Islamic Culture - Islamophobia - Research Paper Example

Islamophobia as A Modern Reality Introduction The present papers revolves around examination of such a wide and controversial topic as islamophobia, resentment of Islamic culture and discrimination of Muslim individuals in non-Muslim societies. Therefore, the topic is islamophobia: a variety of its definitions, main causes and manifestations in the modern globalized and polarized world. The chosen issue being extremely relevant, the topic rationale is expressed in frequent manifestations of islamophobia in modern societies and escalating tensions between Western and Eastern cultures that tend to lead to disturbing consequences and are capable to result in the violent clash of civilizations. Therefore, understanding on the nature and causes of islamophobia is a vital milestone of the way of dealing with this problem in a constructive way and eliminating further dangers of terror, controversies, malperceptions and wars. The paper includes several parts. The first chapter deals with the complex meaning of islamophobia as a term and overviews different definitions of the latter, intending to construct a comprehensive and full definition based on the views of different scholars. The second part of the paper is intended to reveal origins and preconditions of islamophobia in various domains – cultural conflict, resources distribution, ideological concerns and others. Being an inseparable aspect of the topic, the events of 9/11 are discussed and described in the third chapter, as this event is generally considered to be the turning point in development of islamophobia in the modern society. The fourth chapter, in its term, collects data and describes the current state of islamophobia in the two main areas of the Western civilization – America and Europe. In addition, the fifth chapter touches upon the issue of feminism as manifestation of gendered islamophobia and resentment of Islamic cultural traditions. Finally, the main points and findings on the topic are summarized in the conclusion. As the topic is up-to-date and relevant worldwide, there is a considerable body of studies and researches as well as reports devoted to it. Therefore, the obstacles in information search were not encountered; instead, the wide array of sources enabled rather deep insight into the essence of the topic. Definition of the term Islamophobia as a cultural and political concept incorporates a wide range of meaning components referring to different domains of the society’s life. Generally, however, islamophobia is understood as a type of xenophobia uniting different forms of negative reaction to Islam and social phenomena related to it. Different scholars on both sides of the barricades grant varying sets of traits to islamophobia as the model of perception of Islam. For instance, Mustafa Abu Sway (2005, p.15) defines islamophobia as the term implying various types of discrimination including “discrimination in the provision of health services, exclusion from managerial positions and jobs of high responsibility», prejudiced or biased portrayal in literature or media, as well as violence, verbal and physical abuse and vandalism. In the report of the Runnymede Trust, one of the most unbiased and clear definitions of islamophobia was given: “Islamophobia is the shorthand way of referring to dread or hatred of Islam – and, therefore, to fear or dislike of all or most Muslims” (Runnymede Trust, 1997, p.1). Thereby, the chairman of the Runnymede commission Gordon Conway considered this phenomenon fear and hatred towards Muslims and their religion cultivated in mass media of all levels and spread across all social classes. The concept of islamophobia drawn by the Runnymede Trust rests upon the four key aspects: violence, prejudice, discrimination and exclusion. This means that Muslims face discrimination in various areas of life including professional activity and services’ provision and prejudiced depiction of their religious group in media – especially Western – and in everyday conversation. Moreover, they experience violence and are exclusion from positions presupposing responsibility, political domain and certain areas of employment. In the framework of islamophobia, Islam possesses the following characteristics: it is aggressive, static, savage and hostile towards the Western culture; it is irrational and aimed as ideological motivation for promotion of military or political interests; it deserves discrimination and does not share ‘traditional’ values held in the West. The term was first used in the essay of the orientalist Etienne Dinet in 1922, where he explained prejudiced attitude towards Islam with numerous confrontations between Islamic civilization and Europe beginning with the crusades, which inevitably implied religious opposition – Islam versus Christianity. In other words, “attention to nearly 1,400 years of rivalry between western Christianity