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In post-war Sri Lanka waves of anti-Muslim riots and violence has become a common trend. This paper critically analyses how the century old Sinhala Buddhist majoritarian ideology contributes to the post-war anti-Muslim violence in Sri Lanka. This paper argues that post-war Islamophobia and anti-Muslim violence is not just a matter of political gambling or electoral strategy of political parties. Instead, it resulted from the deep-rooted extreme Buddhist majoritarian ideology that tries to drive the state and the society towards an exclusive Buddhist state. The ideology creates a cultural legitimacy to criminalize the Muslims as "invaders" and "the other" within Sri Lanka. This cultural cover up has led to epidemic direct and structural violence across the island. Hence, this paper suggests that the conflict management process should diverted towards structural changes, which includes both the constitutional and educational aspects, into account, rather than depending solely on the civil society driven inter-community co-existence projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Trojan Hose Affair scandal alleged that there was a hardline extremist Islamism plot to take over British state schools in Birmingham. While community groups and government officials battled to take control of the narrative, the pupils who were ultimately at the center of the scandal, were not considered. This paper is based on research conducted in 2015, with students at one of the schools implicated in the Trojan Horse Affair. Through seven one-to-one interviews and a group discussion, the research finds that students portrayed their selves in a state of constant psychological reconciliation due to the heightened mediatization, racialization, and securitization of Islam and Muslims, during and after the Trojan Horse affair. This caused increased levels of anxiety in students, which peaked around the constant surveillance through the gaze of the media, teachers, and Ofsted inspectors, creating a double-edged Panopticon. The paper particularly underscores student concerns for potential social exclusion and discrimination they may experience as a result of the school affiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the political participation and mobilization of Muslims in Italy, an understudied topic. A few existing studies outline that Italian Muslim involvement in the political process has been quite low on both the local and national levels. However, along with the notable recent growth of the Muslim population in Italy, a certain evolution of political mobilization has occurred as well. This paper will analyze how Italian Muslim political participation, both through non-electoral and electoral channels, has evolved through time. It will question what are the key issues and challenges for participation; and to what extent homeland politics and foreign policy events have affected political mobilization. It will argue that even though some limited evolution of political mobilization has occurred in recent years, the Italian Muslim political participation and impact both remain rather limited due to the strong anti-Muslim sentiment in Italy, as well as due to internal fragmentation of Muslim communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Independent India has witnessed a surge of right-wing militant Hindu extremism since the 1980s. The long term political and ideological goal of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is to create a Hindu Rashtra through propagating Hindutva. To realize this goal, proponents of Hindutva radicalize youth and children with conservative and fictional thoughts which lead to Islamophobia. This paper examines the link between radicalization and spread of Hindutva discourse, and communal violence. It also surveys campaigns used by the VHP to prevent proselytism. The paper also analyses how RSS aims to rewrite textbooks and control education patterns and establish conservative schools to further its interests. Findings of the paper also indicate that governments have been either complicit or negligent while dealing with Muslim riot victims. Analysis of news article regarding communal violence involving Hindus and Muslims indicate that the media acts as an echo chamber and enable Hindutva and Islamophobia in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Leila Aboulela's Minaret1 in terms of its protagonist's journey between the Muslim origin and global diaspora. For its theoretical underpinning, the paper draws on transnational Muslim feminist paradigm with Miriam Cooke as its chief proponent. With this, the paper probes how the convergence of the religious origin and contemporary diaspora creates a globally accepted, new identity for Muslim women across the globe. Muslim migrant women from the third world, who are already faced with double colonization, are now struggling against Islamophobia as yet another oppressive force. Aboulela's protagonist, Najwa, experiences similar difficulties, especially when it comes to identity construction and meaning-making in her life abroad. She, being a Muslim woman, revisits her religion in search of self-actualization and awareness about the global ummah without any geographical boundaries. This study is, therefore, an attempt to see the variegated identity of Aboulela's protagonist as a Muslim woman and a global citizen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the Wittgensteinian method of discourse analysis to analyze the narratives of Islamophobia in Donald Trump’s speeches and interviews. Theoretically, the analysis is informed by hegemonic neoliberal ideology. It argues that to sustain itself, hegemonic neoliberalism must contrast itself against other belief systems that it unilaterally denounces as inferior. After having done so, hegemonic neoliberalism then seeks to neoliberalize those belief systems. In this vein, this paper contends that hegemonic neoliberalism has an Islamophobic “face” because it “otherizes” Islam and Muslims in order to justify its neoliberalization of Islam and Muslims. Thus, this paper defines neoliberal Islamophobia as the conceptualization of Islam and Muslims as antithetical to neoliberal values. In all, Trump’s speeches and interviews contain five Islamophobic narratives: (1) radical Islam is the sole cause of terrorism; (2) radical Islamic terrorism is a global existential threat; (3) Muslim refugees and immigrants are a threat to American security; (4) the proposal to suspend entry of Muslim refugees and immigrants to the US; and (5) the faux humanitarian policy of establishing safe zones for Muslim refugees in Syria. The paper concludes with policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a controversial