in fifteen EU member countries. The report communicated that “Islamic communities and other vulnerable groups have become targets of increased hostility since 11 September. A greater sense of fear among the general population has exacerbated already existing prejudices and fuelled acts of aggression and harassment in many European member states. At the same time, attempts to allay fears sometimes led to a new interest in Islamic culture and to practical interfaith initiatives.” This sense of overall fear in the West has greatly contributed to the rise of hate crimes against Muslims. In the US, the FBI recorded 481 incidents of hate crimes against Muslims and Muslim “look-alikes” post-9/11. Human Rights Watch also noted that these hate crimes increased 1700 percent in comparison to pre-9/11 levels. The trend has decreased since then; however, it never returned to pre-9/11 levels. Additionally, the FBI statistics only include incidents reported to the authorities or to the FBI. It is possible that there have been significantly more hate crimes reported.
The West has made efforts to address this hostility toward Muslims. Both the European Union and the United Nations alike have formed conferences to combat Islamophobia, ranging from international councils (Organization of the Islamic Conference, to national (Council on American-Islamic Relations), to thousands of regional and municipality-based Muslim associations throughout Western countries. These councils share the goal of including Muslims in Western societies, both as individuals and groups of people. Although strides have been made to confront Islamophobia, the aim to completely dissolve this social phenomenon in the West is difficult to address. Questions still remain; how does an entire demographic of the world unlearn a mentality that has been deeply ingrained in their psyche? The difficulty with addressing Islamophobia is that it is a racialized concept. Racialization in the US affects all of its inhabitants because each person belongs to a racial category. This racialization builds the foundation for Islamophobia in the West.