and Islam, so the phenomenon of anti Muslim sentiments is far older than the concept of Islamophobia, or fear of Islam as a religion and of its adherents” (Taras, 2013, pp.417-418). Chris Allen (2007, p.148) mentions existence of this term in the 1970s in the vocabulary of feminists, who used it for “the rejection of aspects of the tradition by people born into the Islamic faith”, opposing the more traditional lifestyle that followed Iranian revolution. Generally, it can be stated that islamophobia was originally strongly dominated by the religious component (which is supposed to have lied in its core). However, the term has undergone certain reconsideration through all these years, especially with the upsurge of globalization tendencies. Bravo Lopez (2011, p.557) provides the view of Tariq Mohood (1997), who asserted the term to be rather incorrect due to its wider content – recent tendencies have been illustrating the nature of islamophobia as that implying discrimination based rather on racism than solely on religious affiliation. Therefore, the more recent views of the phenomenon attribute it to cultural racism (Bravo Lopez, 2011, p.557) and religious intolerance, for Muslims are mainly people of non-European origins belonging to different type of culture and different racial type (non-white). Moreover, according to Halliday (1999), the phenomenon should be called “anti-Muslimism” due to the obvious fact that intolerance is aimed rather on a people referred to as Muslims rather than to Islam as a religion. Taras (2013) support the opinion that racial component of islamophobia as a concept is being downplayed nowadays, stating that the phenomenon includes a strong racial implication. In addition, in political meaning, islamophobia is led by the creed of Islam being an enemy rather than a partner – a savage aggressive force that can be used when necessary and must be restrained, which is rather clearly seen from the numerous conflicts in the Middle East with the involvement of United States. Origins of Islamophobia In our world, the earliest trends of globalization date back as far as to the 15th century and the Age of Discoveries. Since that time, technological advance, development of political and economic relations, improvement of transport connections and industrial upsurge has been creating favorable conditions for cross-cultural communication and mutual penetration of different national and religious traditions. Nowadays’ global community is characterized by “highly heterogeneous populations” (Alam & Husband, 2013, p.235) as a result of extensive and unlimited transnational mobility. Both economic and cultural capital flow freely with “human flows of economic and political migrants” across the state borders, making the issue of coexistence and tolerance extremely relevant. At the same time, these external realities have sparked rise of nationalisms in many states, especially in Europe, with ideological and national controversies growing at a rapid pace. This tendency was increasingly widespread in the postwar years of the 20th century in Europe, when massive influx of Muslim immigrant workers was observed. Døving (2010, p.53) stresses the effect of identity politics as the factor intended to insure security in conditions of immigration and emigration. Identity politics encourages affirmation of the national identity and entrenches it in such trait as vulnerability. Therefore, being convinced that their identities are vulnerable and endangered in the multinational globalized environment; people are likely to see the direct target for fear and resentment in the identity that is perceived or portrayed as ‘other’. As it has been mentioned above, the roots of islamophobia lie in the original and rather profound controversies between Islam and western Christianity, with Islam being perceived as something hostile and alien. Throughout the 20th century and especially during the World War II, Soviet ideology and communism were perceived by the Western civilization as the main opposing force; but with the decline of the USSR, as Reifer (2006, pp.51-52) states, “radical Islam quickly took the place of communism as the newest obstacle to achieving peace, prosperity and liberal capitalist democracy; one that called for an aggressive military response”. This means that islamophobia originates in the times, when Islam was spreading across peoples due to its “different” nature and profound “dissimilitude” to the Western tradition – thus, the confrontation began its development centuries ago. Development of anti-Muslimism during the 20th century and its fusion with racism contributed to the image of Islam as the “ultimate cultural other” (Taras, 2013, p.419), which implied profound inability to cope with liberal and democratic values, which were vigorously promoted by the Western world. Therefore, according to Taras (2013, p.417), «the supposed historical incompatibility of