schooling system, critical analysis of the informal curriculum of Islamic schools in Australia is timely for dispelling assertions and counter-assertions with evidence. This project employed a collective case study methodology to understand how broader contextual factors—that is, an Australian landscape shaped by neoliberal engendered market forces and racialisation—and stakeholder experience contributed to the construction of the espoused purpose of Islamic school. Drawing on data from a survey of stakeholders from three Islamic schools, analysis of documents and a leadership qualitative questionnaire, the findings reveal, by providing an alternative educational experience: Islamic practices; the space for religious expression; and, extra-curricular programmes to connect students with society, schools create a community and a sense of belonging. By doing so, they contribute to social cohesion. Consistent with Apple and Zine, an understanding of Islamic schools cannot be detached from the cultural climate. This paper contributes to debates of divisiveness charged at Islamic schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since much of the discussion about Islamophobia has been concerned with positive-self and negative-other representations of Muslims, understanding it as a culturally racist discourse foregrounds the way Muslims are constructed as deeply threatening to the values and identities of the spaces they occupy. These representations invoke an essentialised and determinative Muslim culture that can be understood as the central organising principle of Islamophobia: the belief that relies upon binary oppositions that allow its proponents to advocate a host of positive values, while repudiating and denigrating Muslims. This paper explains how Islamophobia can be conceptualised as the racist discourse that upholds a system of Eurocentric supremacy, a historical development based on the universalising aspects of Western culture that led to the development of a racialised social system in Europe. By demonstrating the form and content of Islamophobic discourse, the paper draws attention to a wide array of issues ranging from the securitisation discourse, institutionalisation of Islamophobia, to its modes of articulation in specific European countries. It further argues that given the rise of racist, especially Islamophobic, far-right parties in European countries, combating Islamophobia becomes an institutional priority that requires outspoken and brave initiatives and persons who not only challenge this pervasive form of racism but also address structural forms of discrimination affecting Muslims or those perceived as such. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the consequences of Donald J. Trump's anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies vis-à-vis his travel ban on Muslim immigration experiences. The paper looks at the impact of Trump's and like-minded European leaders' Islamophobic rhetoric and policies on dominant cultures, public policies, and assimilation of Muslims in the U.S. and in Europe. The review correlates said rhetoric and policies with public attitudes about Muslims, the rise of hate crimes and violence against Muslims, public policy changes, and assimilation (including civic engagement) of Muslims. The paper contrasts the differences in attitudes and responses of Muslim and non-Muslim communities in the U.S. and Europe. It concludes that U.S. and European Muslims retain overall positive attitudes about their new home countries and institutions and are politically engaged against the rise of anti-Muslim xenophobia, which varies between America and Europe, based on their respective histories, cultures and economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Trust Building" initiative, launched in the United Kingdom in April 2016, aimed to dispel myths about Islam and build trust between Muslims and the wider community. This community-led initiative involved trained Trust Building "Ambassadors" delivering workshops at places of work and other community settings to talk about Islam and facilitate open dialogue. Previously, the project reported trust among participants had significantly improved, but the reasons for this were not explored. In this paper, we unpack how and why trust was being built. Providing a forum that permits open dialogue between Muslims and the wider community allowed opportunities for stories and experiences to be shared, enabling negative stereotypes to be uncovered and addressed, and for mutual values to be recognised. With negative media portrayal and rise in hate crime towards minorities, this research is a promising model that has important implications to address the trust deficit seen within our society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate on integration of Muslim immigrants into the European societies. Censuses1 indicate a continuous growth of Muslims in member states of the European Union (EU) since the 1960s.2 In some of the member states of the EU, Muslims make up more than five percent of the population, and this number is expected to grow in the coming decades, depending mostly on how much immigration into the EU will be allowed. Since 2011 the EU has been facing the biggest influx of migrants in its history. Reasonably, accepting and integrating such a large number of people in its societies became a great challenge for many EU member states. It has become clear that the integration programmes within the EU member states are outdated and that new migration policies, as well as practices will have to be adopted and developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates American-Muslims' perceptions of the police. With regard to studies of the police and Muslim communities, much of the focus has centered on evaluating police officers' perceptions of the Muslim community. Attitudes toward the police reflect an important measure of police legitimacy for minority communities. The current study analyzes responses from a convenience sample (N = 142) collected from around the United States. Our t test analysis of first-and-second generation American Muslims found no significant differences between attitudes toward the police. However, our OLS Regression models suggest that education, fear of negative treatment due to race, ethnicity, or religion, fear of victimization, negative media portrayal, and neighborhood factors significantly affected perceptions of the police. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports findings from an ethnographic study of the adjustment experience of a group of postgraduate international students at a university in the South of England. Friendship emerged as a major category of research, an aspect of which was the formation of a friendship group unified by a shared faith, namely Islam. Muslim students were drawn to create this network of friends by a desire to share the re-enactment of ritual associated with home, to reassert and to celebrate religious identity and to provide a bolster against a climate of Islamophobia. Acts of Islamophobic abuse are on the increase throughout the West and in the UK; this paper argues that international students become entangled in unresolved tension between the Muslim and non-Muslim sections of the British population, shedding light on the vulnerability of British Muslims and on the reception offered by the host community to international visitors to the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the March 15 attacks in Christchurch, there has been raised awareness and new and strong enthusiasm to understand the experiences of the Muslim minority community. This exploratory paper investigates the perceived discrimination as experienced by Muslims or those who identify with coming from a Muslim background and who work at New Zealand universities. Using a questionnaire, we surveyed the experiences of perceived discrimination of Muslim staff working at universities across the country and the impact it has had on the wellbeing of these members of the society. The study concludes that a significant minority perceive themselves as targets of discrimination within their workplace and even more people while not being directly impacted acknowledge that there is discrimination. This study hopes to raise awareness of the extent of discrimination perceived by Muslims with the hope of encouraging government and ministers to investigate the issue in more depth and providing guidelines for organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from a qualitative study in Britain on international Muslim students’ perceptions of media portrayals of Islam. Eighteen international students were interviewed; they came from a range of countries so that a diversity of opinion could be gathered. The paper reveals that participants perceived the representation of Islam in the British media to be negative, being associated with conservatism, economic backwardness and terrorism. Participants criticised the media’s tendency towards the homogenisation of Muslims and of Muslim communities and countries. They also called on media organisations to balance the negative portrait of Islam with positive news stories and to be more responsible in their reporting of terrorism. Interestingly, it could be observed that their direct consumption of UK media was limited, pointing to the possibility that their views were either “discursively” driven or were the product of “passive media consumption”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the Melbourne's Islamic Museum of Australia tells a story of an “Australian Islam” through its use of material and artistic objects; how it symbolizes and synthesizes the assumed binary of East and West, through spatial expressions that narrate a religious community's “growing up” in a changing urban and Australian context. Furthermore, it looks at how the curators, intentionally or otherwise, deal politically with the Muslim community's affective relationships that are shaped by their experiences as a minority that endures a persistent Islamophobia in the community. By examining the role the Museum's material artefacts play in intercultural relations within a multicultural Australia the paper draws from Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, to argue that the Museum reflects an Apollonian sense of art that attempts to regulate and control the wilder excesses of a Dionysian and communal spirit. The Apollonian view translates to an expressive and abstract celebration of liberal myths about progress and individuality that purposely relegates the more dangerous struggles of Muslim immigrants dealing with the conditions of a Dionysian post-colony to the shadows. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The rapid growth of Australia's Muslim population over the past three decades has presented a challenge to local governments to find ways of accommodating their needs, particularly providing spaces to build mosques. Yet in many parts of Australia, mosque applications have been opposed by local communities and consequently such applications are usually declined by local councils. Many Muslims believe that Islamophobhia and racism are behind such refusals. This paper examines the role of urban planning policies in determining the location, architectural form, and the use of mosques, and their impact on the local community, through a case study of the Masjid Al Farooq in South-East Queensland. It seeks to understand whether urban planning policy as well as urban planners can become a tool of integrating the community and, if so, how. This case study reveals that there is no provision in urban planning policies specifically for places of worship. Such applications are treated the same as all others even though they have a very different purpose. Places of worship form an integral part of community and can be crucial at a time when political leaders seem to be placing emphasis on family and social cohesion. Marginalising places of worship will continue to disenchant segments of the population and make them feel like “outsiders”. Given the contemporary global political climate, there are no easy solutions. This paper makes policy suggestions that government, planners, and community leaders can embrace so that mosques and those who worship in them are seen as part of the community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the last decade, Islamophobia and racism have become rampant in the West, particularly in the United States of America and Europe. Muslims, whether they are immigrants or not, practitioners or not, are frequently prejudiced and discriminated against. The observer of the world scene is more likely to note that Sufis are valorized by a large audience. Compared to cults that identify themselves with the Salafi or Wahhabi ideology, the Sufi folk are usually defined as peaceful, tolerant and moderate. It is not a coincidence then to find that the Sufi leaders are working tremendously hard to promote love and peace worldwide. The present paper is an attempt to sketch out the reception of Sufism (Islamic mysticism) in the West. More particularly, it sheds light on the experiences of some Western converts, whose attraction to and fascination with Sufism is immeasurable. Central to this enquiry is the reception theory, which claims that people receive discourse in different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how a predominantly immigrant interview sample of 62 Muslim physicians articulate their cultural citizenship