Islamophobia, Racism and the Vilification of the Muslim DiasporaAuthor(s): Rachid Acim

Source: Islamophobia Studies Journal , Vol. 5, No. 1 (Fall 2019), pp. 26-44
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Islamophobia Studies Journal

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26 ISJ 5(1)

Islamophobia, Racism and

the Vilification of the Muslim
Diaspora

Rachid Acim
Ibn Zohr University, Agadir, Morocco

ISLAMOPHOBIA STUDIES JOURNAL

VOLUME 5, NO. 1 Fall 2019, PP. 26–44.

Published by:
Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project,
Center for Race and Gender, University of California, Berkeley

Disclaimer:
Statements of fact and opinion in the articles, notes, perspectives, and so
on in the Islamophobia Studies Journal are those of the respective authors
and contributors. They are not the expression of the editorial or advisory
board and staff. No representation, either expressed or implied, is made
of the accuracy of the material in this journal, and ISJ cannot accept any
legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be
made. The reader must make his or her own evaluation of the accuracy
and appropriateness of those materials.

26

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 27

Islamophobia, Racism and the Vilification of the Muslim Diaspora

Rachid Acim
Ibn Zohr University, Agadir, Morocco

ABSTRACT: Is Islamophobia a new phenomenon? Are Islam and the Judeo-Christian West
still hateful of and hostile toward each other? Do Muslim women with veils and headscarves
constitute a threat to the West’s secular and liberal values? What has fueled the sudden rhetoric
of Islamophobia in the United States of America and Europe? How does Anglophone print
and digital media report pressures, prejudices and discriminatory practices against male and
female students? How do Western media cover the social exclusion of the Muslim diaspora?
These questions need a thoughtful coverage and concentration in academia. It is believed that
most of the grievous and painful stories experienced, for example, by Muslim immigrants—
be they legal or illegal, asylum seekers, refugees, or whatsoever, still do not find a room in
scholastic research. This paper utilizes the narrative research method to study and probe into
the problem of Islamophobia, the vilification of and racism against Muslims in the United
States of America and Europe. The usage of human stories, people’s personal experiences and
narrative accounts or recounts of Islamophobic incidents (real or imagined) as the basis of this
inquiry is particularly suitable for research because it can help understand the status quo of
Muslim diaspora in the United States of America and Europe. Narrative data are retrieved
from five major US-news publications and press elite (e.g., Foreign Policy, The New York Times,
The Washington Post, USA Today and Chicago Tribune). The analysis of these data can be used
to improve the situation of Muslim diaspora and their interaction with non-Muslims all over
the world. The mediums cited above have been chosen because they are the prime source of
information for intellectuals and policy-makers. Decidedly, they construct and build up ample
epistemologies on Islamophobia and other epiphenomena of racism.

Keywords: Islamophobia, narrative research method, media, human stories, epistemologies

INTRODUCTION
Is Islamophobia a new phenomenon? Are Islam and the Judeo-Christian West hateful
of and hostile toward each other? Do Muslim women with veils and scarves constitute a threat
to its secular and liberal values? How does Anglophone print and digital media report the pres-
sures, prejudices and discriminatory practices against male and female students? How does
Western media cover the social exclusion of the Muslim diaspora?1 These are critical questions
that need a thoughtful consideration and serious reckoning in the contemporary world, in
which distrust, tension and condemnation have shaped and characterized the relations between
Islam and the Judeo-Christian West.
Islamophobia or anti-Muslim racism is clearly not a new phenomenon; dislike and
hatred of Islam is deep-rooted in the 7th century when the Prophet Mohammed (570–632)
started preaching and spreading out the faith throughout Arabia. Islam was assailed “by rival
groups such as the residents of Mecca” (Taras 2012, 109). Several Muslim lives would be lost
to the wrath of the Quraysh tribe. Early converts lost their lives, while many others were

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28 ISJ 5(1)

