Muslims as Victims of Security Dilemma in the West

Abstract

Islam is the second largest religion after Christianity in the world, and Muslims are the fastest-growing ethnocultural minority communities in the Western world. However, Muslims, especially living in Western countries, have increasingly become the victim of a contemporary form of racism and xenophobia—that is Islamophobia. Survey reports conducted across Western nations have underlined the fact that a significant number of respondents are critical of the Muslim minority community and that this negative trend poses a challenge for these Muslim minorities’ ethnocultural freedom and equality. Today, mainstream Muslims in the West are victims of both Islamic State of Iraq and Syria-like terrorism and Islamophobics. Within this context, this study analyses the causal relationship between the West’s sense of insecurity and Islamophobia through the lens of the realist concept of security dilemma using a qualitative approach.