Islamophobic Discourse Research Articles

Indian Islamophobia as Racism

AbstractTo date, analyses of ‘cultural racism’ or ‘neoracism’ have largely been oriented towards Western countries, where the pattern of discrimination at issue remains linked to perceptions of phenotypical characteristics. In India, by contrast, there are no physical markers of difference between Muslims and other social groups. Nonetheless, Islamophobia in India should be described as a form of racism, given the history of the term and its normative implications. Within Indian Islamophobic discourses, the Muslim ‘type’ functions much like racial types within European anti‐semitism. In addition, the disadvantaged social location of Indian Muslims resembles that of African Americans in significant respects. The label matters because it also offers a diagnosis and prescribes remedies. For legal, moral and political purposes, viewing the situation of Indian Muslims through the lens of racism points to solutions different from the ones the Indian state has implemented under the aegis of secularism.

Dealing with Islamophobia: Expanding religious engagement to civic engagement among the Indonesian Muslim community in Australia

The increasing Islamophobia in the Western world is worsened not only by global political issues but also by the stance of Muslims, who are perceived as exclusive and ethnocentric, particularly in the Australian context. This article outlines the strategies used by Indonesian Muslims in Australia to deal with the Islamophobic discourse, namely enhancing religious engagement to enhance solidarity and social cohesion between them and increasing civic engagement as an assimilation attempt with Australians. Religious engagement is carried out through enhancing Islamic lecture activities to promote a more moderate and open understanding of Islam. Meanwhile, civic engagement activities included increasing social involvement as a form of community service, collaborating more with other communities as a form of collective action, jointly proposing political policies as a form of political involvement, and working with Australians to create a better future as manifestations of civic engagement in the context of social change.Contribution: Although Islamophobia is mostly a political issue, the Indonesian Muslim community in Australia views it as a chance to open up and demonstrate to the Australian community that they can work together in a broader kind of civic engagement.

Islamophobic and counter-Islamophobic YouTube representations of the British Muslim Communities

Based on David Gauntlett’s Web 2.0 approach of media audiences, this article argues that while Islamophobic discourses may be hegemonic in the British media in general, and the online media in particular, counter-Islamophobic ones have real potentials to subvert the anti-Muslims hegemony in contemporary Britain. Online media users, both as producers and consumers of mass-mediated representations, are empowered to blur the boundaries between the real and the virtual spaces in the construction of different conceptions of their own identities as well as of those of the others. To this end, comparatively, the comments of the users of two YouTube videos are analyzed and critically appraised to identify how they prosumed the different representations of Muslim communities of/in Britain. It is suggested that YouTube users contribute, from their respective subject positions, to the construction of diverse conceptualizations of their own identities and those of others as well. Their prosumed representations both entrench and defy a hierarchy of Islamophobic and Islamophallic images of Islam and Muslims in contemporary multicultural Britain.

Tweeting #RemoveKebab: A Critical Study of the Far Right’s Islamophobic Hate Hashtag on Twitter

Background: To contribute to research on the transnational far right, Islamophobia, and social media platforms, this article interrogates the far right’s practice of using Twitter to produce and circulate a #removekebab hashtag. Analysis: The accounts behind the words and images of 100 #removekebab tweets are analyzed to show how they communicate the transnational far right’s hateful Islamophobic discourse. Conclusion and implications: The far right’s #removekebab tweets dehumanize Muslims, tacitly call for genocide against Muslims, and rationalize this violence by stereotyping Muslims as a collective threat to the West.

An intersectional feminist response to the UK government’s Violence Against Women and Girls 2021–2024 Strategy consultation

This article summarises our review of and response to the UK government’s public consultation process on the 2021–2024 Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy. From an intersectional feminist perspective, we identify methodological, ethical and conceptual limitations to the consultation process, highlighting that a heavy focus on criminalisation risks compounding barriers for those seeking support or justice as it does not engage with the lived experiences of those who experience violence. Examples of violence in the public survey released for consultation were underpinned by racist and Islamophobic discourse, constructing Othered groups of people as violent by drawing on sensationalised and racialised forms of violence. In response, we provide recommendations and considerations for strategy reform, and for those working and researching in the VAWG sector.