and sense of “belonging” in the USA. Many Muslim physicians who have come as international medical graduates (IMGs) share the challenges, obstacles, and assets of their IMG peers. Yet within the context of rising Islamophobia after the September 11 (9/11) attacks in the USA, immigrant Muslim physicians encounter “racialized” religious discrimination in the workplace and in local communities. This paper examines how this group actively builds a sense of belonging at multiple levels through the family, community, ethnic and religious institutions; and “represents” Islam in the USA and abroad. We also suggest that integration into the American medical profession facilitates cultural citizenship, and perhaps the “disciplining” of Muslim IMGs into broader American society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the impact that radical right wing populist groups and hard-line Islamist groups have on each other and on political developments in the UK. In the UK, recent years have witnessed an emergence of a number of right-wing populist groups, notably the English Defense League. Such groups frequently see themselves in opposition to fringe conservative Islamist groups such as Islam4UK, a recent offshoot of the defunct Islamist group al-Muhajiroun. How do such fringe groups influence mainstream political discourse and politics through building connections with mainstream parties or moderate-leaning voters? This paper will apply mobilization theory to explain the evolution of these two groups. Through case studies of these two groups and their interaction, this paper shows that right wing populist and Islamist groups have managed to exert a significant influence on national discourse, but their electoral impact has been minor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a number of primary and secondary sources, the paper identifies major perspectives and debates on themes, issues, challenges, developments important in the field of Islamic education. Against the backdrop of the rise of religious discourse and politics in the public sphere, this paper (i) discusses the sources and evolution of the concept of education as a discipline in the Muslim world; (ii) situates Islamic education within the wider Islamization project and examines the need to re-conceptualize the concept within the epistemological and ethical perspectives while balancing it with a re-examination of self and the appreciation of the 'other'; (iii) explores the educational implications of the Muslims vs. the West divide, (iv) highlights the proliferation of Islamic schools and the concomitant innovative ideas globally; and (vi) suggests insights into improving Islamic education in the twenty-first century. The paper highlights the continuity and change in these themes across time and space. The paper finally concludes that Islamic education has reached a cross-road. To succeed in the new millennium will require ingenuity and collaboration, learning not only from the past, but also from the present and looking into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks critically at the idea that the causes of political violence can be explained through a focus on innate human propensities rather than contingent social considerations. It traces the origins of this premise from socio-biological accounts of conflict causality, before going on to discuss perspectives that place a similarly determinative emphasis on cultural factors. It argues that the use of such culturalism has, having been elaborated during the Balkan wars of the mid-1990s, become extended and developed to direct attention towards the apparently peculiarly threatening nature of Muslims and Islam as a key part of the “global war on terror”. In conclusion, it suggests that characterising Muslim identity in this way ultimately serves three de-politicising purposes; firstly, it tends to endorse the status quo, secondly, it helps to legitimise a comprehensive program of securitisation, and thirdly, it offers an account of the causes of political violence which neither implicates external factors nor confers a responsibility to act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Muslim Australians believe that prevailing media attitudes towards them and their religion, Islam, disadvantages them both economically and socially. The Western media is alleged to have aggravated anti-Muslim sentiment since the 1990–1991 Gulf Crises, and after September 11, 2001 and the Bali tragedy in 2002, effectively divided the world into the Muslim terrorists (‘evil’) and the civilised Christians (‘good’). Within the framework of national interest and security, this paper examines whether Muslims' allegation of media bias is valid. If so, then, it will address the question, why is the media demonising this group of people, and who is to blame for this phenomenon—the media, its audience or the militant Islamic groups? This paper is based on primary and secondary sources including oral testimonies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has become almost impossible to believe that Islam even existed in Western consciousness before September 11, 2001 (9/11). Those who have used that event to denigrate Islam, and those who criticise the Islamophobia inherent in such negative discourses, take the events and aftermath of that day as their starting point. In contrast to that imagination, and also in contrast to some literature that attempts to instantiate a critique of Orientalism, this paper shows that Western representations of Islam and Muslims were sophisticated, diverse and historically fluid before 9/11. It does so by analysing media sources from the United Kingdom and France, the two nation states whose governments have famously been at loggerheads over their post-9/11 analyses and foreign policies. The objective here is to capture the diversity of mainstream social discourses as they were reflected in the press. The purpose is not to analyse media influence or the relative importance of different discourses, so the sources are deliberately selective and small in number. The article is structured around the ‘paradigm shift’ from an exotic, sensual stereotype of Islam to a stereotype of Muslim fanaticism (prominent at the time of the Rushdie affair, for example), which prepared the ground for responses to 9/11, but it also identifies a media critique of these discourses, and of Islamophobia in society and in the media itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research has explored the ways the mainstream news media covers Muslims and Islam, but few studies have examined Muslims’ reactions to this reporting. Studies that have investigated this issue have identified that the responses of Muslims to news media coverage tend to be largely negative