Islamophobia, “Clash of Civilizations”, and Forging a Post-Cold War Order!

Hatem Bazian

doi:10.3390/rel9090282

Abstract

Islamophobia, as a problem, is often argued to be a rational choice by the stereotypical media coverage of Islam and Muslims, even though it points to the symptom rather than the root cause. Islamophobia reemerges in public discourses and part of state policies in the post-Cold War period and builds upon latent Islamophobia that is sustained in the long history of Orientalist and stereotypical representation of Arabs, Muslims, and Islam itself. The book What is Islamophobia? Racism, Social Movements and the State, edited by Narzanin Massoumi, Tom Mills, and David Miller offers a unique contribution to how best to define and locate the problem of demonizing Islam and Muslims in the contemporary period. The three scholars provide a more critical and structural approach to the subject by offering what they call the “five pillars of Islamophobia”, which are the following: (1) the institutions and machinery of the state; (2) the far-right, incorporating the counter-jihad movement; (3) the neoconservative movement; (4) the transnational Zionist movement; and (5) the assorted liberal groupings including the pro-war left and the new atheist movement. The UK-based research group correctly situates Islamophobia within existing power structures and examines the forces that consciously produce anti-Muslim discourses, the Islamophobia industry, within a broad political agenda rather than the singular focus on the media. Islamophobia emerges from the “Clash of Civilizations” ideological warriors and not merely as a problem of media stereotyping, representation, and over-emphasis on the Muslim subject. In this article, I maintain that Islamophobia is an ideological construct that emerges in the post-Cold War era with the intent to rally the Western world and the American society at a moment of perceived fragmentation after the collapse of the Soviet Union in a vastly and rapidly changing world system. Islamophobia, or the threat of Islam, is the ingredient, as postulated in Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” thesis that is needed to affirm the Western self-identify after the end of the Cold War and a lack of a singular threat or purpose through which to define, unify, and claim the future for the West. Thus, Islamophobia is the post-Cold War ideology to bring about a renewed purpose and crafting of the Western and American self.

Highlights

The antecedent to contemporary Islamophobia repertoire maybe traced to early medieval Christian representation of Islam, Prophet Muhammad and the Qur’an, which at the time was part of the Church’s attempt at providing an explanation for the rapid rise of the new religion and loss of territories
While this early period is important, I am hesitant and careful not to use the term Islamophobia to refer to or describe the early formative period of Islam and its relations with the Byzantine and Persian Empires, on the one hand, and the rapid Muslim expansion into territories that up to that point belonged to both powers
Arjana’s book is not directly interrogating Islamophobia as the main theme but rather examining the long entanglement of Western discourses with a constructed image of a Muslim and Islam monster that serves as the locus for fear and resultant demonization, a much-needed aspect to mobilizing political projects of self-defense and military campaigns

Summary

Introduction

From Proto-Islamophobia to the Cold WarThe antecedent to contemporary Islamophobia repertoire maybe traced to early medieval Christian representation of Islam, Prophet Muhammad and the Qur’an, which at the time was part of the Church’s attempt at providing an explanation for the rapid rise of the new religion and loss of territories. Islamophobia, or the threat of Islam, is the ingredient, as postulated in Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” thesis that is needed to affirm the Western self-identify after the end of the Cold War and a lack of a singular threat or purpose through which to define, unify, and claim the future for the West.

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Conclusion