Perpetuation of Islamophobia
This is my final paper for SOCY 7 Race and Ethnicity: Social Constructions and Social Realities with Professor Emily Walton:
As soon as Sadiq exits his car in the Dunder Mifflin parking lot, Michael Scott panics that he hired a terrorist as his IT Technician. This comical scene from NBC’s The Office involving a Sikh who is presumed to be a radicalized Muslim touches on the pervasiveness of Islamophobia in the West. I was too young to remember the ordinary Monday when the Twin Towers collapsed, a tragedy sparking fears over whether Islam can safely persist in society. Growing up near Boston, I remember seeing on television a joyous 2013 marathon instantly turn into a massacre, followed by the ensuing manhunt for the Muslim perpetrators…all happening within forty minutes of my house. While terrorists continue to act in the name of Islam to justify their actions, Westerners start to seriously question the innocence of Muslims living around the world, as their faith appears to preach violence. As fear develops to greater heights, frightened citizens may support measures such as US President Donald Trump’s suggested ban on immigrants from certain Muslim-majority countries, and possibly even see sense in British protesters’ desire for “Punish a Muslim Day” (Rannard 2018). Islamophobia has a foothold in society due to the experiences of victims of devastation, and partly because of regularly witnessing terror on screen. This magnifies panic over Muslims and leads strangers to assume guilt on often innocent, Muslim or non-Muslim, individuals trying to live lives like their neighbors. Islamophobia certainly is not the only form of xenophobia to have disturbed the world, posing whether some underlying characteristics of nations cause the irrational fear of foreign bodies to occur. Through an examination of responses to the 9/11 attacks in various Western nations, I find that a multicultural society processes Islamophobia in through the installation of fear via the media, racial profiling, and xenophobia stemming from colonial roots.
Media
The media and entertainment industries perpetuate non-white terrorism by playing into what the public desires to see, thereby escalating Islamophobia. CNN and other news outlets report stories on Muslim perpetrators four to five times as often as non-Muslim perpetrators according to Craig Considine (2017), playing into the attitudes of Americans who already think negatively of Muslims while casting doubt in the minds of indifferent Americans–forcing them to question the innocence of followers of Islam. This presents a biased image of Islam to the public, magnifying the threat that Muslims pose on society while distorting the reality of who else contributes to terrorism. Sarah Ruiz-Grossman (2017) notes that far-right extremists have committed twice as many attacks in the United States since 9/11 as Islamist extremists have. Given the major influence of modern media, this statistic may seem especially shocking to the average viewer. News shows often display images of violence depicting jihad (Considine 2017:15)–a Quranic term meaning ‘struggle’ that is misunderstood as a call for holy war against the West. The threat of jihad gives people reason to dispute the entire ideology of Islam itself, likening the crimes of terrorists as inherent to being a Muslim. Some businesses negatively portray Muslims in order to make money, which they achieve by providing consumers with sensationalized content that validates fears and frustrations. Take for instance Fox’s 2001 television series 24, which presents Muslim immigrants and refugees as lurking extremists waiting to attack Americans (Poniewozik 2017). Despite criticism for its portrayal of Islam (Arnold 2007), the show’s relative success demonstrates that its message resonates with millions of people.