because of the lack of Muslim news sources, the stereotypical representation of Muslims in news coverage, the portrayal of Muslims as the enemy within, and the conflation of Muslims with terrorism. This paper further explores the attitudes of Muslims to news media coverage of Islam and Muslims by drawing on data from 14 focus groups (N = 104 participants) conducted with Australian Muslims. Similar to previous research, findings reveal that Australian Muslims are highly critical of news media coverage of Islam and Muslims and express concern about the divisiveness that such portrayal can have for Australian society. However, the study participants also had positive comments to make about the news media. Possible solutions to negative news media portrayals of Muslims are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Islamophobia has become a significant problem across the Western world. Australia is no exception. The emergence of far right groups and a political environment that allows anti-Islamic discourse has created an increasingly unwelcome environment for Muslims, even though multiculturalism has long been a fundamental marker of Australian daily life. The rise of Islamophobia has been damaging to Australia. This paper explores the rise of anti-Islamic sentiments in Australia and the increasing marginalization of Muslim youth, showing that Islamophobia not only breaks the bond between Muslim youth and Australian society, it also polarizes relations within Australian Muslim communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying the racially and ethnically diverse Muslim minority population in any US city must take into account the racialized landscape prevailing in the city. Milwaukee is a highly racially segregated city, where residential patterns have been shaped by decades of immigration by various ethnic and racial groups, and by restrictions on residential housing, as well as industrialization, deindustrialization and suburbanization. This paper presents findings of an ethnographic research along with the results of a household survey of Muslims in Milwaukee in the context of Milwaukee's urban landscape. Muslims in Milwaukee are racially, ethnically and linguistically diverse. Their patterns of residence and of worship suggest the influence of not only segregation and the typical patterns of ethnic immigration but also clustering and dispersal. Patterns of residences also show the influence of not only Muslim leadership and organization but also of the racialized landscape of the city. Our survey provides a portrait of a community negotiating racial and ethnic differences and solidarities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the Prevent strand of the British counter-terrorism strategy (CONTEST) and the related normalisation of exceptional measures to combat terrorism have had a significant impact on the ways in which Muslim communities can play out their Muslimness in Britain. State treatment of Muslims as a suspect community facilitates the (re)production of widespread Islamophobia that penetrates the social fabric and reinforces a popular image of Muslims as folk devils of late modernity. Those Muslims who exhibit popularly understood signifiers of their identity (e.g.: skin colour, beard, hijab) risk becoming an easy, immediate target for state discrimination and social prejudice. After exploring how this vicious cycle is produced and reproduced at both the macro-(state) level and the meso/micro (community and individual) level, some tentative recommendations will be provided. These recommendations advocate for: preventative measures that are grounded on bottom-up approaches and that are able to empower Muslim communities; the promotion of a better, more nuanced understanding of Islam within broader society; and a reflection on the philosophical ideas of difference and diversity as they relate to the coexistence of pluralistic, multi-ethnic communities within post-modern, global societies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the characteristics of Islamophobia in contemporary Austria. The country represents a particularly interesting case study of the dissemination of anti-Muslim sentiments as it has had a strong tradition of populist, right-wing politics, which was closely associated with the name of Jorg Haider until his death in 2008. However, publicly voiced prejudices against Muslims have remained comparatively rare. For some time, Austria's policy towards its Muslim population was even regarded as a model to be adopted by other countries. Even though this situation has started to change in the last three or four years, Islamophobia in Austria still seems to be more modest than, for example, in The Netherlands, where populist politics and anti-Muslim diatribes are closely connected. A further thesis to be confirmed in this research links anti-Muslim rhetoric in Austria with entrenched Judeophobic prejudices in the society at large. In this sense, some kinds of Islamophobia may serve as a cover for anti-Semitism. This view is very much in accordance with Austria's collective memory, which for a long time has demonstrated an amiable attitude towards Muslims, whereas Jews have always been seen as the utmost enemy. At a time when anti-Semitism has become socially disrespected, Islamophobia, a widely held attitude throughout Europe, is being used to appeal to Judeophobic sentiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though Islamophobia has been recognized as a specific set of discriminatory practices vis-a-vis Muslims in the European Union and Australia, present legislations have been slow to address, or address very restrictively, discrimination on the grounds of religion. Often Muslim victims have not been able to use existing, racially based, anti-discrimination laws as Islam is not recognized as an “ethno-religion”. Conversely, religious vilification laws which adopt a racial vilification approach encounter resistance and can create problems relative to free speech issues. This paper examines the evolution (or lack thereof) of anti-discrimination legislation in the European Union and Australia. Cycles of assertion and discrimination, linked to waves of Islamophobia and their resulting impact on anti-discrimination legislation, pave the way for an ethnicization of Muslim identities which sees “Muslims” functioning effectively as an ethno-religious category in the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the 9/11 attacks, Muslim Americans have witnessed an unprecedented civil rights' crisis. This crisis has been fueled by many anti-Muslim activists, organizations, politicians, media and financial institutions, all of them appeared or grew particularly during the Obama administration to form an Islamophobia