Islamophobia: An Introduction to the Academic Field, Methods, and Approaches

The Islamophobia Studies field, a new and emerging academic area of research and scholarly engagement, is currently witnessing contributions from a diverse set of scholars with more entering the fray daily. Initially, writings in the field were focused on problems and challenges facing Muslim assimilation and integration, primarily in the British context and secondarily on the larger European continent. Moreover, much of the early work on Islamophobia primarily delved into media representation and stereotypes without further theorizing or interrogating structural aspects that informed or framed the publicly constructed image of Islam and Muslims. Furthermore, and up to the most recent past, the existing methodological approaches of race, gender, culture and ethnic studies, and postcolonial studies (leaving aside other traditional departments within humanities and social science fields) remained distant from Islam and Islamophobia as a subject of scholarly investigation that does not originate in an orientalist and problematizing approach, even when it is attempting to be “objective” in the research. The focus of this chapter is introducing and tracing the development of the emerging field of Islamophobia Studies.