How could Islamophobia be a form of racism? Isn’t race about skin colour?

[anya_valimahomed]

Islamophobia can be a form of racism because the act of being racist does not necessarily depend on the actual religion or skin tone of the person receiving the racism, it depends on what that person is perceived as by the racial offender. If a Pakistani woman is perceived to be an Arab and is subjected to Islamophobia the person subjecting this onto her is profiling her and antagonising her based on the fact that she is thought to be a Muslim. The woman could have completely different features and skin tone to a ‘typical Arab’ but that does not matter; what matters is that she has been perceived to be a Muslim which in most cases is enough criteria to be exposed to prejudice and discrimination. Therefore, the taunting of a group of people solely because they are perceived to be Muslim is racist as well as Islamophobic because the people being racist do not know for a fact if the person is Muslim or not or anything about their personal beliefs. This presents two examples of racism one is being racist due to someone’s skin colour and then making assumptions about their religion, beliefs and lifestyle because they are brown. A second is knowing that person’s religion and assuming them and all others of that religion are the same eg calling all Muslims terrorists. This is illustrated perfectly in the Hussain article where the “Arab slayer” “Before pulling the trigger ,he asked the Bangladeshi immigrant where he was from. His answer did not matter.” Which highlights that the true ethnicity of the man did not matter to the “Arab slayer” and therefore his racism towards Arabs rooted in islamophobia became apparent without him even interacting with an Arab man.

[nickolas_mazza]

I think that's a very good point being made, one that goes back to the idea of the "triple gaze" we've mentioned so often since our discussion on Race and Class. The identity of marginalized peoples tends to matter less than what their 'perceived identities' are, they are often being defined by how a white society views them.

This can be the case for someone seen as Black, Asian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or any other minority group. How someone truly identifies doesn't matter to the white majority, who just make assumptions and assign a minority's labels for them. If assigning someone as a 'Scary Black Man' is racist, so too should be the assigning of someone as a 'Scary Muslim Man'.