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Islamophobia is a concept denoting essentializing negative attitudes, beliefs, emotions and practices targeting Islam and/or Muslims. As such, it names a social phenomenon that we can observe, measure, and attempt to understand. For many scholars, understanding Islamophobia involves a deconstruction of the societies that harbor it, meaning that theorizing about Islamophobia is a form of societal critique. In recent years, post- and de-colonial perspectives have become increasingly popular in such theorizing. Broadly speaking, the core-argument coming out of this scholarship is that Muslims across the West are facing systematic racialization and discrimination. How does this argument hold when confronted by the broader research on Muslim experiences with exclusion in the West?
Between exclusion and inclusion
In an article published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, I address the question posed above by reviewing qualitative studies from the last decade that explore Muslim experiences with social exclusion in Western contexts. This literature reveals the multidisciplinary interest in the topic, ranging from sociology to educational sciences, religious studies, political science, and anthropology. Furthermore, it highlights the various ways in which the topic is explored. Studies investigate how, and where, Muslims experience exclusion (“Lived experiences”), how they deal with exclusion (“Coping mechanisms”), how they pursue perceived collective interests as Muslims (“Activism”), how they understand concepts, policies, and practices (“Perceptions”), and how they articulate their self-understandings and relations to society (“Identity and belonging”).
A key finding that emerges from the literature is that Muslims, across the West, experience various forms of exclusion simply for being perceived as Muslim. Theoretically, this implies the presence of a cross-national discourse about Islam and Muslims that shapes and conditions the social interactions in which Muslims engage. In reference to the core argument put forward by post-and de-colonial scholars of Islamophobia, the finding can be said to lend support to the claim that a racialized imaginary of Muslims has a systematic, as in wide-spread, presence across the West.
However, there is another finding that complicates such a theoretical closure. Namely, the literature reveals that many Muslims feel that they belong, and are included, in the societies of which they are part. Furthermore, this finding is true across different national contexts and samples, meaning that it cannot be explained away as an outcome of different degrees of privilege within the Muslim demography. As such, it is a finding that also deserves to be conceptualized and given weight in theory.
So what?
In what ways do the findings of inclusion matter? My primary argument is that such findings challenge the concept of racialization as omnipresent, and hence determining, of Muslim experiences in society. This means that processes other than racialization, such as various processes of inclusion initiated by, for example, multicultural policies, also need to be taken into account when theorizing about what it’s like to be Muslim in the West. This is not about making inclusion part of theorizations about Islamophobia, but about leaving space for it. In other words, acknowledging and understanding inclusion prevents the creation of deterministic narratives about exclusion.
Nuancing the theoretical narratives coming out of post- and decolonial strands of Islamophobia scholarship should by no means be taken as a downplaying of the very real and serious dangers that Islamophobia is posing for Muslims. Nor should it be taken as implying that Islamophobia can be reduced to individual prejudice. Indeed, the very fact that Muslims all over the West face similar stereotypes and acts of exclusion when going about their daily lives is a testament to the fact that Islamophobic tropes, discourses and practices are culturally and institutionally embedded across national contexts. This ought to remain the primary message coming out from Islamophobia scholarship. However, doing so convincingly requires theoretical narratives that can account for the broader range of empirical material existing in the research literature. Importantly, when interrogating grand narratives of exclusion with accounts of actual Muslim experiences, as done in my research, findings of inclusion demonstrate the need for a movement away from perspectives that cast the West as a solely, largely, or primarily exclusionary environment for Muslims.
Moving away from grand narratives
In a recent special issue in Ethnic and Racial Studies, scholars from the INTERSECT-project hosted by MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society put forward the argument that Islamophobia is a globalizing, but also genuinely global phenomenon, as opposed to a Western export. From this perspective, theorizations and conceptualizations of Islamophobia as solely a Western imperial construct fails to account for the ideological and political basis of Islamophobia in places like India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and China. If variations of islamophobia are developed locally rather than adopted from the West, this means that researchers must (re)approach contexts with an inductive, as opposed to deductive, mindset. For example, in a separate contribution in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Ejiofor argues that conceptualizing Islamophobia as racialization misses the point entirely when attempting to understand the dynamics in the Nigerian context. The problem with racialization, according to Ejiofor, is that it cannot be disentangled from the historical, cultural and (post)colonial contexts that informed its development. Rather, he understands Islamophobia as a form of anti-Muslim tribalism, which he contends to be a more fitting conceptualization in contexts where Muslims are indigenous to their countries, and phenotypically similar to their non-Muslim countrymen.
The insights from the INTERSECT-project also carry consequences for research in the very Western contexts where most Islamophobia scholarship hitherto has been situated. Primarily, it encourages attention to the relationship between concepts and contexts. In light of the arguments presented earlier, this means that contexts, of various scales, should be given theoretical attention, that is, be allowed to inform the concepts that are used in describing them. Examples of such research does exist in the field, but it does not seem to have the same impact on theory as do the exclusionary narratives coming out of post-and de colonial perspectives.
It is true that grand narratives have a certain appeal. They tell stories that resonate and make sense of complex issues, usually related to injustices that are real, visible, and pressing. However, they also simplify. Fortunately, as showed here, they are vulnerable to empirical scrutiny, which can also initiate new perspectives and ideas. Hopefully, future Islamophobia research, and theorizing, will be context-oriented and data driven. It’s too important not to be.
