Theoretical Framework for Islamophobia Prejudice - Essay Example

Theoretical Framework for Anti-Muslim (Islamophobia) Prejudice Student name Course name Institution Date of submission Student Number Introduction According to Poynting and Mason (2007), the terms Islamophobia or anti-Islam denotes demonising of Islam leading to the negative attitudes and feelings towards Muslims and Islam. Johnson (2011) views the two terms as denoting the prejudice, fear, or hatred of Muslims, particularly as a political force. While Bleich (2011) comments that Islam should be viewed as a religion instead of a cultural identity, the terms Islamophobia and anti-Islam are intermingled. A meta-analysis of literature by Wood and Finlay (2008), following the terror attacks in London in 2005, revealed two prevailing issues regarding Islam: a consistent, the perception of the Islam as having a potential to be dangerous, and denigration of the outlook of the British society where multiple cultures may possibly coexist in peace. In fact, religion and culture are habitually used together in discussions concerning Islamophobia (Helbling, 2013). Apart from the widespread scrutiny from the media, the issue of “Islamophobia” has been examined at a more meticulous level in psychological research. This paper explores the theoretical frameworks that attempt to shed light on the causes, nature, and expressions of prejudice against Muslims. It uses social-psychological theories to explore the prevailing prejudices, stereotypes, and discriminatory actions towards Muslims. This essay argues that cultural-based and personality-centered theoretical frameworks of prejudice seek to explain how Islamophobia is passed on through generations, how it prevails, and how it differs between individuals. However, they do not explain how prejudiced people get to become Islamophobic. Prejudice, stereotype, and discrimination Historically, scholars in the field of psychology have tended to evince strong interest in exploring the theories of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination, in addition to the incident of intergroup bias (Dovidio et al, 2007). Intergroup bias denotes the tendency to perceive systematically one’s own membership group more favourably than a non-membership group. Alibeli and Yaghi (2012) define prejudice as an attitude that contains cognitive elements, such as beliefs about a certain group, an affective component (such as dislike), and a conative component (such as behaving negatively towards a certain group). In religious stereotyping, prejudiced people behave or communicate in ways that show presumptuous, incorrect, and false perceptions of particular religious groups (Nadal et al, 2012). Essentially Alibeli and Yaghi (2012) used prejudice in reference to an antipathy rooted in inflexible and faulty generalisation. As could be derived from his definition, the term may be directed towards a target individual or group, such as the Muslim or towards Islam. For instance, people or groups of people who are prejudiced against Muslims may have a common belief that Muslims are terrorists or dangerous (Nadal et al., 2012). Additionally, prejudice and stereotyping express emotionally damaging responses to other individuals through affective prejudice. What manifests include hatred, disrespect, or antipathy. For instance, individuals or groups of people who are prejudiced against Muslims may perceive that to be safe, they have to avoid contact with Muslims (Bleich, 2011). Personality centred theories Personality centred theories seeks to locate the origins of prejudice in people’s early childhood experience and personality dynamic (Alibeli and Yaghi 2012). Hence, prejudice may prevail since it plays a crucial emotional function to the prejudiced people by enabling them to project onto others sentiments and expressions they cannot acknowledge they have (Elashi et al., 2010). For instance, people who are intolerant against Muslims may have a tendency to deny their intolerance for Islam, as well as how they can project their prejudice onto the Muslims. In Alibeli and Yaghi’s (2012) view, such projection may transform into scapegoating of people. In which case, instead of targeting the actual causal factors of terrorism so as to accept their share of responsibility, the prejudiced people transfer such responsibility to the minority or the more vulnerable group, such as the Muslims. Kushner and Luhn (2012) suggest the Scapegoat theory to explain the situation. According to the theory, when the causes of the dominant group’s anger, frustration, and hostility are theoretical, individuals may tend to seek a scapegoat that is more vulnerable and not capable of responding in kind. They use the scapegoat as an object for venting onto their angers, frustrations, or hostilities. However, the scapegoat theory does not clearly explain why prejudice has persisted in the peaceful, prosperous, as well as during the periods of economic growth. Alibeli and Yaghi (2012) suggest that the authoritarian personality theory offers such explanation. The theory links prejudice to individual’s personality traits that develops through time, such as gullible acceptance of authority or strict compliance to conventional values. In Alibeli and Yaghi’s (2012) view, authoritarian personality tends to develop among individuals raised in social setting that tend to promote limited communication with parents and