Islamophobia in Portugal, Beyond the National Register

Abstract

The relationship between Islam and Portugal is intimately tied to processes of national formation and diverse in terms of the key protagonists, historical periods, and political conjunctures that it evokes – hence it is particularly suited for the contextualised study of Islamophobia. Drawing on a larger European study, and specifically on discourse analysis and empirical research on the Portuguese context, this article examines, on the one hand, narratives on Muslims and Islam circulating in the academic literature and in cyberspace (2000–20); on the other, different expressions of Islamophobia – individual and institutional (Sayyid 2014a): i) a case of mosque vandalism and practices of media reporting; ii) concerns regarding educational equality raised by research participants, namely regarding school organisation and history teaching. Engaging with the intrinsic instability of the category Muslim – across historical junctures, political contexts, and academic disciplines – this article calls for an engagement with Islamophobia beyond the national register (Vakil 2010), revealing how the wider circulation of public discourse and interventions constrains the possibility of articulating Muslim political subjectivities.