Islamophobia, racism and anti-Muslim racism

[cathy_ndiaye2]

Something that we will certainly discuss in class: Is the term "Islamophobia" useful?
Personally, I think that the term Islamophobia is useful, but sometimes it is not used in the right context. Before reading Rana’s article, I did not really consider that racism and Islamophobia were the same. For me, a racist act is an act that is perpetrated because of someone’s skin colour or race whereas an Islamophobic act is based on the fact that you can see that the victim is visibly Muslim. Whether it is directed towards women who wear hijab, niqab, burqa, etc. or towards another clear symbol of Islam like the mosque or the Quran for example. Of course, racialized Muslims can be victims of both. Still, I think it is important to differentiate between racism and Islamophobia. In the case where someone is being oppressed, because he is visibly Muslim and at the same time he is racialized, in my opinion, the appropriate word to characterize this act of oppression would be anti-Muslim racism because this terminology encompasses both dimensions, the ethnicity one and the religious one.

Also, what can be a little bit confusing is that most Muslims are racialized so how can we really know that someone is being oppressed because of his ethnicity and skin colour or based on his religious belonging? If we take for example a South Asian or Arab man who wears a beard, would the oppression that he undergoes be based on the assumption that he is Muslim or based on his ethnicity? I feel like for men, and more specifically racialized men, it can be even more difficult to recognize if the oppression they are victim of is based on them being Muslim or on them being racialized. For sure there is intersectionality between ethnicity (race) and religious affiliation. Still, there are also differences, and I think that most Muslims are racialized in one way or the other but obviously, not all racialized people are Muslims. From what Junaid Rana is saying in his work (if I understood correctly), it seems that historically being racialized and being Muslim were the same. About that, I think that to this day, in the West, White people (and even people in general) do not see a difference between racialized people and Muslims and that might be one of the reasons that explains why the importance of the term Islamophobia is being questioned. In Salman Hussain’s review of Rana’s work, Hussain exposes that ‘’ ‘The Muslim’ in his analysis is not simply the followers of Islam, but “a category that encompasses many nationalities, social and cultural practices, religious affiliations (from Muslim Sunni and Shia to Christian, Sikh, and Hindu) and social realities, that, through the process of state and popular racialisation, is generalised.‘’

Another question that could come to mind is that if a White woman who reverted to Islam and wore the Muslim woman’s attire was oppressed, would that be considered racism or Islamophobia? I think that because she wears the hijab people might not even know that she is White hence, she might be a victim of both. Racism because people could assume that since she is Muslim, she must be Arab or another ethnicity. Islamophobia because she is visibly Muslim. So, the answer to that question might be neither of the two, but rather that she is a victim of anti-Muslim racism. In conclusion, the multiple terminology can be confusing but in my opinion, Islamophobia, racism and anti-Muslim racism are terms that can describe different specific realities, so they are all important.