strict upbringing (Elashi et al 2010). For instance, strict societies where Muslims are the minority groups are likely to have a common anti-Muslim sentiment in order to displace their anger for social factors, such as gender, ethnicity, race and job insecurity (Alibeli & Yaghi 2012). Cultural-based approaches Still, as established, personality-centred approaches fail to explain the cultural and social influences of prejudice. Alibeli and Yaghi (2012) suggest the use of Cultural-based approaches to prejudice. Alibeli and Yaghi’s recommended approach sees prejudice as being influenced by social factors such as a group’s cultures. The theory views prejudice as means by which in prejudiced societies express social harmony, connectedness, and association with others. As Johnson (2011) explains, a particular state of inferiority is often assumed to symbolise minority group, such as Muslims. In a practical world, the religious or social groups that dominate the society facilitate the realisation of such condition by denying the Muslims resources that can deliver them out of their inferior status. This may explain the alleged wars against Muslim Arabs in the Middle East and Gulf countries by the dominant Western European and North American countries to deny them vital oil resources. Consequently, the false premise of Muslim minority inferior status becomes real in the Western society (Bleich 2011; Kushner & Luhn 2012). Alibeli amd Yaghi (2012) cited a study done in 2006 by the Pew Research Centre, which indicated the American people (55%) believed that Westerners and Muslims have a bad relationship, compared to 32% who believed otherwise. Social distance theory also seeks to explain that hatred of Muslims is anchored in culture (Alibeli and Yaghi 2012). The theory hypothesises the degree of intimacy to which a certain society may be willing to admit people. The theory proposes that the level of social distance varies from the closest to the furthest intimacy (Trope et al 2007). A protracted study by Healey (2006) in the United States indicated that the perceived intolerance of Muslims and non-European groups existed and were passed through generations. Within the context of anti-Islam, social distance from Muslims has been passed on through generations, forcing unprejudiced people to discriminate (Kushner & Luhn 2012). Power-conflict approaches As established in the above discussion, the underlying strengths of personality-centred and cultural-based theoretical approaches are that they effectively clarify how people pass on anti-Islam feelings through generations and how such feelings become manifested in day to day life. Their major weakness however, is that they are incapable of explaining how people get to become prejudiced towards Islam and Muslims. Alibeli and Yaghi (2012) suggest that power-conflict approaches to prejudice fill that gap. The Power-conflict theories hypothesise that prejudice starts due to competition over the scarce resources or between and among social groups, as a way of rationalizing exploitation or racial stratification. In which case, when a dominant group looks to make a minority group appear inferior, it will form ideologies that rationalize relevant arrangements. Social dominance theory also contributes to the understanding of anti-Islam sentiment. As Pratto et al (2006) explains, the theory was conceived as an attempt to gain an insight into how “group-based social hierarchy” is created and maintained. It assumes that it is crucial to gain an insight into processes generating and sustaining feelings of prejudice at various levels of scrutiny. Examples of these levels include group’s cultural policies and ideologies, practices, values or relations towards others inside or outside their group (Sidanius et al 2004). The theory perceives human societies as systems (Sidanius et al 2004). It hypothesises how processes function together at multiple levels to generate systematic effects. According to the theory, persons with high-social-dominance orientation aspire to sustain inequality in the society and to support actions that strengthen social hierarchy. Such people depend on legitimising myths as a support, put differently, they perceive that their prejudicial attitudes contain intellectual and moral basis. According to Nadal et al (2012), non-Muslims, who have a high social dominance orientation, can use terrorist attacks to legitimize their anti-Muslim prejudice. In fact, a study by Oswald (2005) found facts for an integrated model that incorporates the view that Muslims are perceived by the more dominant Christian group as a threat, through self-classification into a Muslim “them” and a dominant “us,” assertion in a just world. Hence, the intimidating actions that even a few members of the more dominant Christians may undertake can give good reasons to argue that they are being prejudiced towards the less dominant yet vigilant Christian group. Sorting people or groups of people into like-minded social roles can further be explained by the social dominance theory (Pratto et al 2006). Since individuals’ values concerning group-based equality are crucial for the functioning of a social group or institutions where they are placed, social dominance theory expects that several processes have to assort people into like-minded social roles. Approaches, such as differential attrition have tended to explain this concept. Pratto et al (2006) conceived differential attrition approach to explain how Muslims can be sorted into like-minded social roles. Hence, because individuals can be differentially punished or rewarded for sharing role-incompatible or role-compatible group dominance attitudes, differential attrition can be expected from the social roles among Muslims and non-Muslims (Helbling 2013). Stereotypes can be explained by the Attribution theory, which defines the manner in which humans evaluate, perceive, and judge each other. As Malle (2011) explains, Attribution theory is concerned with how the social perceiver processes information to arrive at a conclusion at causal explanations for incidents of events. The theory takes into perspective how and why normal people explain events. In this regards, people tend to understand other groups of people in order to explain how they behave. Malle (2003) points out that people tend to explain how other groups behave by attributing such behaviours to internal dispositions or personality traits, such as Muslims should be hated because of the terror attacks in 9/11. As Dovidio et al (2007) illuminate, the tendency for prejudiced people to hate Muslims would result from attributing such behaviour to certain situation, where facts have been gathered. Hence, there must be an external factor or source of information, which lead the prejudiced people to have anti-Islam feelings (Murray & Thomson 2009). Conclusion While cultural-based and personality-centered theoretical frameworks of prejudice explain how the feeling of hatred towards Islam is passed on through generations, how it prevails, and how it differs among prejudiced people, they do not give reasons for, as well as on how such feelings start. The main theoretical approaches to prejudice, stereotypes, and discriminations include Cultural-based approaches, Personality-centred approaches and Power-conflict approaches. Personality centred theories seeks to locate the origins of prejudice in people’s early childhood experience and personality dynamic. On the other hand, cultural-based approaches argue that prejudice is influenced by social factors and cultural norms. Lastly, the Power-conflict theories hypothesise that prejudice starts due to contest for the scarce resources or even among social groups as a way of rationalizing exploitation or racial stratification. Reference List Alibeli, M & Yaghi, A 2012, "Theories of Prejudice and Attitudes toward Muslims in the United States," International Journal of Humanities and Social Science vol 2 no 1, pp.21-29 Bleich, E 2011, "What Is Islamophobia and How Much Is There? Theorizing and Measuring an Emerging Comparative Concept," American Behavioral Scientist vol 55, pp1581–1600 Dovidio, J., Hewstone, M, Glick, P & Esses, V 2007, “Prejudice, Stereotyping and Discrimination: Theoretical and Empirical Overview," Social Psychological & Personality Science, pp.4-28 Elashi, F, Mills, C & Grant, M 2010, "In-group and out-group attitudes of Muslim children," Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology vol 31, pp.379–385 Healey, J 2006, Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Class, Thousand oaks, California Helbling, M 2013, Islamophobia in Western Europe and North America: Measuring and Explaining Individual Attitudes, Routledge, New York Johnson, R 2011, "A Theoretical Framework for Anti-Muslim Prejudice: Framing Tolerance via Moral Malleability and Entitativity Perceptions," Yale, viewed 4 Feb 2015, Kushner, T & Luhn, K 2012, The Politics of Marginality: Race, the Radical Right and Minorities in Twentieth Century Britain, Routledge, New York Malle, B 2003, Attributions as Behavior Explanations: Toward a New Theory, University of Oregon, Oregon Malle, B 2011, Attribution theories: How people makes sense of behaviour, In Chadee, D. (Ed.), Theories in Social Psychology (pp.72-95). Wiley-Blackwell, New York Murray, J & Thomson, M 2009, "An Application of Attribution Theory to Clinical Judgment," Europe Journal of Psychology vol 11 no 5, pp.96-104 Nadal, K, Griffin, K, Hamit, S, Leon, J & Tobio, M, & Rivera, D 2012, "Subtle and Overt Forms of Islamophobia: Microaggressions toward Muslim Americans," Journal of Muslim Mental Health, vol 6 iss 2, pp.1-6 Oswald, D 2005, “Understanding anti-Arab reactions post-9/11: The role of threats, social categories, and personal ideologies,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, vol 34, pp.1775-1799. Poynting, S & Mason, V 2007, "The resistible rise of Islamophobia: Anti-Muslim racism in the UK and Australia before 11 September 2001," The Australian Sociological Association, vol 43 no 1, pp.61–86 Pratto, F, Sidanius, J & Levin, S 2006, "Social dominance theory and the dynamics of intergroup relations: Taking stock and looking forward," European Association of Experimental Social Psychology vol 17, pp.271-320 Sidanius, J, Pratto, F, Laar. C & Levin, S 2004, "Social Dominance Theory: Its Agenda and Method," Political Psychology, Vol. 25, No. 6, pp. 845-880 Trope, Y, Liberman, N & Wakslak, C 2007, "Construal Levels and Psychological Distance: Effects on Representation, Prediction, Evaluation, and Behavior," Journal Of Consumer Psychology, 17(2), 83–95 Wood, C, & Finlay, W 2008, “British National Party representations of Muslims in the month after the London bombings: Homogeneity, threat, and the conspiracy tradition,” The British Journal of Social Psychology, vol 47, pp.707–726 Read More