The Islamophobia Index: Exploring the Challenges in Establishing Reliability for a Content Analysis Instrument Evaluating Islamophobia in Media Texts

In a wide variety of studies over the past two decades, the media has consistently been identified as a significant social institution implicated in normalizing and disseminating anti-Muslim prejudice. Identifying and combating Islamophobic discourses has been a challenging proposition, however, due to difficulties in systematically identifying and evaluating “Islamophobia” within texts. Islamophobia is a complex and contested phenomenon that defies easy classification within the boundaries of terminology which would normally be employed to describe hostility or prejudice based on, for example, race or religion. This article outlines some of the challenges involved in defining and categorizing Islamophobic discourses through an exploration of the process of constructing, evaluating, and applying a unique content analysis instrument, the “Islamophobia Index,” to media texts, using data sets drawn from the Australian news media. We critically reflect upon the methodological limitations of systematic quantitative studies, the importance of qualitative and interpretive approaches that take into account researcher subjectivities, and ultimately reposition and repurpose this project as a mixed-method study. In conclusion, potential applications for the Index, including non-media textual analysis, are considered.

Taboos as a Cultural Cleavage Between Muslim Immigrants and Secular Western Publics: Bridging the Gaps by Viewing Integration as a Two-Way Process

A taboo is an activity that is forbidden or sacred based on religious beliefs or morals. Taboos are usually culturally specific. That which may be discussed or done in one culture (incest, abortion, out of wedlock pregnancy, forced marriage, same-sex-marriage, legalizing drugs, etc.) may be highly taboo in another culture. Arab and Islamic societies are strongly religious in their values, while in comparison most Western countries are almost always more secular, and hence religion is represented as a barrier that seems to hamper the integration and inclusion of Muslim minorities into Western societies, an element that poses a challenge to the Western lifestyle and may even encourage the legitimacy of public Islamophobic discourses. So, to what extent do Muslim immigrants carry their cultural practices with them, including taboos, and to what extent do they integrate into Western countries, where civic laws have replaced religious sanctions when taboos are broken? The knowledge of taboos and the ability to deal with them is one of the keys to successful integration as a two-way process between Muslim immigrants and the receiving society.

Gendered Islamophobia: The nature of Hindu and Buddhist nationalism in India and Sri Lanka

AbstractThis article explores the gendered nature of Hindu and Buddhist nationalism in India and Sri Lanka. Nationalist movements have become increasingly prevalent in both countries and frequently rely upon Islamophobic discourse centred around a fear of Muslim expansionism. Specifically, nationalists in each country frame their concerns through a gendered lens concerning Muslim fertility vis‐à‐vis Hindus and Buddhists, religious intermarriage of Muslim men with Hindu/Buddhist women, and the securitization of Muslim women’s clothing choices. Femonationalist rhetoric has also increasingly been utilized by Hindu and Buddhist nationalists to frame Muslim women as victims of Islam’s patriarchal structures and in need of saving by Hindus and Buddhists. This article draws upon original field research in India and Sri Lanka, including interviews with Hindu and Buddhist nationalist groups, their leaders, and Muslim minorities and organizations.