threatened and tortured for their religious convictions. Prophet Mohammed was himself har-
assed, abused and sometimes even assaulted. Islamophobia at that time, one could say, did not
exist as a name but it was a reality.
Since the 9/11 climate, Islamophobia has become a globalized catchphrase in both the
media and popular discourse. Thus, a wide range of books accumulated a global stock of cli-
chés, stereotypes and folk myths about the Muslim deviant “Other,” involving the racialization
and demonization of Muslims (Pratt and Woodlock 2016). The resurgence of Islamophobia
resulted in hate crimes against Muslims, Arabs, Afghanis, and South Asians across North
America and Europe. The incidents reported ranged from verbal abuse to physical threats,
assaults, and the destruction of property. Besides these individual instances of violence, double-
checking, racial profiling and finger printing at airports are becoming rampant worldwide
(Zine 2008).
Muslims were often pigeonholed as threatening subjects and mongrels that act in con-
trast with, and antagonistically to peace and world order. As for Muslim lands, inhabited by
Muslim-majorities (such as in Iraq, Bosnia, Palestine, Afghanistan, Sudan, Syria and Libya,
etc.), the image that is prevalent in newspapers and television screens, is “often that of a hard,
uncompromising faith whose adherents will resort to violence in defense for their principles or
to impose their [own] will on others” (Ruthven 1997).
In respect to Muslim women, they were frequently linked to and associated with
extremism and radicalism; they unexpectedly turn into signifiers of threats, danger and peril.
In the words of Marranci (2008, 119), “Muslim women are not even icons; they are just ghosts.”
Such nauseating images about Islam are warranted by the so-called “war on terror,” which has
germinated an ideological discourse, fed by xenophobia, racism, bigotry and anti-Muslim sen-
timents. This ideological discourse has constructed a contemporary image: the Muslim folk
devil incorporated in the Muslim religious radicals and the violent terrorists—which Khan
(2003, 158) calls “the Islamic Grand Inquisitor”—who is dissimilar to the subservient blacks
and assimilated Jews.
So, the Muslim diaspora in this new world order, find themselves living under constant
scrutiny and surveillance and in constant fear (Zine 2008, 60). Islamophobia has, therefore,
been politically and ideologically constructed to justify the reasons why Muslims are perse-
cuted and discriminated against. This gives the impression that Muslims are blameworthy for
generating the fear of and the phobia for Islam that Islamophobia implies (Jenkins 2012).
The present paper attempts to document the ample manifestations of Islamophobia,
prejudice and racial discrimination against Muslims in the United States of America and
Europe through the investigation of news stories and narratives provided by the print (and even
digital) media in either place. A particular emphasis is laid on the persecution of Muslim
immigrants such as refugees, commonplace people, students, (veiled) women and job seekers.
Education, the public and employment sectors are all contested, with a view to seeing whether
or not the Muslim diaspora experience Islamophobia and racism. To this end, the following
questions are considered:

1) To what extent did Islamophobia inhibit Muslim immigrants to integrate in the

United States of America and Europe?
2) Has there been any prejudice or discrimination in the job market based on the Muslim
background of a person?
3) Are Muslim students—males and females—segregated and discriminated against at
schools and in colleges?
4) How are the Muslim immigrants/refugees dealt with in these receptive countries?

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 29

News outlets such as The Washington Post, Foreign Policy and The New York Times serve
as a major source of information for the researcher. Neither bias nor the subjectivity of the
media are issues that he intends to make out in the present inquiry because the entire focus is
primarily centered on the narrative accounts provided by these media as concerns Islamophobia,
racism and the vilification of the Muslim diaspora. Initially, the researcher traces up briefly the
historical roots, evolution and definitions of Islamophobia; and then, he shifts into reporting
and pining down the état d’art regarding this topical issue. Next, the methodology developed
is illuminated, and eventually, some insightful recommendations for practical action are set
forth. In what follows, the researcher traces up the origin of Islamophobia.

THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS
The term “Islamophobia” has become widely used in the Anglo-Saxon world and has
become recognized in academia as can be noted in the wide range of academic journals, media
publications, research reports, think tanks and international conferences specifically devoted to
it. However, there is still a paucity of a research that questions the numerous manifestations
and multi-facetedness of Islamophobia in the West. Most of the grievous and painful stories
experienced by Muslim immigrants—be they legal or illegal, asylum seekers, refugees, or
whatsoever, still do not find a room in scholastic research. Acknowledging this given assump-
tion, at the heart of this paper, lies the following working definition of Islamophobia: “[It] is a
form of religious and cultural intolerance of Islam and Muslims. While this might serve as a
useful shorthand definition, the actual meaning of the term is more complicated” (Ross 2014).
As stated above, Islamophobia is not a new problem because it is anchored in the historical
tense relations between Muslims, Christians and Jews. The antagonism between the followers of
these three religions goes back to one thousand years. Throughout history, Muslims and Christians,
for example, held negative views about each other, and they perceived each other as “the Other.”
As Said (1978) has so powerfully noted, the hostility on which contemporary Islamophobia is
founded is not new to the West, but has a long history with roots going back at least as far as the
Crusades. The negative stereotyping of Muslims and gross misunderstandings and representations
of Islam have long-standing features of many Western countries. Islam has often been interpreted
as “the Other,” as the antithesis of Western society. The West has often defined itself against Islam,
with Islam being portrayed as barbaric, inhumane and evil. Islam has often been viewed in mono-
lithic ways, as an unchanging religion which lacks cultural diversity (Said 1978).
The massacre of British tourists in Tunisia in 2015, San Bernardino’s violent attacks at
a Christmas party on December 3, 2015, the Nice attack in 2016, in which 86 people were
killed, the Brussels bombings in the same year, the murder of an 84-year-old priest in his
church near Rouen in northern France, and other terrorists acts in other spots of the world, have
sent shockwaves around the United States of America and Europe, bringing full blame to Islam
and Muslim communities. These incidents, and innumerable others, aroused suspicion against
Muslim diaspora and provoked an outpouring of hatred, dread and anti-Muslim sentiment.
Added to this is the ongoing debates taking place in France, the United Kingdom,
Belgium and the Netherlands about the wearing of the “hijab,” “niqab” and “burqa” or “bur-
kini,” respectively. In each country, several excuses and presumptions are being formed up that
such apparel hinder Muslim immigrants from being integrated or assimilated into their recep-
tive countries, and, in some ways, they impede them from being French, British, Belgian and
Dutch. In 1998, a major report was published by the Runnymede Trust, a think tank research-
ing policies for a multiethnic Britain. The report highlighted the numerous forms of hatred
and hostility practiced against Muslims in a range of ways, including:

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30 ISJ 5(1)

•• negative or patronizing images and references in the media, and in everyday

conversations;
•• attacks, abuse and violence on the streets;
•• attacks on mosques and cemeteries;
•• discrimination in employment; and
•• lack of provision, recognition and respect for Muslims in most public institutions
(McCarthy et al. 2005).

