COCHIN, 27 September 2006 — The word Islamophobia was first formulated in 1991 and was defined as “unfounded hostility toward Islam, and therefore fear or dislike of all or most Muslims.” Islamophobia was coined by way of an analogy to the word “xenophobia.” Its employment involves distinguishing between unfounded (mad) antipathy of Islam on the one hand and reasoned disagreement or criticism on the other. It refers also to the practical consequences of such hostility in unfair discrimination, prejudice and less favorable treatment against Muslim individuals and communities, and to the exclusion of Muslims from mainstream political and social affair.
The word Islamophobia has been coined because there is a new reality which needs naming - anti-Muslim prejudice has grown so considerably and so rapidly in recent years that a new item in the vocabulary is needed so that it can be identified and acted against. Islamophobia is the fear and/or abhorrence of Islam, Muslims or Islamic culture. It can be characterized by the belief that all or most Muslims are religious fanatics, have violent tendencies toward non-Muslims, and reject as directly opposed to Islam such concepts as equality, and tolerance.
During the 1990s many sociologists and cultural analysts observed a shift in racist ideas from ones based on skin color to ones based on notions of cultural superiority and otherness. Islamophobia is a form of racism whereby Muslims - a religious group - not a race, are considered as a race. A set of negative assumptions is made of the entire group, and therefore Muslims are discriminated against by Westerners. Given the strong association between Arabs and the religion of Islam, Islamophobia is often expressed as a form of anti-Arab racism, though not all Arabs are Muslim and the majority of Muslims are non-Arabs. Despite the fact that Muslims both in the Muslim world and in the West have been fervent in their denunciation of 9/11, the collective responsibility still burdens them.
There is a political reason for the widespread demonization of Islam. With the collapse of the Soviet Union it would seem that fundamentalist Islam has replaced expansionist communism as the new and venomous enemy that threatens life, liberty and property in the so-called free world. It is as if the old threat has re-emerged, but in Islamic form. Religious Bolsheviks have simply replaced secular Bolsheviks as the enemy hell-bent on destroying liberal democracy and capitalism, and “Das Kapital” has given way to the Qur’an as the ideological combat material. In effect a new “Green Menace” has replaced the old “Red” one.
It has been brilliantly argued by Edward Said that the denigration of Islamic civilization associated with Islamophobia is central to the concept of Western Civilization. The ousting and marginalizing of Islam marks the debut of “Western Civilization” and, thus, explains the depth and longevity of Western Islamophobia. Said writes, “Islam was a provocation in many ways. It lay uneasily close to Christianity, geographically and culturally. It drew on the Judeo-Hellenic traditions.”
We live in the age of information and it is the media that interprets and filters information. Thus whoever controls the media controls us because they control information, and those who control information control knowledge. And knowledge is power. If knowledge is power then those who control the modern Western media are most powerful because they determine what we should know and what we must not know about ourselves. When we talk about global media we are in fact using a misnomer as no such global media exist. It is only a synonym for the torrential flow of news from the West to the East. The names of the media companies that crop up in our mind are uniformly American and European. Although the Western media claims to be impartial, liberal, free and objective; in reality it is biased, subjective, illiberal, insensitive and intolerant. It does not want you to question because it wants you to accept it as the truth. It does not want you to know because it wants to control you. It is the Zionist influenced media of the West, which has portrayed Islam to be something that it is not.
The uncontrolled use of stereotypes in the entertainment industry has a controlling impact on how ordinary moviegoers come to perceive hundreds of millions of people of Middle Eastern and Asian decent. Thus, derision is added to an already blur and bleak perception of Islam in the West. The media have been the primary contributors to an erroneous image of Islam by stereotyping all Muslims as being terrorists. The narrative of political, militant Islam, produced and sustained by an enormous network of writers, policy makers, journalists, and speakers, is no less damaging and dangerous than their counterparts in the entertainment world. This narrative relegates the word “Islam” to political and military confrontation and has the weakening effect of reducing the Muslim world to a subcategory of the Middle East conflict. Ironically, or perhaps we should say tragically, many people in Europe and America turn to Islam as a way of understanding the causes of the Middle East conflict. Jack Shaheen, the great media expert, concludes that from the late 1960s into the new century, Arabs and Muslims were the only group for whom it was socially acceptable to attach negative stereotypes on television and in the movies.
The expression of anti-Muslim ideas and sentiments is increasingly respectable. They are becoming a natural, taken-for-granted ingredient of the commonsense world of millions of people every day. Even organizations and individuals, known for their liberalism and anti-racism, most often express prejudice against Islam and Muslims. We rarely, if ever, called the IRA bombings “Catholic” terrorism because we knew enough to realize that this was not essentially a religious campaign. Indeed, like the Irish republican movement, many fundamentalist movements worldwide are simply new forms of nationalism in a highly unorthodox religious guise.
Islamophobia inhibits the development of a just society, characterized by social inclusion and cultural diversity. For it is a steady source of threat and distress to Western Muslims and implies that they do not have equal rights as other citizens. Islamophobia increases the probability of serious social disorder, with consequent high costs for the financial system and for the justice system. It prevents Muslims and non-Muslims from cooperating appropriately on the joint diagnosis and solution of major shared problems, for example problems relating to urban poverty and deprivation. Islamophobia means that much talent is wasted. This is not good for wealth creation and the economy, and bad for international trade. Islamophobia makes it more difficult for mainstream voices and influences within Muslim communities to be expressed and heard. Further, it prevents non-Muslims from appreciating and benefiting from Islam’s cultural, artistic and intellectual heritage, and from its moral teachings. Similarly it inhibits Muslim appreciation of cultural achievements in the non-Muslim world and thereby endangering pluralism. Relentless Islamophobia in the media means that juvenile Muslims develop a sense of cultural inferiority and lose confidence both in themselves and in their parents. They tend then to “dropout” and may be readily influenced by extremist groups, which seem to give them a strong sense of identity. In consequence many Muslims are driven into the hands of extremists, and imbibe extremist opinions.