Institutionalised Islamophobia Before Prevent

With little exception, across the breadth of literature addressing the implementation of the CTSA (Counter terrorism and Security Act 2015) in British universities, a distinct narrative predominates. Herein, the imposition of Counter-Terror state measures are articulated as interrupting the liberal egalitarianism of universities, sites characterized as free of racialized regulation. I argue that this body of critique unwittingly submerges the historically racialized character of universities and in particular, the sectors own production of the ‘transgressive fundamentalist Muslim student subject.’
 Grounded in empirical research (2004–5) and historical/document analysis of the nineties, I address this lacuna by charting a series of junctures which illuminate how one aspect of Islamophobic discourse in the sector, centering on the figure of the ‘fundamentalist’ has previously been institutionalized and harnessed to Islamophobic effect. I elucidate how this aspect of Muslim student histories can be identified as a formative period that cohere with prevailing narratives of securitization and surveillance.
 Framed through a decolonial perspective, it is argued that dominant characterizations of state imposition in the sector does not represent a radical disjuncture from (pre-)existing discourses associated with ‘Muslim students.’ Rather, in troubling the neo-liberal university as a-priori racialised, it is argued that Prevent has (e)merged into an existing regime of racialised ‘post’-disciplinary power.

Yeni Medya ve İdeoloji: Netflix Yapımı Dizilere Althusser’ci Bir Yaklaşım

The concept of ideology, which is generally defined over negative meanings such as 'biased/false consciousness' and 'distorted communication', is directly associated with the power domain. Ruling owners actively use the media to reproduce their own ideology. In other words, if the power cannot represent itself in ideological fields, it cannot guarantee its existence. The media is considered one of the important devices spreading the ideology of power through society. For this reason, those who own the means of production reproduce their ideologies through the media. In the rapidly digitalizing world, the power strives to have a presence in the new media environment as in the traditional media. New media, which has an interaction-based, user-oriented structure, increases its influence every day all over the world in line with the rapid development and dissemination of technology and draws attention with its feature of being an area where individual and social participation is concentrated. The aim of this study which focuses on the relationship between power, ideology and media is to unearth the implicit meaning of Netflix's original content, the global digital streaming platform, which is an ISA from Althusser's point of view. In this context, the concept of ideology and Althusser's theses on ideology were emphasized in this study, and the structure and strategy of Netflix were presented. In line with the purpose of the study, the original Netflix production 'Designated Survivor' and 'Messiah' series, which have a high IMDB score, have a close theme, present an ideological plot, and are the subject of controversy in the media in this respect, were selected. The first episodes of the series at hand were examined by the method of the critical discourse analysis method. In the study, it was observed that the ideology of America and current political issues were re-produced with the established discourses through Netflix, which is the global digital broadcasting platform. It has been determined that American values are glorified in both series examined in this context and that 'enemy' and 'terrorist' representations come forth through Islamophobic discourses.

Dismantling the Deadlock: Australian Muslim Women’s Fightback against the Rise of Right-Wing Media

In Australia, as in other multicultural countries, the global Islamophobic discourse linking Muslims to terrorists to refugees results in the belief of an “enemy within”, which fractures the public sphere. Muslim minorities learn to distrust mainstream media as the global discourse manifests in localised right-wing discussion. This fracturing was further compounded in 2020 with increased media concentration and polarisation. In response, 12 young Australian Muslim women opened themselves up to four journalists working for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). They engaged in critical journalism research called Frame Reflection Interviews (FRIs). The process gave journalists important knowledge around the power dynamics of Islamophobia and empowered participants to help shape new media discourses tackling Islamophobia. This paper proposes that the FRIs are one method to rebuild trust in journalism while redistributing risk towards the journalists. These steps are necessary to build a normatively cosmopolitan global public sphere capable of breaking the discursive link between refugees and terrorism and fighting back against the rise of the far right.

Trump and Muslims: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Islamophobic Rhetoric in Donald Trump’s Selected Tweets

The emergence of Donald Trump as an anti-Muslim-Islam presidential candidate and victory over Hillary Clinton is an issue of debate and division in the United States’ political sphere. Many commentators and political pundits criticize Trump for his disparaging rhetoric on Twitter and present him as an example of how Twitter can be an effective tool for the construction and extension of political polarization. The current study analyzes the selected tweets by Donald Trump posted on Twitter to unmask how he uses language to construct Islamophobic discourse structures and attempts to form his ideological structures along with. The researchers hypothesize that Islamophobia is a marked feature of Trump’s political career realized by specific rhetorical and discursive devices. Therefore, the study purposively takes 40 most controversial tweets of Donald Trump against Islam and Muslims and carried out a critical discourse analysis with the help of macro-strategies of the discourse given by Wodak and Meyer and van Dijk’s referential strategies of political discourse. The findings reveal that Trump uses language rhetorically to exclude people of different ethnic identities, especially Muslims, through demagogic language to create a difference of “us” vs. “them” and making in this way “America Great Again”.