Choudhury et al. have attempted to explore European Muslims’ perception of Islamophobia

and discrimination, as well as issues of integration and belongingness in the European Union in
ten member states: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Netherlands,
Austria, and the UK. They have found out that many European Muslims feel that they are under
intense scrutiny; they are excluded from economic, social and cultural life. Even worse, most of
them suffered from alienation and socio-economic marginalization (Choudhoury et al. 2006).
Gardner et al. (2008, 119–36), in turn, have scrutinized the media by tracing up the presence of
Islamophobia in Germany and Australia; they focused upon the extent to which Islam is accepted
in either country. Aside from the subjectivities of the media, they have discovered that there is a
higher level of acceptable multiculturalism in the Australian media, differences in the depiction
of immigrants’ roles and the variety of appellations used to label them. These researchers have
suggested the employment of multicultural education, or say intercultural education, so as to
reduce if not eradicate the insidious phenomenon of Islamophobia.
In a similar vein, Alshammari has studied Islamophobia, prejudice and inequality in the
United States of America and has concluded that many American Muslims are denied chances to
take key positions in the American society in fear that they might use their attained status to per-
petrate vandalism and perpetuate extremism. He has thus recommended that the United States of
America ignite the torch in waging a war against religion discrimination and prejudice (Alshammari
2013). Briskman (2015) has likewise examined the rise and institutionalization of Islamophobia in
Australia and the threat which Muslim immigrants and asylum refugees pose to domestic security.
It was suggested that the Australian government take up considerable measures and practical pro-
cedures to stop hate speech and verbal/physical attacks against Muslims; however, the Australian
government has to control and monitor the movement of Muslim youths.
This continuing parley and heated debate over Islamophobia among academicians, as
Sayyid (2014) stipulates, has two major sources: one is philosophical and the other is political.
Many times the term is left undefined and sometimes it is politicized because of the militariza-
tion of the borders. Following the same trend, this paper attempts to contribute to the richness
of the debate on Islamophobia and racism against Muslims. The researcher’s conviction is that
racism and discrimination are a two-way street because they can emanate even from certain
Muslim groups, who are violent, extremist and hostile to non-Muslims. The persecution and
expulsion of Christians and Yazidis in Northern Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
(ISIL or ISIS) in 2014 is one example in point. This study seeks to unearth and excavate some
media accounts as well as recounts of Muslims with racism and Islamophobia. The next subsec-
tion presents the methodology, which is adopted in this study.

METHODOLOGY
This paper utilizes the narrative method in studying the problem of Islamophobia
and racism against Muslims in the Judeo-Christian West. The use of human stories, people’s
personal experiences and narrative accounts or recounts of Islamophobic events (real or

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 31

imagined) as the basis of this inquiry is particularly suitable for research because it is more
likely to understand the status quo of Muslims in the host countries. According to Webster
and Mertova (2007, 89), narrative inquiry and storytelling research “seeks to elaborate and
investigate individual interpretations and worldviews of complex and human-centered
events. It is more concerned with individual truths than identifying generalizable and
repeatable events.”
It is noteworthy to mention that narrative research has been widely used in the social
sciences, especially in education. Narrative data are collected from the media through investi-
gating its discourse on Islamophobia and racism with respect to Muslim diaspora. The analy-
sis of these data can be used to improve the situation of Muslims and their interaction with
non-Muslims. The researcher’s pivotal argument is that the Muslim diaspora, in the United
States of America and Europe, are viewed as a “potential threat” (Akcapar 2012, 86), and to
use Bennett’s (2012, 11) terms, they are “the green menace” that has replaced the “red men-
ace,” represented by communism. This derogatory vision and unending discrimination against
the Muslim diaspora is what the paper seeks to unravel. Foreign Policy, The New York Times and
The Washington Post have been chosen because they are the major sources of information for the
American policy-makers and European intelligentsia class. The Washington Post (founded in
1877) and its sister in the realm of press The New York Times (founded in 1851) are two
American national broadsheets, and they are the most widely circulated newspapers in the
United States of America. They address a vast readership of politicians, decision-makers and
intellectuals. With the possible exception of the New York Times, most of the American news-
papers slant their news stories in a pro-Republican or pro-Democratic direction (Page 1996,
72). Concerning the USA Today and Chicago Tribune, they are also two American dailies deliv-
ering national and local news. As opposed to Foreign Policy, which was founded in 1970, whose
audience remains limited, and whose mission is to explain “how the process of globalization
is reshaping nations, institutions, cultures, and more fundamentally, our daily lives” (Biagi
2015, 358), the Washington Post is conservative and pro-Republican (Page 1996, 70). Whereas
Foreign Policy is a bimonthly American news publication, with six print issues annually, dedi-
cated to providing a critical analysis of the US foreign policy, the New York Times and the
Washington Post are two dailies with a wide readership.
In fact, all the three news publications are delivered in print and digital formats, and
they focus primarily on global affairs, current events and domestic and international policy.
Interestingly, these news outlets, periodically, deliver stories about the mistreatment of and
prejudice against Muslims, and their coverage of the Muslim world and diaspora differ quite
markedly. Moreover, they are “the mediums through which most Americans acquire informa-
tion about the world around them” (Rosati and Scott 2012, 410), without excluding other
media like the Internet and television.
The paper breaks the news articles into tiny pieces and sheds a particular emphasis
on the incidents that involve Islamophobia and racism against the Muslim diaspora. As a
consequence, it treats all news as one entity with no distinction to be made between editori-
als, news stories, features or even op-eds. Of crucial importance is that each of the news
outlets above has its own distinctive house style, its proper journalistic discourse and edito-
rial policy guidelines. Cruz (1997, 54) contends that “[t]he true worth of a newspaper is
reflected to a great extent by its editorial page; hence, it should adhere to certain traditions
and policies.” The three publications of course have a wide range of world concerns, politi-
cal interests and ideological ends. The following subsection provides an exhaustive analysis
of the media outlets’ reporting of the problem of Islamophobia, racism and the vilification
of the Muslim diaspora.