network. The network's mission was to keep anti-Muslim sentiment alive in the American society. Yet, how was Islamophobia network structured? And what were its strategies and objectives? In order to answer these questions, this article follows a combination of descriptive and analytical approaches. While the descriptive approach is useful in presenting facts about the Islamophobia network during the Obama presidency, the analytical approach is valuable for exploring the network's strategies and investigating its objectives. The findings demonstrate that the Islamophobia network has succeeded to make hostility against Muslims an omnipresent theme in the American society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research comparatively analyses the cultural roots of Islamophobic policy in China and France using an interdisciplinary, literature-based approach. In China, Han sentiments of cultural superiority interact with the deep influence of Confucianism on Han culture; a history of ethnic conflict particularly between the Uyghurs and Han Chinese; and historical scars from the century of humiliation. This results in a hatred particularly of non-Sinicized Islam, which manifests in the persecution of the Muslim-majority Uyghur cultural group. In France, colonial arrogance interacts with an increase in immigration and consequent diversity after World War II resulting in a shift in laicité's focus towards minimising visible diversity. This centres on reducing the expression of Islam in public spaces and particularly focuses on Muslim women. In both contexts, then, cultural arrogance interacts with ethnic tensions to result in the perception that Islam that has not been homogenised is incompatible with the dominant culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do American Muslims make sense of their engagement in U.S. civic spaces? Research has mostly focused on determining whether the level of civic engagement of American Muslims has increased or decreased following 9/11. But we know little about how American Muslims participate in U.S. civic spaces and which kinds of meanings are used to make sense of their civic participation. Drawing on participant observation in a Muslim food pantry, this article identifies two different styles of civic engagement in service provision, the "Muslim charity" and the "Collective goodness" style. Both these styles envision civic engagement as a religious duty but interpret it differently. The Collective goodness construes civic engagement as a religious duty to be performed showing group pride. The Muslim charity style connects civic engagement with individual humbleness, instead. I show how these different styles of American Muslims' civic engagement produce meaningful contradictions and I gauge their potential effects on defusing of anti-Muslim sentiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When feminism is co-opted to caricature Islam and Muslim men as patriarchal and oppressive to women, it may cause Islamophobia. This interrelation between feminism and Islamophobia can be called 'Feministic Islamophobia'. Such Islamophobia is reflected in V. S. Naipaul's travelogues – "Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey" (1981) and "Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions among the Converted Peoples" (1998). An advocate of these travelogues Daniel Pipes (1949-) wrote an Islamic history – In the Path of God: Islam and Political Power (1983) – that, like Naipaulian travelogues, represents feministic Islamophobia. This article argues that the co-opted feminism of both Naipaul's travelogues and Pipes' history causes feministic Islamophobia that is one of the causes of intertextual dynamic between their texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While conversion to Islam in non-Muslim societies has a long and diverse history, the socio-political contexts of the post-9/11 period have led to Western converts being viewed with sharpened curiosity, suspicion and even hostility. Yet despite the rise of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment during this period, it has been suggested that significant numbers of Westerners have converted to Islam. While there has been considerable growth in academic scholarship on Western converts over the past two decades, research on this phenomenon in the Australian context remains limited. This article seeks to address this gap by outlining key findings from the 2019 Islam in Australia Survey, which represents the first in-depth, quantitative research on Australian converts to Islam. These findings provide insight into converts' backgrounds, conversion motivations, religious identities and social connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the rise of Islamophobia, Muslims in the West have been experiencing increasingly challenging identity dilemmas. Canada is not an exception. This article, at the intersection of Critical Race Theory and post-colonial perspectives, analyzes the narratives of 13 highly educated Uyghur Muslim immigrants living in Quebec and some English provinces of Canada. Their stories show that many of them have become subject to multiple identity dilemmas common to other Muslim diaspora groups, while also facing some challenges unique to their own background. This article further highlights the Uyghur's experiences through a new angle: they all appear to have developed an us/Muslim immigrant vs. them/white Canadians' dichotomy. In the province of Quebec, their narratives reveal "oppositional consciousness" against the dominant white Quebecers, which is quite political, while in English provinces they may see their Muslim identity more as "oppositional culture" against the white English Canadians, which is much less political. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to scrutinise the implementation of a "vicarious retribution model" on anti-Muslim hate crimes and suggests that despite its advantages, the model is not sufficient to provide a clear picture of hate crimes alone and needs a supporting model such as "the domination hate model of intercultural relations" (DHMIR) to give it a historical and socio-political context. Whilst a rigorous model of analysis, the "vicarious retribution model," has been co-opted by institutions to explain the rise in hate crimes based on the assumption that the U.K. (and other countries investigated) have only experienced Islamophobia in the post 9–11 context. The IHRC surveys in the U.K. in 2010 and 2014, the occurrence of Brexit, and the post-referendum spike in hate crimes belie some of the foundations of the applicability of this model. Therefore, the study is an effort to understand anti-Muslim hate crimes through the use of the "vicarious retribution model" and the DHMIR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