European and Islamic values is, therefore, central to the rise of Islamophobia”. In Europe, islamophobia is considered to root in the following: “The increase in Muslim immigration to Europe has been concurrent with the growth of political Islam”; therefore, “the lines between Islam and radicalism have become blurred in Europeans’ eyes» (Moreno, 2010, p.74). In other words, this perspective views inability to distinguish Islam form extremism as one of the preconditions for development of islamophobia. Generally, many researchers – despite somewhat different views of Islam and islamophobia unanimously agree upon the fact that the great upsurge of this phenomenon was sparked by the terroristic attack of 9/11 in the U.S., which marked the beginning of the global war on terrorism. Another significant source of intolerance towards Islam and Muslims in the recent decades has been described by the Runnymede Trust (1997): the report describes two views of Islam by non-Muslims. Open view portrays Islam as a progressive religion that is worth respect, equal to others and capable of being a good cultural partner and practiced sincerely rather than manipulatively. Thereby, criticism and disagreement with Islam is acceptable as long as it is reasonable, debatable and justified. On the other hand, the closed view of Islam that is considered the source of islamophobia implies perception of the religion as static, barbaric, sexist, deficient in comparison to other major religions, inferior to the Western tradition and promoting terrorism in order to spark the clash between civilizations. Within this view, reciprocal criticism of anti-Muslim stance is rejected, while hostile attitude towards Islam is justified and natural. At the same time, the radical wing of Islam and particularly wahhabism has been intensifying tensions between Christian West and Islamic East: it is the hostile, aggressive and even terroristic ideology promoting fundamentalism, sexism and conservatism and widely criticized by other Muslims. Thus, radical wings of Islam create unfavorable stereotypes associated with the entire Muslim community that are further entrenched in people’s minds by mass media. Any negative statements regarding Islam in newspapers, magazines or on TV eventually lead to growing islamophobia and prejudices related to Islamic culture. Viewed from ideological viewpoint, the issue of islamophobia is compared to the policy of anti-Semitism typical for pre-Nazi Europe (Døving, 2010). The component of islamophobia that makes it similar to anti-Semitism – especially in the modern days – is the threat posed by the Muslim minority to the state: there is implicit fear that the minority (and in this case ultimately different, ‘other’) might grow and overtake control, threaten traditional customs and modern Enlightenment values of the West. Therefore, islamophobia, especially on the current stage of growing Islamic populations of the Western countries, is associated with the fear to be controlled by a ‘different’ and hostile culture that will endanger values people have held for centuries due to their cultural, religious and national origins. A good example of a growing Muslim minority is Germany, where controversies between the local non-Muslim population and the ethnic group of Muslim immigrants have been causing many concerns. As it has been mentioned, identity politics as the precondition for islamophobia works to enhance the people’s sense of identity and thus make people perceive external threat to it more acutely. Ciftci explains this tendency with “perceptions of “in-group” and “out-group” (2012, p.296), when individuals with well-developed social identities evaluate their ‘in-group’ members higher than ‘out-group’. In this case, Muslims are ethnic and religious outsiders to the members of the Western culture, posing symbolic and realistic threat. Moreover, Ciftci (2012) supports the hypothesis that people with the strong and well-developed national identity are more prone to negative attitude towards Muslims, while those having weaker national identity. In this respect, there is high probability of prejudice and discrimination aimed at Muslim immigrants in non-Muslim countries, for the conflict of national identities is then deepened by competition over the country’s various resources (for instance, employment capacity). Attacks of 9/11 Rigid upsurge of islamophobia all over the world in the recent years has been undoubtedly triggered by one of the most appalling terroristic attacks in decades, the events of September 11, 2001 as well as the military interventions in Arab countries in Middle East practiced by the United States. Particularly, Ali (2012) asserts the second period of islamophobia to have begun after 9/11. Americans as members of the attacked nation view that day as a dramatic turning point in the world’s history that has led to deaths of around three thousand people (Kreamelmeyer, 2011, p.43). The