The theme of this year’s Islamophobia Awareness Month is “seeds of change”. This is about recognising how smaller steps can lead to larger steps in the pursuit of transformative change. We don’t think this should be interpreted as a call for making tweaks to a harmful system, or reformist measures that strengthen and legitimise the existence of State surveillance- such as improving police relationships with Muslim communities, or Muslims being discussed in relation to what they “contribute” or their levels of “integration”.
There is widespread misunderstanding, especially within the migration charity sector, as to what Islamophobia is and how it functions. So, we have interpreted this year’s theme to mean planting seeds of political education and consciousness in our community’s minds. As part of our Who Is Welcome campaign, we are kicking off Islamophobia Awareness Month by exploring how Islamophobia functions as a type of racism, and why it is important that we view Islamophobia through the lens of racism.
Islamophobia is racism. End of.
There’s a lot of resistance to correctly view Islamophobia as a form of racism. Islamophobia is not simply a “critique” of a religion, as many would have you believe. Far from it.
At its core, Islamophobia is based in a specific form of racism called Orientalism. This is the racist colonial idea that people from the “Orient” or the “East” (South Asia, West Asia and North Africa) are “savage”, “backwards”, “oppressive”, “dangerous” and in need of “civilisation”. Orientalist ideas of people from these areas of the world was (and still is) used as the justification for colonising them. Understanding Orientalism as the foundation of Islamophobia is important because we can see how it seeps into modern-day narratives about Muslims (and people who are perceived to be Muslim- more on that later), especially in the aftermath of the “War on Terror”.
Islamophobia is not based on anything objectively observable about Islam, or on anything to do with the teachings of Islam, but rather on the West’s construction and assumptions of Islam and what it means. Islamophobia also incorporates the notion that Muslim women need to be “saved”¹ from Muslim men, and that queer people must be protected from “oppressive” Muslim societies.
Orientalism is racism: the West’s construction of the “Orient” constructed people from the “Orient” as a “lesser race” that deserved to be colonised. In understanding Orientalism as a key part of Islamophobia, we can understand Islamophobia as anti-Muslim racism: verbal, political, physical and legal violence² towards Muslims.
Islamophobia impacts non-Muslims
In 2018, the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims released a report in which they defined Islamophobia as follows:
“Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness”. In other words, Islamophobia is violence directed towards those who are Muslim, but also towards those who are perceived to be Muslim in accordance with certain criteria: “markers of Muslimness”.
In the West, Islam has been racialised. This means that “Muslimness” is given a racial character, and ascribed with the quality of non-Whiteness. And so whilst “markers of Muslimness” vary based on gender, such as certain attire (hijab, taqiyah) or facial hair (beards), they broadly include a South Asian, West Asian or North African phenotype (facial features and skin colour), as well as South Asian, West Asian or North African cultural markers such as food and music. This means that anyone who looks (or acts) “Brown” or “Middle Eastern” is a potential target of Islamophobia, since everyone who looks “Brown” or “Middle Eastern” is conflated with “Muslimness”. Islamophobia is therefore based on stereotyping entire regions with many different peoples and cultures into one homogenous group. There are documented instances of South Asians (many of whom are Sikh, but also Hindus and Christians), Black men with beards, but also Central and Eastern European migrant men, being targeted by Islamophobic abuse.
Understanding how Islamophobia also targets non-Muslims allows us to further understand how Islamophobia functions as racism. Islamophobia turns Muslims, but also those perceived to be Muslim, into “racialised Others”.
Islamophobia and migration
In the aftermath of August’s fascist riots, where many marginalised groups, including Muslims and migrants, were targeted, we need to understand the relevance of Islamophobia in shaping anti-migrant discourse. One example of this is when MP Paul Scully made Islamophobic comments painting Tower Hamlets and Sparkhill (Birmingham) as “no go zones”: areas which just so happen to also have high migrant populations. As demonstrations outside hotels accommodating refugees are increasing, we must also remember that the majority of people in Home Office accommodation are from majority Muslim countries.
According to the Government’s data, many of the top nationalities of people arriving to the UK by an “irregular method of entry” were Muslim-majority countries, such as Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Sudan and Albania. We can understand anti-migrant policies then, not merely as anti-migrant, but also as anti-Muslim. This is especially clear when we consider the expansion of the Prevent duty into the immigration system, or the fact that most people affected by deprivation of citizenship powers are Muslim.
Those who work towards migrant justice also need to understand how Islamophobia and anti-migrant discourse both operate on tactics of scapegoating and distraction. Muslim migrants are demonised and blamed for the failures of the State, in order to distract from increasingly dehumanising austerity policies. The same system that oppresses migrants also oppresses Muslims, queer people and racialised communities across the country, using the same tactics and same rhetorical patterns. Single issue politics is an injustice to liberation everywhere. Being serious about migrant justice also means being serious about Islamophobia.
We invite the sector, media and politicians to:
- Recognise Islamophobia as a form of racism, and commit to understanding how it operates across all levels of society
- Recognise the ways that Islamophobia affects migrant, including refugee, service users, staff members, and wider communities
- Commit to creating workplaces and communities that are inclusive of Muslims
- Commit to defying Islamophobic rhetoric, policies and narratives
- Commit to amplifying Muslim voices
For more information on Islamophobia and migration, check out our Who Is Welcome and Hostile Office campaigns.
Footnotes
¹This echoes the Orientalist thinking behind the West’s desire to “save Brown women from Brown men”.
²Verbal violence includes name-calling, slurs, stereotyping; legal violence includes policies and laws; political violence includes discourse from politicians, educational institutions, and the media.