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32 ISJ 5(1)

DISCUSSION AND INTERPRETATION

When studying the American media’s discourse on Islamophobia, racism and the vili-
fication of the Muslim diaspora, it was found that the reporters periodically cover and report on
incidents of racism and discrimination against Muslim subjects. In 2015, for example, these
international media have exposed the world public to a Hungarian camerawoman, identified as
Petra Laszlo, in the process of kicking and tripping Syrian migrants, who flew from the local
police next the Serbian border; these digital and print media have run different headlines and
deemed the act racist and inhuman:

−− A HUNGARIAN CAMERAWOMAN TRIPS REFUGEES WHO ARE RUNNING

FROM POLICE (The Washington Post, September 8, 2015).
−− HUNGARIAN JOURANLIST, PETRA LASZLO, FIRED FOR KICKING
MIGRANTS ON CAMERA (The New York Times, September 8, 2015).
−− HUNGARIAN JOURNALIST FILMED TRIPPING MAN CARRYING MIGRANT
CHILD (USA Today, September 9, 2015).
−− HUNGARIAN CAMERAWOMAN APOLOGIZES FOR KICKING MIGRANTS
(Chicago Tribune, September 11, 2015).

The incident above prompted a widespread outrage because it revealed that the West,
more particularly Europe, is still fearful of an “Other” that is swarming, publicly or privately,
into its territory and crossing its geographic borders, both social and cultural. This “Other” is
intricately connected to the “not me” (Joffé 1999, 28)—me, of course, in the sense of I and us,
Westerners, and yet this “Other” is not at all “welcomed” in Europe. The incident, which was
ranked as an act of racism and Islamophobia, apparently, projected again the world into
Manichean terms: Good vs. Evil, South vs. North, Us vs. Them, and so on. According to
Galtung, “The Manichean dichotomy is so frequent in occidental thought” that consistently
and insistently classifies and categorizes people into different factions (Galtung 1996, 29).
This non-coincidental categorization finds reason in another incident far worse than
the first, in which an Emirati businessman visiting Ohio for medical treatment was mistak-
enly taken for a terrorist, treated bad, knocked down and handcuffed. The act bespeaks the
vilification and deprecation of the Muslim “Other,” whose “alien” uniform, reportedly, poses
some threat to the West security. He was oppressed and treated in a disagreeable and dehu-
manized manner. The third incident that is worth-documenting has to do with the killing of
two Bangladeshi immigrants, an Imam and his assistant, in a shooting near a mosque in
Queens. Once again, their murder points to the anxiety and typical nervousness that sneaked
even to the ordinary citizen about this mythical “Other.” The religious garb of the Imam and
his companion by no means triggered some kind of megalomania for the gunman, who shot
down the two Muslim immigrants as if shooting an elephant. This psychotic grandeur is out-
spokenly expressed vis-à-vis the Muslim diaspora, who allegedly find themselves in critical
and embarrassing situations like justifying links to al Qaeda, ISIS or other terrorist organiza-
tions. Generally, this justification could be ascribed to the West’s misperceptions of Islam,
the Middle East, Africa and the anarchic zone of some Muslim-majority countries like Libya,
Syria, Yemen, and so on.
Within the Islamophobic discourse, Islam and Muslims have been constructed as a mono-
lithic bloc; Muslim’s diversity is overlooked in terms of differences and harmony between Muslims
and non-Muslims. As a corollary of this, a number of negative stereotypes have projected onto all
Muslims, and “any episode in which an individual Muslim is judged to have behaved badly is

