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Debates about Islamophobia have been blighted by the question of whether the prejudice can be defined as a form of racism or as hostility to religion (or a combination of the two). This paper sheds light on this debate by presenting the findings of a new nationally representative survey, focused on the UK, that contrasts perceptions of Muslims not only with perceptions of other ethnic and religious minorities but also with perceptions of Islam as a religious tradition. We find that prejudice against Muslims is higher than for any other group examined other than Travellers. We also find contrasting demographic drivers of prejudice towards Muslims and towards Islam. Across most prejudice measures we analyse, intolerant views are generally significantly associated with being male, voting Conservative and being older, although not with Anglican identity. We find, however, that class effects vary depending on the question's focus. Anti‐immigration sentiment – including support for a 'Muslim ban' – is significantly correlated with being working‐class. However, prejudice towards Islam as a body of teachings (tested using a question measuring perceptions of religious literalism) is significantly correlated with being middle‐class, as is negative sentiment towards Travellers. Using these findings, the paper makes an argument for supplementing recent scholarship on the associations between racism and Islamophobia with analyses focusing on misperceptions of belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sylvia Wynter brings to light a structural entanglement between race and religion that is fundamental to identifying racism's logic. This logic is continuous albeit often masked in particular in European race–religion constellations such as antisemitism and islamophobia. Focusing on the Americas, Wynter reveals a structural epistemic continuity between 'religious', rational and scientific racism. Nonetheless, Wynter marks a discontinuity between pre- and post-1492, by distinguishing between the Christian subject and Man, the overrepresentation of the human. In this essay, which focuses on European entanglements of race and religion, a process of dehumanization and its historical and geographic continuities is more discernible. As such, I question Wynter's discontinuity, arguing that the Christian subject was conceived of as the only full conception of the human (although not without debate or inconsistencies), which meant that non-Christians were de-facto and de-jure excluded from the political community and suffered degrees of dehumanization. Within the concept of dehumanization, I focus on the entanglement of race and religion, or more specifically Whiteness and Christianity, as distinct markers of supremacy/difference and show that the Church had, and asserted, the power to produce both lesser and non-humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]