Sharía e identidad musulmana. Una pareja bien avenida

Este artículo examina los vínculos existentes entre sharía e identidad en algunas sociedades mayoritariamente musulmanas, así como los debates en los espacios públicos y las manifestaciones en defensa de la aplicación de la legislación islámica. Analiza igualmente el recurso a la sharía por parte de diferentes actores sociopolíticos, incluidos regímenes árabes en determinadas coyunturas, al igual que su inclusión en discursos abiertamente islamófobos en sociedades occidentales con presencia de minorías musulmanas.

Islamophobic Discourse of Czech Politicians and Political Parties on Twitter during the 2015 Migration Crisis

Abstract This article focuses on the manifestations of Islamophobia of Czech politicians and political parties on the social networking service Twitter during the 2015 migration crisis. It utilizes the securitization theory of Copenhagen school as a theoretical framework, and through content analysis of relevant tweets aims to provide more data on what role Islamophobia played in the securitization of incoming migrants. We find that although securitization, and much more politicization, of migrants took place, obvious Islamophobia, similar to the one of the Czech Islamophobic movement, happened only in some cases. A number of those politicians who politicized or migrants and Islam usually raised their voices against radical Islamophobes.

Islamophobia and French academia

The aim of this article is to study the French academic controversy related to Islamophobia. It raises the general question of the autonomy of social sciences in relation to the political-media field and the capacity of researchers to be reflexive and to distance themselves from the mainstream Islamophobic discourse. Drawing on the publications produced by French academics about Islamophobia, the article first analyses the space of controversy, showing that it does not take place in the central social science journals but on their periphery, or even outside the academic field. It then focuses attention on the logic of avoiding the (rare) French accounts on Islamophobia, which not only results in a timid academic disputatio but also in a disqualification of the concept of Islamophobia that mobilizes arguments similar to political-media discourses. The tension between factual judgement and value judgement is also analysed, highlighting how researchers working on Islamophobia are charged with a lack of scientific rigour and the unacknowledged political bias of the deniers. Finally, the article highlights the instrumentalization of the reference to Pierre Bourdieu by the deniers of Islamophobia. Thus, the forms of the French academic controversy on Islamophobia are indicative of the denial of Islamophobia and the influence of the media on the academic field.

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Anti-Muslim Rhetoric in Donald Trump’s Historic 2016 AIPAC Policy Speech

The primary focus of this study is to explore Donald Trump’s emerging anti-Muslim ideology in his speech delivered at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections. The discourse of this speech is loaded with anti-Muslim and anti-Islam linguistic instances. To analyze Trump’s Islamophobic discourse, the study engaged with the ideological square model under the umbrella of critical discourse studies. For data collection, validation and linguistic inquiry, NVivo 12 Plus has also been used. The findings reveal that self-others schema has strongly been evidenced in Trump’s AIPAC policy speech where he tried to depict Muslims in negative terms and successfully presented himself as a “hero” of the nation who wishes to save America from suffering and destruction. In addition, this research exhibited Trump’s obvious attempt to accentuate his virtuous self by using an array of rhetorical strategies in order to imprint negative attributes in terms of high level of Islamophobia.

Critical Folkloristics, Free Speech, and the “War on Terror”

Abstract In 2008, five affiliates of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) were convicted of conspiring to supply “material support” to the terrorist organization Hamas. One of the convicted was a folksinger, included in the indictment due to a series of music performances given at HLF fundraisers. In this article, I critically interrogate the history and development of the HLF trial, arguing for the development of an activist-oriented critical folkloristics as a powerful tool with which to respond to Islamophobic discourses at the heart of the American “War on Terror.”