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 33

used as an illustrative example to condemn all Muslims without exception, leading to a general-
ized and deliberate racialization and criminalization of all Muslims (Sajid 2005).
Historically, Middle Eastern and African immigrants have flooded to America and
Europe in hope to find economic opportunities, or escape oppressive regimes, yet they encoun-
tered a whole galaxy of misfortunes like deprivation, segregation and rejection. While some of
them have integrated well into the European and American society, a substantial number have
not: many of them are suffering from high unemployment, poverty, and discrimination” (Perry
and Negrin 2008, 145). The story of Zahra, as reported by The Washington Post, for instance,
tacitly explains the multiple forms of bullying and racism, which Muslim students experience
owing to their religious identity while at schools. She is not able to reveal her name in public
because of anti-Muslim sentiment and hatred that sometimes go around:

She recalled that she or family members were called her names. In the seventh grade,
when she started wearing the hijab, one girl that she considered a friend stopped talking
to her at school. Her bus driver called her a “terrorist.” For a while she stopped wearing
it. “I wanted to not go to school. I would rather be home-schooled,” she said. “It was
terrible for me.” (The Washington Post, September 9, 2016)

This is congruent with Pain and Smith (2008, 143), who contend that “Muslim stu-
dents felt particularly vulnerable to discrimination and racist attacks.” Their Muslim identity,
to borrow Goffman’s (1922–1982) phrase, is typically a source of “stigma.” In fact, Muslim
students are sustaining a controlled movement and restriction in terms of travel. The New York
Times has cast some light on their exposure to a wide range of assaults. Its news reporter, Diane
Daniel (2016), notes in this respect that

More and more people are being deplaned because they’re Muslim. For instance, one
student was asked to leave a flight because he was speaking Arabic. What seems to be
happening frequently is if another passenger on the plane has a complaint, the person
they’re complaining about is asked to deboard. (The New York Times, October 2, 2016)

In many other situations, Arabic language is considered as unacceptable and criticized

inside and outside of schools because it is perceived to be the language of Islam and terrorism.
Muslim students of Arab descent thus face subordination due to “the white gaze” that does
not actually degrade and debilitate the “non-white” Muslim subject but rather it unmasks
the social anxiety and psychological perturbation, which sneaked into the territory of the alle-
gorical “we.” Without doubt, the “we” is inclusive of equivalent terms like our language, our
culture and our history.
Muslim students’ crossing of the linguistic borders, so to speak, is neither appreciated
nor tolerated. This linguistic disadvantage, which is faced by so many Muslim immigrants and
refugees, who sometimes cannot and do not speak the dominant language (e.g., English,
German and French, etc.) justify their subjection and subordination at work and at schools.
Their nationalism, loyalty and allegiance to the host country are predominantly questioned and
frequently doubted. Such unfailing skepticism and distrust of the Muslim diaspora can be well
illustrated in the next revealing statement. Their Arabic language, according to Foreign Policy,
is seen as a major hindrance to social integration and cultural assimilation:

On March 18, [for example], a student in Pine Bush High School near New York City
recited the American Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic. This was done as part of the

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34 ISJ 5(1)

school’s Foreign Language Week, which was conducted to celebrate the “many races,
cultures and religions that make up [the US and the Pine Bush] School District.” One
would expect the multicultural and cosmopolitan American society to appreciate such
gestures. However, the reactions to the recitation of the Pledge in Arabic spoke
otherwise: the language in itself was described to be meant for terrorists, and associated
with Islam. Such bigotry once again highlighted everything that is wrong with USA:
xenophobia, racism, ignorance, violence and above all, Islamophobia. (Foreign Policy,
January 6, 2016)

The story of the 14-teen, Ahmed Mohamed (famous for the pseudonym “Clock Boy”),
which was reported by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and probably or deliberately
overlooked by Foreign Policy, reiterates this othering and exoticization of the Muslim immi-
grant, who is most of the time the subject of suspicion, contempt and irony. He is not like other
schoolboys owing to his racial, religious and ethnic features. He is consequently suspended,
stereotyped, and slandered. His problem has been rendered in different headlines, with an
enormously different tone. The presence, for instance, of the lexical term “Handcuffed” in The
New York Times’ headline alludes to the fact that it is critical of the boy’s arrest, straightforward
in its use of language and somewhat sympathetic to the boy’s case. Conversely, The Washington
Post’s headline seems full of ambiguity and vagueness since it has chosen to overshadow the
boy’s arrest. The use of the deictic element “that” likewise blurs the reader’s as what moment is
meant. Now examine the next headlines:

−− AHMED MOHAMED, BOY HANDCUFFED FOR MAKING CLOCK, IS SUING

(The New York Times. August 8, 2016).
−− A YEAR, AHMED MOHAMED BECAME “CLOCK BOY.” NOW, HE CAN’T
ESCAPE THAT MOMENT (The Washington Post. August 2, 2016).

Considering the narrative account provided by Ahmed’s parents, one deduces that reli-
gions and cultures sometimes clash with each other. Jessica Contrera (2016), from the Washington
Post, registers the anti-Muslim hostility that is virtually pervasive in some American schools.