Counter-jihad/Islamophobic networks use discursive strategies for constructing websites/blogs to sway audiences with evocative statements. Building on the attack against core principles, Mattias Ekman (2015) considers the treatment of Islam as a political ideology with an agenda to rule absolutely similar to fascism or communism. Sweden-based website Avpixlat likens Islam with “Jew-hatred…oppression, subjugation, genocide and humiliation,” (2015:1994). The post discusses qualities commonly associated with Nazi Germany, portraying the religion as an extreme ideology bearing resemblance to restrictive totalitarian governments. The stigma of the West against anti-democracy makes this portrayal effective at garnering support from viewers. Islamophobic websites also dramatize the danger of sharia law–disciplines that shape the behaviors of Muslims towards themselves and their communities. US-based Jihad Watch reports on a convert to Islam who was punished with forty lashes for committing a sin (2015:1993). This questions whether it is safe for Muslims to exist in society if they choose to reject human rights norms. However, the claim ignores ongoing changes in contemporary Islam that are evolving sharia from its medieval form to a modern-day emphasis on equality and non-discrimination (Cumper 2014:39), indicating that change is forthcoming but time-dependent. Some networks like Gates of Vienna extend blame onto liberals for betraying Western civilization by enabling Islam to prosper (Ekman 2015:1995). They suggest that multiculturalism, the respect for many cultures in society as equals, has hurt countries because it has welcomed extremist activity. The response would be to shift away from accepting Muslim immigrants and minorities, as this would supposedly bring safety.
Racial Profiling
Islamophobia exemplifies racism without race because Muslims are treated with hate despite phenotypic heterogeneity. Followers of Islam originate from all parts of the world, so stereotyping them based on a certain appearance, for instance, brown-skinned and bearded, would misrepresent a significant portion of the population. The desire to discriminate against Muslims comes not just from appearance, but from the beliefs that they share as worshipers. Americans generally view the concept of Islam more unfavorably than they judge followers of Islam (Considine 2017:2). This initially seems unrelated to race because ideology is the issue more so than people, implying that tension would subside if a Muslim were to give up his/her faith and become agnostic. Yet, it may be easier for Americans to express dislike of an abstract idea and not appear prejudiced toward individuals (2017:9). Consider an American who cannot identify the faith of his next-door neighbor, the two of whom become friends. Were the American to find out that the neighbor is a Muslim, his assumptions on Islam might activate and cause doubt over his own safety. Negative views on Islam relate to feelings about Muslims themselves, due to the assumption that all Muslims practice the same way. An unfavorable attitude towards religion warrants harassment, as perpetrators justify hate crimes as a stand-up to societal threats, even though the crimes actually have racist motives.
Phenotypic features allow people to make assumptions about strangers, as someone who appears at all like the stereotypical Muslim is presumed as such. The generalization of “Muslim-ness” spells trouble for people of certain regions, ethnicities, and religions sharing similar physical traits with Muslims. This includes Sadiq’s people, Sikhs, who experienced 300 cases of violence in America only a month after 9/11 (Basu 2016). It takes little reason for society to become suspicious of a person, as Considine (2017) illustrates by examining the case of Guido Menzio. Menzio is an Italian economist who in 2016 was removed from an aircraft for questioning after passengers profiled him due to his suspiciously olive skin color and exotic accent (2017:10). This case illustrates the shallowness of Islamophobia, as well as the extent to which Islamophobia causes disunity in America. Besides alienating Muslims from Western society, errant racial profiling also divides non-Muslims from each other.
Victims must use techniques to interrupt accusations and prove their innocence to avoid losing their identity from racial profiling. During travel, my family now and then faces Caucasian officers who question us heavily–noticing our South Asian etiquette–about what we are carrying in our luggage, to which Amir Marvasti (2005) suggests several response tactics. Although intimidating to do in front of law enforcement, we could engage in humorous accounting (2005:534) via a joke about Indian food being too smelly to carry. Usually, we will cower (2005:540) by speaking no more than necessary and proceeding to the gate without risking further trouble. Knowing how to behave gives composure in the face of strangers who profile others, reducing humiliation.
Colonial Pasts
In order to understand how Islamophobia came into existence, I will study the possible origins of xenophobia in Western nations.
