Minarets and Steeples

Social Text, 2012

This article works backward from the targeting of Muslims in the war on terror to argue that religion and race have a historical relationship more intimate than typically thought. In particular, it argues that religion is not merely one more semiotic coordinate, alongside descent, phenotype, cultural identity, through which bodies have become racially ascribed as white or nonwhite. Rather, Islamophobia demonstrates that religion (and by extension, secular “ideology”) has historically generated a supplemental racial dynamic irreducible to the assignation of color. This second axis of race distinguishes between those who compose a society worth defending from those whose interior lives or mentalities count as a threat. Like the color line, this second axis of race has a venerable history as a strategy of power. It finds its origins in religious distinctions between the Christian flock and its enemies as constituted by the regime of power that Michel Foucault once called the “pastorate” of premodern Europe. With the rise of the modern governmental state, this medieval politico-theological enemy was translated in secular terms as a figure for ideological threats to civil order, both at the global level of the expanding world-system’s borders and internally within the individual state. A supplement to racisms of the color line, dogma-line racism maps populations along the other side of Cartesian modernity’s mind/body split, in primary reference to mind rather than body, ideology rather than corporeality, according to theologies, creeds, beliefs, faiths, and ideas, rather than their color, face, hair, blood, and origin.

Postcolonial Studies, 2020

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many passages, contrived corridors … [T.S Eliot] An elderly speaker in T.S Eliot’s Gerontion1 while reflecting on Europe after the First World War speaks about history. For him, history’s ‘many cunning passages, contrived corridors’, function to divide time into specific periods/channels, the access to which is fed to us in small portions. Calling these bite sized portions female history, he says that when people call history a muddled ball of chaos their craving for understanding is lost.2 Thus, believing in history as reported is no longer a valid assertion and taking ownership of the ideals and social constructs that were once part of our life is no longer relevant in the age in which physical fragmentation is a reality.3 Eliot’s examination of history is an examination of the way we perceive our past. He wrote this poem when the British Empire was trying to expel Ottomans from Jerusalem.4 In 1917, after entering through the Jaffa gate, Field Marshal Edmund Allenby remarked: ‘The wars of the crusaders are now complete’.5 This statement bolsters the idea that empire builders are quasi-crusaders wanting to complete the work their ancestors had begun. While anecdotal these narratives illustrate ‘how colonial encounters themselves often looked backwards to earlier adversarial relations’.6 In contemporary times we see colonial dynamics as discussed above being reproduced in contemporary postcolonial relations. These vignettes illustrate how postcolonialism hangs over present debates, namely, the intersection between postcolonialism and Islamophobia and how it strengthens the latter concept. For example, if we look at Edward Said’s observation that ‘for Europe, Islam was a lasting trauma’,7 it would help in understanding how for many Muslims in Europe the existing political discourse, which is used to justify discriminatory practices and exclusion from mainstream society, has the implication of recreating Islamophobia as more radical groups seek violent, vengeful retribution against Muslims. In this way, the cultural and the structural interactions of Islamophobia feed into the radicalisation of various groups who see ‘social conflict at the bottom of society as mirrored misrepresentations of each other’

Journal of Global History, 2017

This is a learned and lavishly produced work, written for a broad audience, about the historical origins of one of humankind’s most harmful and persistent ills. It offers a condensed and generally lucid survey of the many waves of discrimination, segregation, and persecution in world history, with a special emphasis on the West. This emphasis is from the late medieval period to our own times; Bethencourt does not really accept that there was racism in Antiquity and early Islam, and so these are covered briefly. The work proceeds in a sober manner, with a fine eye for significant details, variations, and results. Bethencourt’s own field is the Iberian world – Spain and Portugal from the Middle Ages onward, and the Portuguese and Spanish empires – but his judgement onother regions and periods is sound and balanced, based on up-to-date research. The footnotes contain massive learning. This book, therefore, is recommended reading for anyone interested in the subject. It is in discussing the reconquest of Iberia and the crusades that the author comes into his own. All major areas of ethnic and religious conflict and interaction are discussed in chronological order, with a great deal of attention paid to European activities in Africa, the Americas, and Asia in Parts II and III of the work. The development of racist theory and ideology are treated in Part IV. Part V, on ‘The impact of nationalism’, is devoted to the twentieth century. That said, the work is an attempt to review the essence of racism at a conceptual level. Regrettably, I find the attempt unconvincing. This is not so much because I disagree with it, but because it lacks precision and coherence. Bethencourt defines racism as ‘prejudice concerning ethnic descent coupled with discriminatory action’ (p. 1). This phrase means that every form of group prejudice focusing on descent is racism, which is untenable. It would mean, for instance, that the Old Testament is full of racism. Prejudice concerning ethnic descent is at least as old as the art of writing. A further definition, or rather description, by Bethencourt follows (pp. 7–8), which is not helpful because it is insufficiently precise and tries to cover too much. The complementary element of action is a matter of debate. Bethencourt claims that ‘The issue remains that prejudice related to ethnic descent does not sufficiently identify racism; such prejudice must be coupled with discriminatory action’ (p. 8). This is questionable at several levels. Not all prejudice Journal of Global History (2017), 12, pp. 155–160 © Cambridge University Press 2017

Fighting racism in Europe is not easy when Europe has two hands tied behind its back—debilitated by neo-liberal policies on the one hand and the securitisation of minorities on the other.

Stopwar.org.uk, 2015

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news-comment/888-the-five-pillars-of-islamophobia-and-the-roots-of-anti-muslim-racism On a Thursday night, terrorists blew themselves up in the streets of Beirut. The next day, co-ordinated terrorist attacks in des rues of Paris. The same perpetrators targeted Muslims and Christians in the two different capitals. Just a month ago, it was a moving scene watching European women and men holding signs welcoming refugees arriving at train stations. Thus, the horrific attacks would become even more appalling if there was any truth to the news these terrorists might have hid among refugees to reach France. Especially since refugees found better reception in Europe than anywhere else, including many of the Arab and Muslim countries. And for these terrorists to exploit that hospitality is neither Arab nor a Muslim value. There could be no rationalisation to the terrorist attacks in Paris or the atrocious murders in Beirut, Baghdad, Damascus or Nigeria. Putting aside our virtuous indignation, however, we mustn’t forget the so-called Islamic State (IS) was the illegitimate child of George Bush’s “birth bangs of democracy.” The misguided US-led Western interventionist policies created the environment that gave birth to the refugees and terrorists. NOTE: Fareed Khan makes no claim to the authorship of this commentary/article.

Identity, Belonging, and Migration, 2008

There is currently no clarity on what Islamophobia covers: Does it relate to hostility towards Islam, hostility towards Muslims or racism against Muslims? While some argue that the term Muslimophobia should replace Islamophobia due to the hostility being directed at Muslims as people, rather than Islam the religion, it is not clear whether this is the case in practice. This article examines expressions of Islamophobia and Muslimophobia and their relationship to racism in Swiss parliamentary debates on banning the construction of minarets in Switzerland. It demonstrates that Islamophobia and Muslimophobia are different from each other but mostly occur in tandem. Furthermore, Muslimophobia can be but is not always a form of racism due to the ‘manipulation of culture’ in which proponents of the ban can de-essentialise, as well as essentialise, cultural traits to argue that Muslims can become integrated if they fulfil certain conditions. Such conditions can, however, be easily manipulated to continually exclude undesirable ‘others’. The article contends that the minaret ban initiative relied heavily on the ‘slippery slope’ fallacy to make both Islamophobic and Muslimophobic arguments, that is, accusing Muslims and Islam of transgressions against Swiss society that have not even occurred.

2011