When their daughter Eyman was in eighth grade, another student reported that Eyman
said she wanted to blow up the school. Eyman says she never said anything like that,
but she was suspended for three days anyway. In Middle school, Ahmed was suspended
multiple times for getting in fights. His tutors remember the conflicts stemming from
Ahmed’s small size; Ahmed and his family claim he was only defending himself against
students who picked on him because of his religion and race. (The Washington Post.
August 2, 2016)

Whenever a terrorist act occurs somewhere, Muslim students in American colleges

become the targets of violence and hatred. They are more careful traveling alone, going out
and walking to their houses and other venues. Sometimes Islamophobia manifests itself in non-
violent ways, taking forms of vitriolic slurs and xenophobic distaste against “visibly Muslim”
people. And sometimes, the hostility comes even from professors. Tyler Bishop (2015), who
writes for The Atlantic monthly, for instance, has reported about an American professor, who
said in class “that the Prophet Muhammad hallucinated on fumes in a cave—causing him to
believe he had talked to God—and of another student who was told that she is “too pretty to
be wearing a hijab” (The Atlantic, November 20, 2015).

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 35

Criminal threats against mosques, harassment in schools, discrimination against

Muslims, have grown in recent years. The “Ground Zero Mosque” episode in 2010 as well as
subsequent anti-mosque protests across the United States of America signaled a simmering
Islamophobia. This goes in tandem with Marranci, who argues that “Islamophobia and its cog-
nate predispositions do not only target individual Muslims, they target collective cultural
symbols, such as mosques or headscarves” (Marranci 2010, 115). In addition to physical assaults
on mosques, the construction of Muslim religious buildings were continuously hampered in
some states of the United States of America. In the next extract, Mustapha Hameed (2016)
recounts to The New York Times how the mosque, as a sacred space in which Muslim families
congregate to make Eid holiday prayers2 and other religious duties, has moved into a target of
vandalism:

When I was growing up in the Indianapolis suburbs, we’d visit the mosque for Eid
holiday prayers. After services, we’d say awkward hellos to my parents’ friends, stand in
line for stale doughnuts and tea and I’d try to find people my age to shoot a basketball
around. In short, it is a fairly typical American house of worship. And last weekend, it
became a target of vandalism. Slurs spray-painted on its brick exterior—most of them
too crude to quote—suggested all Muslims are suicide bombers or members of the
Islamic State. (The New York Times, March 6, 2016)

American Muslim diaspora are themselves mistreated and discriminated against; they
are not in a strong position, especially if they are at airports, travelling or socializing in a
different milieu. Tellingly, Muslim parents hardly do they report any racist or Islamophobic
acts to the police either because they want to protect their children or because they do not
want the situation to aggravate more. According to the vanguards of Islamophobia Studies,
Islamophobia presumably feeds off the ISIS rhetoric, and it helps the proponents of jihad and
extremism by fueling their narrative against the West.
While propagating Muslim’s immigration and Islam’s expansion as dangerous ideolo-
gies not only do the Islamophobes create and manufacture myths about the Muslim immi-
grants, but they also direct public opinion through the formation of ample epistemologies that
excludes and never includes people. No wonder then to find horrendous phrases evoking the
social exclusion of Muslims such as “terrorist savages” and “mongrels” (Foreign Policy, June 14,
2016), “rabid dogs” and “rattlesnakes” (The Washington Post, November 21, 2015), or even
“suicide bombers” and “misogynists” (The New York Times, August 2, 2016), widely circulating
among some media actors, political activists and even ordinary people.
The Muslim diaspora are arguably the most despised, targeted and criticized groups.
They are “the wretched of the earth,” to borrow Fanon’s (1925–1961) phraseology; their lan-
guage, and so are their faith and culture, are constantly ridiculed and demonized. They feel
themselves obliged to cope with innumerable cases of humiliation, insults, physical and verbal
onslaught. Some years ago Jews underwent the same experience. Marcus assumes that “dis-
crimination against the Jews is a phenomenon nearly as old as Jewish history. At different
times and places, it has taken different forms and varied in intensity (Marcus 1983, 2012).
Although their case is dissimilar to Jews, Muslims appear to be enduring considerable afflic-
tions and an unpretending persecution. In Myanmar, which is Buddhist majoritarian, the
Muslim minority are sometimes denied citizenship and other rights like their Buddhist coun-
terparts. They are facing discrimination and violence, yet this state of affair is hardly noted or
covered by global media. Muslim Uyghurs’ oppression and unending sufferings in Xinjiang are
seldom documented or reported on. They have in turn sustained times of fear, violence and

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36 ISJ 5(1)