Additionally, prejudice and stereotyping express emotionally damaging responses to other individuals through affective prejudice. What manifests include hatred, disrespect, or antipathy. For instance, individuals or groups of people who are prejudiced against Muslims may perceive that to be safe, they have to avoid contact with Muslims (Bleich, 2011). Personality centred theories Personality centred theories seeks to locate the origins of prejudice in people’s early childhood experience and personality dynamic (Alibeli and Yaghi 2012).

Hence, prejudice may prevail since it plays a crucial emotional function to the prejudiced people by enabling them to project onto others sentiments and expressions they cannot acknowledge they have (Elashi et al., 2010). For instance, people who are intolerant against Muslims may have a tendency to deny their intolerance for Islam, as well as how they can project their prejudice onto the Muslims. In Alibeli and Yaghi’s (2012) view, such projection may transform into scapegoating of people.

In which case, instead of targeting the actual causal factors of terrorism so as to accept their share of responsibility, the prejudiced people transfer such responsibility to the minority or the more vulnerable group, such as the Muslims. Kushner and Luhn (2012) suggest the Scapegoat theory to explain the situation. According to the theory, when the causes of the dominant group’s anger, frustration, and hostility are theoretical, individuals may tend to seek a scapegoat that is more vulnerable and not capable of responding in kind.

They use the scapegoat as an object for venting onto their angers, frustrations, or hostilities. However, the scapegoat theory does not clearly explain why prejudice has persisted in the peaceful, prosperous, as well as during the periods of economic growth. Alibeli and Yaghi (2012) suggest that the authoritarian personality theory offers such explanation. The theory links prejudice to individual’s personality traits that develops through time, such as gullible acceptance of authority or strict compliance to conventional values.

In Alibeli and Yaghi’s (2012) view, authoritarian personality tends to develop among individuals raised in social setting that tend to promote limited communication with parents and strict upbringing (Elashi et al 2010). For instance, strict societies where Muslims are the minority groups are likely to have a common anti-Muslim sentiment in order to displace their anger for social factors, such as gender, ethnicity, race and job insecurity (Alibeli & Yaghi 2012). Cultural-based approaches Still, as established, personality-centred approaches fail to explain the cultural and social influences of prejudice.

Alibeli and Yaghi (2012) suggest the use of Cultural-based approaches to prejudice. Alibeli and Yaghi’s recommended approach sees prejudice as being influenced by social factors such as a group’s cultures. The theory views prejudice as means by which in prejudiced societies express social harmony, connectedness, and association with others. As Johnson (2011) explains, a particular state of inferiority is often assumed to symbolise minority group, such as Muslims. In a practical world, the religious or social groups that dominate the society facilitate the realisation of such condition by denying the Muslims resources that can deliver them out of their inferior status.

This may explain the alleged wars against Muslim Arabs in the Middle East and Gulf countries by the dominant Western European and North American countries to deny them vital oil resources. Consequently, the false premise of Muslim minority inferior status becomes real in the Western society (Bleich 2011; Kushner & Luhn 2012). Alibeli amd Yaghi (2012) cited a study done in 2006 by the Pew Research Centre, which indicated the American people (55%) believed that Westerners and Muslims have a bad relationship, compared to 32% who believed otherwise.

Social distance theory also seeks to explain that hatred of Muslims is anchored in culture (Alibeli and Yaghi 2012).

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