The British Empire dominated parts of the world for centuries, and I ask whether Britons today hold a sense of superiority originating from their controlling roots. Since the 15th century, English colonizers viewed natives of the New World as “new savages,” from whom they seized land, relegated to harsh conditions, and imposed a racial hierarchy by classifying based on skin tone/physical ability (Schmidt 2011:2). While Britain’s imperial power may have waned over time, racial difference has not. Poynting and Mason (2007) explain that Britain allowed people from its colonies to become citizens during its post-WWII reconstruction period but pushed them into a disguisedly racialized system via a series of legislation: 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act and 1971 Immigration Act (2007:64-65). The underlying goal of immigration policy was to expand the nation’s population while preserving the existing British way of life. It required the separation of patrials–the native-born–from non-patrials, achieved by treating those born in the UK as racially belonging. Although colonization has ended and immigration policy has changed, whether Britain’s legacy concerns its citizens today is unclear.
Through national pride, Brits demonstrate a connection between expression of superiority and prejudice. A 2016 poll by YouGov found that 44 percent of Brits were proud of their nation’s history of colonialism, while 21 percent regretted its occurrence and the rest felt unsure (Stone 2016). Although the results may not necessarily indicate feelings of superiority, a considerable proportion of citizens express little disapproval for their nation’s history of exploitation. Most convey feelings of patriotism and disregard the dark past. Fear for their country’s safety will result from national pride, strengthening Islamophobic attitudes since any threat to society will be met with vigor and emotion. Novels like Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verse received praise–a finalist for the 1988 Booker Prize–despite having offended Muslims and leading to worldwide protests. Westerners responded to the protests by accusing Muslims of rejecting freedom of expression (Poynting and Mason 2007:68), demonstrating how society frames outside cultures as primitive and therefore inferior.
Integration into Western culture becomes difficult for Muslims when the host culture loses trust in their innocence. During the “Long Boom,” a major immigration period in the country’s past, the Australian government instituted White Australia Policy to maintain the white status quo by only letting in people who were phenotypically and culturally similar to mainstream society (Poynting and Mason 2007:66). People of color were given permission to immigrate only upon a need to increase Australia’s labor force, illustrating how foreigners must compensate for their inferiority by demonstrating usefulness. Although Muslim immigrants can provide utility, risk of their causing societal harm could make them too dangerous to accept. Immigrants also assimilated into mainland culture by adopting the English language and abandoning ties with their homelands, bearing resemblance to how American settlers attempted to “kill the Indian…but save the man” by educating Native American children (Glenn 2015:57). But an individual’s mere willingness to assimilate is not sufficient enough for him to integrate with society. The dominant culture must believe that the immigrant group is willing to cooperate; in other words, assimilation is a two-party effort (Croucher 2013:59). Each new terror attack marginally hurts society’s acceptance of even Muslims who choose to yield to Western culture, maintaining Islamophobia. Hope for multiculturalism grew in the 1970s with bi-partisan support in Australian Parliament, but policy change fell short as right-wing politicians disagreed with “political correctness” and rejected the movement (Poynting and Mason 2007:67), showing the difficulty of enforcing equality between races and cultures.
Islamophobia has grown before 9/11 took place, ever since colonists laid the very foundations for xenophobia. In a study of UK Muslims, Sheridan (2006) finds an increase in implicit racism and religious discrimination following 9/11, where 80% of subjects experienced higher levels of suspicion from the public, ie. getting stares from strangers, hearing offensive jokes, etc. Importantly, implicit racism was present, albeit to a lesser degree, even prior to 9/11. This suggests that rather than having initiated Islamophobia outright, 9/11 was a major spike in existing intolerance towards Muslims over a greater period of time. The extent to which intolerance already persists partly depends on the comprehensiveness of legislature protecting racial groups–the UK’s Race Relations Act has to this day failed to recognize Muslims as an ethnic or racial group (Anon 1999). It also depends on the fierceness of citizens in defending their country from foreign threat, as discussed earlier regarding national pride.
