Islamophobia in the pre-Modern Era
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Reading Rana's text, I was thinking of how intertwined are the notions of religion and race and how politically controlled they are being transferred and even 'exported' in Rana's words.
The relationship between the blood and the race, the religion and the race, the nation and the race and how it has changed overtime gives a very complex nature to "Islamophobia". Being "central to modern nations- and to modernity itself" (27), this concept sets on a spectrum of premodern era and modern era onwards and this distinction in timeline adds another layer to this complexity.
Blood, race, religion and nation have been significant and controversial concepts throughout the history and their relationships have also changed over time. As Rana beautifully takes us through this chronological continuum, we need to trace all the instances in which a change in the register or in the correlations led to what now we have as Islamophobia. I assume comparison between the modern state and what lies in the previous era is crucial in understanding Islamophobia.
I am thinking of the anti-Muslim instances before the modern era and I am curious to think about the way they were interpreted when there was not a notion such as Islamophobia. I am curious to know how similar or different those instances where from what we have now in the modern state. And how they were effective in what we see now as Islamophobia.
Throughout the time, we have had different theories of race as Rana points out e.g. when "a theory of race is socially constructed between concepts of the cultural and the biological" (28) or when the religion was the lens through which racial differences were seen (32) or when race started to have this close relationship with blood and in general the concept of 'scientific racism' was born (34) etc.
Thinking of these different aspects associated to racism, I think we need to consider where anti-Muslim instances did stand with regards to them and how their positionality in the pre-modern era is different from what we see now in the modern state and how they have played a role in constructing what in the modern state we see as Islamophobia. The complexity of this concept constantly makes me think of the roots and the very beginning instances where the world saw the first signs of Islamophobia and the first global receptions of this notion and specifically, how they were taken (or supported, or exported, or exaggerated, or etc. ) politically which did result in the current status.