1

Taj Taher
HONORS 394 B
17 February 2016
Response Paper 3
Islamophobia: to deconstruct the very term itself let alone the conditions surrounding
its inception and persistence throughout history provides myriad avenues for discourse which
could fill reams of pages. Some critics take issue with it on the simplest level of its denotation,
the one proposed and overwhelmingly accepted since publication in the 1996 Runnymede Report
as dread or hatred of Islam (Green 4) for not addressing its relation to other forms of
prejudice. On the connotative level, the term conjures an image of a helpless victim cowering in
fear before a nightmarish figure clad in a thawb, wielding mustache and machine gun. Other
critics, such as Fred Halliday, point out that the term does not accurately reflect the
contemporary climate, for although Islam was the threat during the Crusades, the phobia
experienced today is directed towards the worshippers of the religion and not the religion itself;
he suggests a rebranding along the lines of anti-Muslimism.
If these varying insights reveal anything, however, it is that a fundamental issue with
terms like Islamophobia, anti-Muslim, and even Orientalism is that they take a
phenomenon pertaining to a relationship between entities and narrow the focus immediately
upon one of them through an etymological constraint. The consequent discourse surrounding this
issue apparently becomes almost exclusively concerned with Muslims and Islam regardless of
ones stance: it is Islam this and Islam that, it is Muslim good or Muslim bad. As such,
the other entitys presence is taken for granted; indeed, the fact there exists a relationship at all
may be overlooked.
For there does not appear to be an equal proportion of discourse analyzing the United
States or any other nation considered Western, a critical oversight given that the issue of
Islamophobia rests with them: it is their distorted perception, their reactionary ideology, and their

Taher 2
phobia. Islam, Muslims, the media, political interests, and all that we have discussed in class
certainly fuel this issue, but the phenomenon is rooted in the manner by which a population has
chosen to define and perceive its own identity throughout history. Thus, truly understanding
Islamophobia requires an in-depth analysis of the historical production of the West as an us
versus them society. While analyzing the West instead of Islam may seem like a paradox,
recognizing that the paradox only exists because of an illusory awareness predicated by mere
nomenclature reconciles this dilemma.
That this phenomenon emerges from a Western identity crisis rather than an issue specific
to Islam is indicated by the cycles of similar hostility aimed at a variety of distinct groups
throughout history. Looking at just the United States, the plight of Muslims in this country is not
all that different from that suffered by Japanese Americans during WWII or Native Americans
during Westward Expansion, to name but a few. All of these groups are marked as being civilly
inferior or backwards in some sense, and harboring an imminent potential for violence. In each
of these cases though, a history of cohabitation prior to conflagrations of racial tensions
demonstrates that these allegedly distinct cultures or civilizations (as Samuel Huntington
would call them) were not so ideologically incompatible. What is more, while these instances are
characterized by racism, race itself was not the impetus for hostility.
No, when racial hostility did arise during these separate points in history each involving
a dehumanization of the target group through stereotypes propagated through media and society
it came at a time when the nation had a vested interest in seeing those groups portrayed as
such. As Dr. Jack Shaheen asserts in Reel Bad Arabs, Policy enforces mythical images.
Racism, or mythical images, is then a product of ensuring national interests, because it makes
the means of securing those interests palatable to the human conscience. No one wants to
recognize the worst in themselves, and so to rationalize these acts as righteous necessitates

Taher 3
establishing an us versus them mentality. For these reasons the appropriation of Native
American lands presents itself to the United States public as the spread of civilization to the
untamed savages rather than sheer robbery, the internment of Japanese Americans not a violation
of civil rights but a necessary precaution against the forces of evil, and any number of abuses
against Muslim Americans a countermeasure to the corrupting influence of barbarism that is
Islam. It becomes much easier to carry out questionable actions when defining oneself as the
good guy, and when there is no way to sympathize with the one being dominated.
This conception is not a distinctly Western one, as humanity universally has demonstrated
this tendency throughout history on both individual and communal levels. However, it has
become a problem for the West because the civilization has experienced such immense success.
Within the past several centuries, it has come to dominate the world politically, socially,
economically, and culturally. Because of this fact, the West now suffers from hubris; the moral
superiority which had been assumed in order to justify the expansion of power has now become
entrenched as the core value of the entire civilization. Western culture now prides itself on this
moral superiority, on being so much more enlightened than the rest of the world. After all, if any
of the other civilizations were more advanced, would they not be the ones in power? By defining
identity in this manner, there emerges the sense that these values and tenets are natural. This
historical process of identity formation with a kind of circular reasoning has resulted in a society
which finds any other society that deviates from the Wests superior ideals as inferior or
inherently incompatible because the West needs to be morally superior in order to make sense of
itself. The manner in which it has chosen to define itself is the binary of us and them.
As such, by attributing their success in the world to their worldview and twisting this
with the notion of an inherent identity, the West assumes the same of the rest of the world. The
result are phenomena like Islamophobia, produced by the belief that ideology is somehow

Taher 4
natural and that Muslims are programmed to behave in this non-Western and therefore
uncivilized manner. Moustafa Bayoumi touches upon this process of reducing political
responsibility in matters of wars, state-building projectsnationalism, regionalism
globalization to the spurious fact that Muslims are agents of Islam and only Islam, which To
Western audiencesis an oddly comforting story, (Bayoumi 115). Comforting for it validates
the identity which has been formulated by Western civilization throughout its history: the West
transcends the petty violence of terrorism as it is morally superior. Thus, Islamophobia is allowed
to flourish throughout time since it continues the narrative which the West wants to see played
out, in which it is the good guy saving the world from evil.
While the term itself not to mention the phenomenon of Islamophobia poses an
issue because of the incorrect assumptions it informs, there is perhaps one meaningful use for it.
If phobias are recognized as ungrounded afflictions of fear, then Islamophobia is read as a
disease of fear, not a disease of Islam. This not only absolves Islam of culpability, but implies
that it is in reality benign. This reading also characterizes the West as a victim, since the
phobia affects them without their say. While it is true that the West is responsible for
perpetuating its own fear, this reading allows us to step beyond pointing fingers and instead work
towards the solution of reconciling the Wests identity and purging this fear from it.
Works Cited
Bayoumi, Moustafa. This Muslim American Life. New York University Press, 2015. Print.
Dippie, Brian W. American Indians: The Image of the Indian. Teacher Serve. National
Humanities Center, n.d. Web. 8 Feb. 2016.
Green, Todd H. The Fear of Islam: An Introduction to Islamophobia in the West. Augsburg
Fortress Publishers, 2015. Project MUSE. Web. 10 Feb. 2016.
Halliday, Fred. Islamophobia Reconsidered. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22.5 (1999): 892-902.
Print.
Miles, Hannah. WWII Propaganda: The Influence of Racism. Artifacts: A Journal of
Undergraduate Writing 6 (March 2012). Web. 10 Feb. 2016.
Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. Dir. Sut Jhally. Perf. Jack Shaheen. Media
Education Foundation, 2006. Film.
Westward Expansion. HistoryNet. World History Group, n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2016.