repression owing to the Chinese government’s exaggerated crackdown on terrorism and reli-
gious extremism.
If Muslims, in the United States of America and Europe, or even in Burma, China and
other parts of the globe, do not conform to and abide by the codes and conventions (or even val-
ues) of the host land, and if they do not play the political game correctly, or if they attempt to
alter the rules and regulations, they will be rejected, prejudiced and discriminated against. This
is more or less identical to the very famous Japanese “anime” Yu-Gi-Oh, being now a worldwide
phenomenon among youngsters. That means if one aspires to be affiliated to the Yu-Gi-Oh and be
considered a member and a player, they must meet what Gee (1999) has termed a “social good.”3
If they get accepted “win”—the game—they gain a social good, and if they do not get fully
accepted—“lose” the game—they lose a social good. And so long as racism is exercised against
Muslims and hatred is enacted upon them, they have not earned any social good yet, for they
might be expected to turn over their religious suit to have that prerogative.
The situation of Muslim diaspora in Europe is sometimes more disastrous because they
seem to face deep-seated discrimination in education, housing and employment. Irrespective of
the fact that they were born in Europe, these Muslim subjects experience different traumas of
social exclusion, hatred and xenophobia. The repetitious questions addressed, for example, to
this Dutch Muslim woman have one point in common: Muslim women are unwelcome in
Europe like their male partners. “A question I have heard many times is, ‘When are you going
back?’” a Dutch Muslim woman said in a news report to Reuters. “I say, ‘I was born in Rotterdam,
so where would I go?’ It’s a really painful question and makes you feel like a foreigner” (The
New York Times, December 19, 2016).
In France, where Islamophobia reached its zenith, heated debates are taking place about
the ban of the burkini—the full-body bathing suit worn by some Muslim women in beaches and
swimming pools. By viewing this outfit as an “enslavement of women,” the French law, as an
Ideological State Apparatus (ISA), have supported the prohibitions against the burkini in as much
as it does not correlate with the France’s culture of laïcité, or secularism. Many appellations and
terminologies have been used to describe the Islamic burkini as “a political project,” a “symbol of
Islamic extremism,” “profoundly archaic,” etc. The burkini then is said to create and flesh out
risks of disrupting public order; it is not like any exotic attire, but an outfit that has an ideological
overtone and a disparaging meaning. Because it is considered a transgression and an encroach-
ment upon the values of the renaissance, the burkini is “unwelcome” in a French context like
illegal immigrants crossing the French geographic borders for a better life. This goes in utter
contrast with the ideals upon which the French Republic has been built, coined in the famous
slogans: “Liberty,” Equality,” and “Fraternity”; hence, by banning the burkini in the beaches,
France is somehow “restricting Muslim women’s apparel choices, robbing their free will, making
rules about how they should present themselves in public” (The New York Times, August 28,
2016). The coverage of the burka or burkini ban in France has been recurrent in Foreign Policy
news dishes, which also traces them up to France long and well known convention of laïcité. Yet,
while the New York Times has focused on this controversial styles of dressing, Foreign Policy consid-
ers other forms like abayas and jilbab. Blake Hounshell (2010) criticizes France tendency to fine
or arrest women merely because of their religious/cultural vesture. Consider his words:

I don’t like the notion of French gendarmes arresting or fining people on the street for
what they wear. If the French government wants to prohibit state employees from
veiling, or require people to uncover their faces when they drive or enter government
building, fine. Private businesses, like banks, should be allowed to do the same. But we
shouldn’t pretend there are easy answers. (Foreign Policy, September 16, 2010)

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 37

Muslim women living in Europe had to undergo tough experiences and arduous hard-
ships with the burkini, which has widened the chasm between Islam and France and led to a
clash of cultures and civilizations, to use Huntington’s (1998) terminology; nevertheless, the
burkini evokes the loyalty of the Muslim (hijabi) woman to Islamic precepts and her conformity
with them, a fact which should not be breached in a secular space like the beach or the pool. The
ban of the burkini and even the hijab or the burqa are not new to France or even to the United
States of America since Muslim women have been prohibited from schooling, work, and access-
ing public settings for decades due to their strange clothing. Muslim women, who strictly stick
and adhere to a rigid Islamic orthodoxy through body covering, are unaccepted and unwelcome
because they symbolize Islamic extremism; they are, in so far as Romaissaa Benzizone is con-
cerned, “the smoke that the Islamic State left behind” (The New York Times, August 28, 2016).
Samantha Elauf, along with Itemid Al-Matar, might be victims of Islamophobia; however,
there are countless stories of the victimization and dehumanization of Muslim women that go
unnoticed in the elite media. Wearing a headscarf or having an Arab-sounding name is more likely
to spell joblessness, firing and denunciation for Muslim women. This is evidently shown in the
following extract from The New York Times, wherein Adam Liptak (2015) classifies the miscellane-
ous burdens and hurdles, which these women had to cope with in the United States of America:

Muslim women have been fired or not hired, like Samantha Elauf, who took her case to
the U.S. Supreme Court and won when Abercrombie and Fitch didn’t hire her because
of her hijab. They’ve been arrested, like Itemid Al-Matar, who, while trying to catch a
train, was tackled, detained and later subjected to a strip search by Chicago police. And
they have been pushed out of the judicial process altogether, like in Michigan, which
passed a court rule allowing judges to decide whether women in niqab can appear as
witnesses. (The New York Times, June 2, 2015)