The Reluctant Islamophobes: Multimedia Dissensus in the Hollywood Premodern

This paper contributes to the theorization of how Orientalism has evolved after 9/11 and in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. I specifically address the multimediality of films and propose that post-9/11 Orientalism has fragmented into more digestible, more complex micronarratives dispersed throughout the interplay of different media which constitute the film experience. I recur to Foucault’s concept of dispositif to illustrate how any of these media—such as music, screenplay, editing, acting, etc.—may “[enter] into resonance or contradiction with the others” (Foucault 195), ambiguating the film’s politics. When the film’s different media pursue diverging politics, I speak of multimedia dissensus. In order to test this hypothesis, I focus on two films which explicitly champion diversity and aim to reverse the logics of Islamophobia by presenting tributes to Muslim culture or denunciations of Eurocentric discriminatory practices: Alejandro Amenabar’s Agora (2009) and Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (2005). A more detailed analysis of the films’ multimedial complexity, however, shows that they do participate in the Islamophobic discourses that have dominated Hollywood cinema after 9/11.

Holy Terror!: Islamophobia and Intermediality in Frank Miller’s Graphic Novel

The graphic artist Frank Miller represents an innovative force in the field of graphic novels who pushes the medium into new territories. One such territory is Islamophobia and terrorism in his graphic novel Holy Terror (2011). This article explores how Islamophobia has been mediated and how media systems of the twenty-first century forge Islamophobia into new shapes asking: How does Frank Miller’s aesthetics of silhouetted bodies reframe Islamophobia in an interpictorial and intermedial discourse of images? To what extent do Miller’s graphic stylizations of Islamophobia remediate elements of his previous work on fictional (super)heroes and historical leaders from Batman to the 300 Spartans? I argue that Miller’s visual narrative participates in the Islamophobic discourse of American popular culture by appropriating a wide array of popular culture visual archives for a propagandistic call for Muslim “Othering.” Holy Terror references news media, films and television series, 9/11 photography, familiar comic book heroes, and, of course, Miller’s own oeuvre. Thus, the graphic novel represents what I conceive as a virtual agora where different media converge to negotiate public discourses on Islamophobia. I will turn to the medium of graphic novels to first reveal how Miller’s narratives and silhouette aesthetics of (super)heroes have become complicit with Islamophobic responses to the crisis of 9/11; second, to trace the discourse of Islamophobia in post-9/11 America in Miller’s work; and, third, to reveal how this discourse interlinks with the patriotic logic of the fight against terrorism.

Neoliberal representations of Muslims and the Islamic world: a discourse analysis of imaginative geographies in Brazilian local and regional print media

ABSTRACT Since 9/11, representations of Muslims and the Islamic world in Western mass media have received much scholarly attention, not least because such representations influence how Muslims are perceived by and integrated into Western societies. Most existing studies have shown that Muslims and Islam tend to be framed negatively through orientalist and Islamophobic discourses. However, this paper argues that in specific contexts, neoliberal ideology has generated mass-media representations of Muslims and the Islamic world that differ from orientalist versions. In contexts relating to the globalised halal market, for example, neoliberal discourses portray Muslims and the Islamic world as economically useful and/or exploitable rather than culturally threatening. This argument is supported by an analysis of representations of Muslims and the Islamic world in local and regional newspapers in Brazil, one of the largest halal meat and poultry exporters in the world. Drawing on theories of neoliberalism, a discourse theoretical approach and the notion of imaginative geographies, the study examines newspaper articles on the halal business. Based on the findings, this paper suggests that scholars should subject neoliberal ideology (and its interaction with orientalism and Islamophobia) to greater scrutiny in future research on representations of Muslims and the Islamic world.