France is one of the European countries having large numbers of Muslims. The latter are confronted with the principle of laicité that France adopts. This principle is incompatible with some of Muslims' rituals and practices since laicité bans public religious practices. Equally important, due to many attacks that have hit France, and which are allegedly attributed to Muslims, this minority suffers vilification and discrimination. However, Muslims should be treated and reported fairly in France as the Article One of the French Constitution declares that "it [France] shall ensure the equality of all citizens before the law, without distinction of origin, race, or religion". This signifies that French institutions, especially the media, should apply the article above and try to present a fair image of its citizens including Muslims. Media, in this regard, are at play in their representation of this minority of French citizens. Nevertheless, most Western media rely on the Orientalist views to report Muslims and Islam (Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage, 1977). In this study, both qualitative and quantitative approaches will be used to examine the representation of Muslims in the two French newspapers, which are Le Figaro and Le Monde. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A long history of anti-Muslim prejudice has marked the Balkans. From Pope Urban's call to take the Holy Land back from the "Turks," to the writings of Martin Luther seeking repentance for Christian sins by undergoing Muslim persecution, to anti-Ottoman invectives by Catholic writers in the sixteenth century, Islamophobia has been a dominant narrative. But Islamophobic Orientalism may be a preferred framework for examining anti-Muslim prejudice since the intersectionality of race and religion, combined with region, offers a more comprehensive explanatory narrative. Over la longue durée ["the long term"], the crumbing of Islamic structures in the late nineteenth century, the horrors of World War II on the peninsula, and the outbreak of the Balkan wars in the 1990s—with genocide charges invoked as the definitive sanction—sapped the Muslim presence. The refugee crisis affecting the Balkans contributed further to producing internally-displaced persons and others seeking protection abroad. Albanian writer Ismail Kadare serves as source conveying the exclusionary character of nationalism, prejudice, and stereotyping for a region abounding in provincial, ethnic, and religious intermingling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By examining a news story and reader responses published in the Daily Mail Online (DMO), our study discursively argues that this daily newspaper promotes an Orientalist perception of Islam and Muslims. The religion and its adherents are both framed and perceived as a threat to British society and its “Western values”, thus reinforcing Islamophobia within society. This study also argues that the DMO espouses the perceived Orientalist threat posed by Islam through juxtaposition, exaggeration and manipulation of facts, through lexical choices and visual images that eventually establishes the perception of a cultural clash. In addition, by examining the readers’ responses toward the news story, this study demonstrates that the vast majority of respondents perceive Islam and Muslims as a threat to “the West”. Their comments, as triggered by the text, also contribute to the discourse of Islamophobia and the perceived Orientalist view of an Islamic threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the following mini-study, quantitative content analysis was used to investigate differences in the United States print media’s coverage of the Charlie Hebdo shooting. Four articles were analyzed, two from the corporate media and two from independent sources. The four articles did not disagree on the existence of terrorism, but they differed in terms of their assumptions regarding the cause(s) of terrorism as well as in terms of how the terrorist subject is configured discursively. Blaming Islam in general, or all Muslims, in relation to terrorist acts perpetrated by a few criminals can have drastic results, such as Islamophobia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is more than a decade since social geographer Kevin Dunn first described non-Muslim Australians’ ignorance about Islam and its adherents and outlined a series of recommendations about how Australian governments could address this as a pressing social policy issue. Recently researchers have re-assessed non-Muslim Australians’ perceptions of their knowledge of Islam and Muslims identifying while it has improved since 2003, 70% acknowledge they know little to nothing about either. Using data from Australia’s 2016 National Social Survey, this study examines the correlation between non-Muslim Australians’ perceptions of their knowledge of Islam and Muslims and their actual knowledge. We find that perception of knowledge is a reasonable indicator of actual knowledge. Further, we find that tertiary education is the single significant demographic factor impacting actual knowledge. By examining geographical patterns of knowledge, we also find that ignorance of Islam and Muslims is consistent across Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What role does counter-speech play in media controversies surrounding hate speech? Analysis of a high-profile controversy, namely the case of the Italian bestselling author Oriana Fallaci, may provide an answer to this question. In 2001, shortly after the terror attack against the Twin Towers in New York City, Fallaci published a pamphletThe Rage and the Pridethat later gave birth to the best seller with the same title—which sold more than one million copies in several countries—in which she asserts that Muslims “breed like rats”. In this study, all texts from the largest circulated Italian newspapers,Corriere della SeraandLa Repubblicamentioning the writer and published in the first 12 weeks after the first publication ofThe Rage and the Pridewere selected and submitted to content analysis. Outcomes show that counter-speech did not lead either to consensus or to refutation of such contents. The pivotal role of counter-speech was to contribute to putting the controversy on the agenda and therefore adding to media operational bias. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study critically examines the representation of the 2006 “suspected aircraft terror plot” at Heathrow Airport in London by three mainstream newspapers in New Zealand—theOtago Daily Times, thePress(Press) and theNew Zealand Herald. It seeks to illustrate how these newspapers espoused an Orientalist view of “Islamic Other” in framing the issue by representing Islam and Muslims as a threat to “the West” as well as to New Zealand. It is argued that in reporting the issue, these newspapers provided extraordinary emphasis on Islamic terrorism that was extrapolated from the event but they maintained their categorical silence when the initial sensationalizing representations were found to be questionable, as evidence did not fully support the scale of the Orientalist representation. In trying to explain this media frenzy, we point to the existential fear of New Zealand society about Islam and Muslims both globally and locally. We argue that this typical media representation aimed at controlling discourses and discursive formations about Islam and Muslims in society by overfeeding media consumers with ideologies so that they do not have an opportunity to internalize alternative discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Islam and Muslims in Sri Lanka have a history of more than a millennium. During this long period their economic and religious experience had been one of fluctuating fortunes beginning with harmony and prosperity under Buddhist monarchs to repression and misery under Western colonialists. Economic freedom under native rulers, mercantilist restrictions under the Portuguese and Dutch and open economy under the British brought alternative episodes of economic affluence and depression to Muslims. After independence, however, under a democratic polity the community adopted a pragmatic approach to a new situation, which allowed Muslims and Islam to enjoy once again decades of peaceful coexistence and relative prosperity, until political and economic circumstances of the country changed dramatically to create an environment of anti-Muslim and anti-Islam phobia. What follows is a historical narration of these vicissitude retold from a religio-economic and political perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article investigates the determinants of anti-Muslim sentiment in the West. Starting from the premise that Islamophobic attitudes are more nuanced than a simple dislike of Muslims, I focus on specific forms of attitudes which link Muslims to violence and terrorism. Data from the Pew Global Attitudes Surveys are used to test three theories: perceived threat, social identity, and cognitive capabilities. A series of logit estimations are used for the empirical analysis of individual level data in the USA, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Spain. The results show that perceived realistic and symbolic threat is the most significant source of Islamophobic attitudes in the West. While individuals cognitively differentiate between general feelings toward Muslims and their specific characteristics, higher levels of education significantly reduces negative sentiments. A good number of Westerners think of Muslims as violent individuals while some believe that they support al-Qaeda. Citizens in the West are more likely to associate Muslims with terrorism if they feel threatened by their physical and cultural existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 20 years, not only has Europe witnessed an increasing prominence of right-wing political groups, European governments have also moved to regulate Muslims and how they practice their faith.1 Contrary to this negative form of regulation, I propose through drawing on the theoretical insights of Michel Foucault that the agencies of European governments—focusing here on the government of Ireland—can regulate the societal position of Muslims in a manner that protects against Islamophobia. Islamic communities in Ireland are rich in their cultural and religious diversity. Nevertheless, there exists a paucity of data vis-à-vis Muslims and their experience of racism in Ireland. Put in an international context, Muslims are increasingly vulnerable to prejudice and discrimination on the basis of their faith and the ascribed negative imagery. I contend that the effective collection of data by State agencies is not only necessary to gauge levels of Islamophobia in Ireland, but that this data would also increase the effectiveness of State policies. Furthermore, I contend that if Islamophobia is to be challenged, moves must be made to pathologize this form of racism. This can be achieved by the systematic collection of disaggregated data that illuminates the levels of Islamophobia that exist in society. Effective data collection of this sort could be instrumental in increasing the utility of future State policies designed to combat racist sentiment directed towards Muslims as propagated by right-wing groups and others. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cultural diversity is the norm in Australia and the United Kingdom. Both states celebrate multiculturalism. But some populist politicians, commentators, and quasi-academics have recently portrayed Western Muslims as a “fifth column”, organized and intent on destroying the fabric of Western culture from within. Interestingly, extremist Muslim groups in the West make similar claims about the relationship between Islam and the West. In recent years, however, Western-born “moderate” Muslim intellectuals and moderates have emerged into the public sphere to challenge essentialist depictions of Islam and the Islamist textual interpretations. They claim an important social space for the Western practice of Islam. Whilst a burgeoning level of academic scrutiny is being focused upon moderate Muslims, this article notes the absence of academic literature about a large part of the Muslim population whose public life is not necessarily guided by their religion but more by their culture and ethnicity, i.e. the “cultural Muslims”. This group is unrepresented in the public debate on Islam and often ignored yet could constitute the majority of Western Muslims. This article concludes by posing significant questions about this group and the implications of political discourse upon their future trajectory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the West, I argue, anti-Muslim disdain is driven by both racial and class antipathy. Since the Crusades, racist slander against Muslims has been a staple of Euro-Islamic relations. Muslims know this well. In Canada and the US, anti-Muslim disdain has been incorporated within the settler logic of white supremacy. Muslims have been demoted to the lowest of the low. As communities, they are envisaged as a species of what Max Weber called “poor white trash”. Some un-Muslim Muslims do find acceptance but they are few in number. Overall in the wake of 9/11, the white-trashing of Muslims and Arabs has been the norm. I support my claim with evidence from Canadian, American and European sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]