Part of the reason for the spread of Islamophobia lies in the media’s display of terrorism, matching the desires of the public to view what they imagine to be reality. There is nothing inherently wrong about coverage of atrocities committed by radical Islamists. However, understating terrors committed by white nationalists or constantly associating Muslims with suicide bombers to garner ratings boosts or profits distorts reality and over-intensifies Islamophobia among consumers. This augments the racism that Muslims experience in Western countries, where the dominant culture’s concerns with Islamic ideology result in suspicion over people who look and behave like a clichéd Muslim person would. Victims of racism must decide how to retaliate in face of societal pressures, perhaps using wit to snub accusations or using composedness to cooperate. Lastly, I find that how intensely Islamophobia persists in a certain nation may depend on its history of superiority, creating pride for one’s country and desire to preserve its strength amidst threats. Even Muslims who try to assimilate into these Western nations may find it difficult depending on whether the host country trusts them enough, rendering escape from Islamophobia more challenging. This paper only studies a small portion of the Western world, specifically the US, UK, and Australia which are all originally English nations. Additional investigation would be useful for ranking the most Islamophobic nations, including non-English based territories, by conducting sample surveys in each country asking how critical/accepting each citizen is of Islam/ Muslims. This could reveal whether countries with certain colonial roots (English, French, and Spanish colonies in particular due to their once expansive empires) tend to be more Islamophobic than others. One can also compare the types of media (news, films, television) in each country to understand what people of each country view that may lead them to perceive Muslims differently than others would–perhaps bordering an aggressive Muslim nation leads to more biased news coverage.
References
Anon. 1999. “UK | Lifting the Veil on Discrimination.” BBC News. Retrieved May 30, 2018 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/492516.stm).
Arnold, Judith. 2007. “Kontroverse um die US-Serie ‘24 - Twenty Four.’” Medienheft.
Basu, Moni. 2016. “After 9/11, Turbans Made Sikhs Targets.” CNN. Retrieved May 30, 2018 (https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/15/us/sikh-hate-crime-victims/index.html).
Considine, Craig. 2017. “The Racialization of Islam in the United States: Islamophobia, Hate Crimes, and ‘Flying while Brown.’“ Religions 8(9):165.
Croucher, Stephen M. 2013. “Integrated Threat Theory and Acceptance of Immigrant Assimilation: An Analysis of Muslim Immigration in Western Europe.” Communication Monographs 80(1):46-62.
Cumper, Peter. 2014. “Multiculturalism, Human Rights and the Accommodation of Sharia Law.” Human Rights Law Review 14(1):31-57.
Ekman, Mattias. 2015. “Online Islamophobia and the politics of fear: manufacturing the green scare.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 38(11):1986-2002.
Glenn, Evelyn N. 2015. “Settler Colonialism as Structure: A Framework for Comparative Studies of U.S. Race and Gender Formation.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1(1):52-72.
Marvasti, Amir. 2005. “Being Middle Eastern American: Identity Negotiation in the Context of the War on Terror.” Symbolic Interaction 28(4):525-547.
Poniewozik, James. 2017. “'24: Legacy,' a One-Hour Super Bowl Ad for Islamophobia.” The New York Times. Retrieved May 30, 2018 (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/06/arts/television/muslim-terrorists-24-trump.html).
Poynting, Scott and Victoria Mason. 2007. “The resistible rise of Islamophobia: Anti-Muslim racism in the UK and Australia before 11 September 2001.” Journal of Sociology 43(1):61-86.
Rannard, Georgina. 2018. “Communities Unite to Defy 'Punish a Muslim Day'.” BBC News. Retrieved May 30, 2018 (http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43626843).
Ruiz-Grossman, Sarah. 2017. “Most Of America's Terrorists Are White, And Not Muslim.” The Huffington Post. Retrieved May 30, 2018 (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/domestic-terrorism-white-supremacists-islamist-extremists_us_594c46e4e4b0da2c731a84df).
Sheridan, Lorraine P. 2006. “Islamophobia Pre– and Post–September 11th, 2001.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 21(3):317-336.
Stone, Jon. 2016. “British People Are Proud of Colonialism and the British Empire, Poll Finds.” The Independent. Retrieved May 30, 2018 (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-people-are-proud-of-colonialism-and-the-british-empire-poll-finds-a6821206.html).