Islamophobia in higher education environments

Abstract

AbstractIslamophobia is a reality facing Muslim college students daily on and off campus. In this chapter, I highlight Islamophobia in higher education environments and explore its structural and interactional manifestations. I provide practical recommendations to address institutional and interpersonal Islamophobia and specify how campus educators can work to respond to and prevent Islamophobic incidents. I also make policy recommendations to respond to the hostility toward Muslims in the national discourse. Finally, I outline future frontiers for higher education research, such as the need to account for the complexity of the Muslim identity and its intersections and the need to distinguish Islamophobia from Muslim appreciation through empirical measurement. Future directions in higher education should take on the responsibility of responding to Islamophobia and eradicating its hold on Muslim lives.Practical Takeaways Colleges and universities should critically examine their infrastructures and policies concerning accommodating the religious needs of Muslim students. Each campus should have an academic accommodations policy that specifies how students may go about requesting an accommodation for religious reasons. This policy should be explicitly stated in syllabi, websites, and orientation materials. Institutional leadership should explicitly commit to countering religious‐based hate, including Islamophobia, through policies that condemn such forms of hate and outline specific means of responding to incidents when they occur. A proactive effort to counter hate on campus requires knowledge of the structures in place to utilize these resources when needed and to identify areas for improvement. Educators should create programs and opportunities that promote interactions across religious, spiritual, and secular (RSS) identities and must offer the time, resources, and effort to support formalized campus activities that foreground interfaith engagement. Educators should proactively create spaces for these encounters and incorporate these opportunities into campus architecture and the required programming (e.g., orientation). In the face of a national movement to eliminate, ban, or otherwise weaken diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) resources on college campuses, religious accommodations must be codified in both state and federal laws and guidelines to create consistency across states and a standard of how universities could actively work to create a welcoming environment for all.