fact that radical Islamic group al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the terroristic attacks sparked the upsurge of islamophobic reactions across the globe, with many Western governments launching massive war on terrorism and apprehending many Muslim citizens for suspicion of aiding and abetting terroristic groups. “In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, lawmakers enacted numerous discriminatory laws targeting Arabs and Muslims under the ostensible guise of national security policy” (Ali, 2012, p.1032). Strengthening islamophobic moods have caused growth in the number of hate crimes against people descending from the Middle East and people with similar appearance. Even a number of attacks on Sikhs wearing Muslim-like turbans were reported. Despite the fact that President Bush delivered a speech, asking people to treat American Muslims with respect a few days after the attack, the rising frequency of verbal abuse, attacks of mosques and Muslim citizens was observed. What is notable about the uncontrollable nature of post-9/11 islamophobia – especially in the U.S. – is that, judging by the data on hate crimes and assaults, the majority of the Muslims were victimized based on their appearance and perpetrators often targeted people they perceived to be Muslims; this might lead one – again – to the idea that islamophobia as a type of xenophobia has a strong ethnic/racial component. Islamophobia in United States and Europe Since the time of islamophobia resurge, Muslims have been facing a range of barriers in the Western communities, especially in Europe and United States. According to the reports of Council on American-Islamic Relations issued in 2009-2010, Muslim population still faces discrimination and barriers in American society, being marginalized and distanced from full participation in the life of the society. CAIR (2010) reports Muslims to become frequent victims of hate crimes, with cases of violence occurring even among children. For instance, there is a reported case of “A 14-year old Staten Island student [being] beaten by a classmate. While the assailant was beating the young man he stated that he hates Arabs and hates the victim’s religion» (CAIR, 201, p.29). In the article written by Jung (2012), there is a confirmation of the hypothesis that religious affiliation affect the level of islamophobia and respect towards Islam; the lowest level of respect of Islam and Muslims is reported to exist among Christians. Thereby, “given that the vast majority of Americans are Christians, Muslims are vulnerable to become symbolic ‘‘other’’ (Jung, 2012, p.122), which is discriminated on various levels. In addition to being discriminated at the workplace and in everyday life, adherents of Islam happen to be discriminated on the level of legislation and judicial system, too, with their civil right being endangered. Ali (2012, p.1029) writes that in 2010, “Oklahoma voters overwhelmingly passed the Save Our State Amendment”, an act, [which] would have amended the Oklahoma Constitution to specifically forbid Oklahoma judges from using international or "Shariah Law" in any state court decision». This type of islamophobia is referred to as institutionalized in many researches. Another domain of institutionalized islamophobia in United States according to Sway (2005, p.20) is freedom of expression entrenched by the First Amendment of the U.S. constitution, which gives American non-Muslim citizens a legal right to “malign Muslim leaders” and issue islamophobic statements. “Over 23 million Muslims live in Europe constituting about 5% of the total population» (Gunduz, 2010, p.37), and, taken together with Turkey, Muslim population within European Union reaches 90 million people. Moreover, despite the fact that Islam is nowadays the second largest denomination in 17 of 38 EU states (Gunduz, 2010), many European governments tend to reject Islam as an equal religion. This leads to discrimination of Muslims as a minority and nonrecognition of their civil and cultural rights. Muslim population has doubled since 1970s, and many of these people already have or will soon obtain European citizenships; therefore, there is an evident need for recognition of Islamic culture and acceptance of Islam as one of the largest religions. However, identity politics and profound dissimilarities in cultures reinforced by the upsurge of Islamic terrorist groups cause resentment of Islam as ‘other’ and encourage Eurocentrism. The resentment is justified by the fear of Islamification of Europe because of immigration and thus growth of Muslim communities in the host countries: “Many politicians and much of the public believe that the growing presence of visible symbols of Islam - mosques, minarets, headscarves, burqas - contributes to the sense of the Islamification of Europe» (Taras, 2013, pp.418-419). Moreover, it is obviously fear of terroristic attacks that has been