Thinking Through Islamophobia: Global Perspectives

by S. Sayyid (Editor), Abdoolkarim Vakil (Editor)

Islamophobia is a widely used but inconsistently defined term, hotly disputed and frequently disavowed. To its supporters, it captures a defining phenomenon of our times and is an important tool in highlighting the injustices Muslims face. Yet its effectiveness is weakened by the lack of an agreed meaning and relationship to racism and orientalism. To its detractors, Islamophobia is either a fundamentally flawed category or worse, a communitarian fig leaf, shielding "backward" social practices and totalitarian political ambitions. The figure of the Muslim forms the backdrop to these debates and, more generally, to the mobilizations and contestations of "moral panic" that follow. Adopting a global perspective, this collection provides four distinct contexts for the problematization of Muslim identity and the deployment of Islamophobia. Drawing on diverse fields of disciplinary and geographical expertise, twenty six contributors address the question of Islamophobia in a series of interventions, ranging from large and sustained arguments to illustrations of particular themes in the following real-world "Muslimistan" (broadly within OIC member countries); states in which Muslims either form a minority or hold a subaltern socioeconomic position yet cannot be easily dismissed as recent arrivals (much like immigrants from India, Russia, China, and Thailand); lands in which Muslims are represented as newly arrived immigrants (such as Western plutocracies); and regions in which the Muslim presence is minimal or virtual, and the problematization of Muslim identity is vicarious.

Genres: Islam, Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

Published February 10, 2011