intensifying islamophobic trends in the recent years. Gunduz (2010, p.37) writes that «today, Muslims are seen by many as an alien people with a culture threatening European values». One of the recent events bringing the issue of islamophobia to the fore in modern Europe is shooting in the office of Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical newspaper, which published satirical cartoons related to Islam and Prophet Muhammad. Two Islamist gunmen identifying themselves with the wing of al-Qaeda in Yemen shot 11 people dead in the office building of Charlie Hebdo. This is one of the most recent examples illustrating the contribution mass media make to marginalization of Islam and the effect of attacks committed by radical Islamist groups produces on entrenchment of islamophobia in Europe on cultural, social, political and security levels. Moreover, Gunduz (2010) describes the way social media (film genre, various types of printed editions etc.) in Europe contribute to resentment of Islam depicting Muslims in a biased manner, “the pictures are frequently those of backwardness, religious fanaticism, suppression, lack of liberties and even those of terrorism” (Gunduz, 2010, p.38). The fundamental error of such presentations lies in overlooking the fact that Muslims – like Jews, Christians and adherents of other denominations – may differ in secular orientations and affiliations, models of practice and ways of life. In addition, the case of hijab wearing should be mentioned as the example of controversies and discrimination experienced by Islamic culture. Sway refers to bans for hijabs in Western countries as one of the most obvious manifestations of islamophobic attitudes: “Islamophobic policies target the hijah as a symbol of Islam” (Sway, 2005, p.19). This means that the ban is passed on the highest legislative level by the state governments. For instance, the author mentions the ban for hijabs in educational institutions that was enforced in 2006 in Germany: according to this legislation, teachers were not allowed to wear headscarves, for such expression of worldviews could imperil peace in schools. Feminism as a manifestation of islamophobia Feminism has also been a type of islamophobia manifestation across Western countries – mainly due to its cultural traditions implying a strongly patriarchal pattern of gender relations and inequality. Referred to as gender islamophobia, this type of criticism of Islam is exercised by the feminist movements of the West, where Islam is often “caricaturized as misogynistic and oppressive to women and thus to advance imperialist hegemony” (Hasan, 2012, p.55). Considering Islam from the position of closed view, numerous feminist scholars criticize this religion for its sexism and oppression towards women, and the issue of women’s rights has long been in the limelight of the cultural discourse related to Islam. Moreover, after the attacks of 9/11, the U.S. government justified its bombing of Afghanistan with gender discrimination practiced their and going against Western democratic values. However, Hasan (2012, p.58) asserts the inferior position of women in this Muslim state to be mere “justification for overthrowing the Taliban regime”. In this respect, it is necessary to understand that application of Western feminist ideology is culturally inadequate and is led by wrong notions held about Islam – again, due to profound differences in worldviews between Muslim East and Christian West. Conclusion Having analyzed a wide array of studies and researches devoted to islamophobia and its different aspects, one might be able to conclude that this sociocultural phenomenon has an extremely wide meaning implying a variety of discrimination and abuse types. However, the core component of the definition, upon which the majority of researchers tend to agree, is negative attitude and hostility towards Islamic culture and religion. Moreover, as most definitions imply, the key source of islamophobia is traced in profound differences between Western and Eastern cultures and values and perception of Islam as something alien, ‘other’. At the same time, development tendencies of this phenomenon are often dominated by September 11, 2001 as the main milestone in the modern resurge of Islamism and thus Islamophobia. Unfortunately, in the recent years, there has been intensification of discrimination and oppression of Muslims in Western countries (first of all, United States and EU), which endowed islamophobia institutionalized nature and escalated reciprocal controversies. Nevertheless, this issue is to be dealt with and solved, for – as studies demonstrate – the lion’s share of negative attitudes tends to descend from blurred line between extremism and Islam, and erroneous perception of Islamic culture as other, yet it should be viewed as different but equal and capable of cooperation and partnership. 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