Because of their exotic clothes, some Muslim women continue to face significant risks
of exposure to hate crimes, harassment and even discrimination in public places. Some years
ago, a 35-year-old woman was standing outside a Valentino store in Manhattan when, sud-
denly, she felt heat on her left side. Her blouse was set on fire, and a man stood nearby with a
lighter in his hand. The woman, in question, escaped with a hole in her blouse and, lucky as
she were, the woman was not burnt. The New York Police Department has investigated the
incident as a possible hate crime—the woman is Muslim, and she was wearing a hijab.
Muslim American champions like Ibtihaj Muhammad, best known for being the first
Muslim woman to wear hijab while competing for the United States in the Olympics was not
safe from misogyny and violent commentary. The famous American entertainer and political
commentator, Rush Limbaugh (b. 1951), reacted to her participation sarcastically by stating:
“But why celebrate a woman wearing something that is been forced on her by a religion, a
religion run by men? She may actively agree to do it, don’t misunderstand, but it’s a religion
run by men that subjugates and subordinates women” (The Washington Post, September 16,
2016). When observing the rhetorical structure of the headlines, one could note that the
American news media, once again, has covered the question of hijab in diverging manners. As
can be seen, while The New York Times projects it as part of the American identity, The
Washington Post discards it from the whole headline and identity make-up. Put otherwise, the
head scarf is played in the foreground in the first, yet it has been backgrounded in the second
due to its controversy. Foreign Policy, on the other hand, did not allocate any space for the
American Muslim and her scarf during her participation in the Olympics. The headlines in
question read as follows:

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38 ISJ 5(1)

−− FENCER IS FIRST AMERICAN OLYMPIAN TO COMPETE IN A HEAD SCARF

(The New York Times, August 8, 2016).
−− NOTHING CAN PREPARE AN OLYMPIAN LIKE ADVICE FROM SOMEONE
WHO HAS BEEN THERE (The Washington Post, July 23, 2016).

The view of the Islamic attire as a token of repression, subordination and subjugation should
not be taken for granted in as much as there are thousands of Muslim women, dressed in the Islamic
clothing, who managed to make an imprint in Europe and the United States of America. The rise of
a Bosnian mayor with a headscarf in 2013, for example, has raised questions about whether or not
the Islamic dress is truly a symbol of repression and subordination. The mayor insists that such
clothing neither hampers nor hinders her from fulfilling societal and political duties. “I am European,
I am Muslim. This is my identity,” she said. The hijab “is what you see on the outside. But the
strength is what’s inside, not to do bad deeds. To live my life in honesty, and not to speak the lan-
guage of hate” (The Washington Post, March 9, 2013). This time the tone of The Washington Post,
unlike Foreign Policy, matches the New York Times, which reports that the Bosnian mayor sees no
contradiction in the influences that define her life. “I am the East and I am the West,” she said. I am
proud to be a Muslim and to be a European. I come from a country where religions and cultures live
next to each other. All that together is my identity” (The New York Times, October 30, 2012).
In fact, the oppression of the Muslim woman on account of her nonnative clothing needs
some political correctness since it can vehicle another contribution to the heterogeneous rich tap-
estry of European and American multiculturalism and religious diversity. The latter are needed
as “they can enhance creativity that would provide a new engine for national development”
(Battistella 2014, 114), yet they should be “broader in [their] scope and more inclusive”
(Jakubowics and Ho 2014, 132).
Regardless of the wide and prolific contributions made by the Muslim diaspora to the
American and European civilizations, they are still suffering and sustaining several problems of
integration and assimilation4. The story of Salim Al-Shamiri, a fashion designer who fled the
Iraqi war and migrated to the United States of America, reiterates the problem of inequality
and exclusion, exercised openly against some Muslim immigrants of an Arab genealogy. In the
following extract, Abigail Hauslohner (2016) narrates down the Iraqi man’s encounter with
discrimination to The Washington Post:

He fled Iraq for the United States in 2008 and said he has sometimes experienced
discrimination as an Arab man. A landlord refused to rent to him, he’s been kicked out
of stores and he often avoids the question “where are you from?” Sometimes, he used
the name David hunter. (The Washington Post, August 17, 2016)

Muslim refugees and asylum seekers are not in a better condition; they are themselves
maltreated and considered as “menacing outsiders.” Alia Malek (2016) has followed and sur-
veyed the journey of Syrian refugees from Syria through Turkey to Europe and chronicled the
double brutalization they are exposed to at home and outside of it. In the following story, sev-
eral refugees—men, women, and children—were hopeful to undertake a voyage to embrace the
European narrative of civilization, yet they were thrown away by animosity and adversity. As
she has reported it to Foreign Policy:

During what should have been one of their last ID checks on the train, their documents
were discovered to be fake. Pulled off and interrogated by police in Southern Germany,
the women were directed to a nearby temporary reception center, where they were held

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 39

until authorities transferred them to a more permanent holding camp for refugees. For
four days, the sisters slept there on a cafeteria floor where mattresses, stained with sweat
or urine, had been slapped down. The place reeked of soured shoes and dirty bodies.
(Foreign Policy, January 1, 2016)

To some Europeans, these Syrian refugees seem un-European for reasons of culture,
religion and language. Europe has openly opposed Muslim immigrants, refugees and their fam-
ilies. France, Germany, Holland and Denmark are reluctant to open their physical, national and
cultural borders to these people because they accuse them of refusing to assimilate with the host
nation. They think that their Islamic religion and culture are basically against the concept of
modernity and liberalism. Because of this, refugees then fell as victims of religiously-motivated
hate crimes demanding their expulsion and deportation.
Almost in all the narratives and story accounts already investigated, the reporters are,
knowingly or unknowingly, engendering a specific knowledge, or say several epistemologies,
which might and might not be biased, about the deplorable situations Muslim diaspora are
enduring in Europe and the United States of America. They are forging a theoretical framework
of Islamophobia Studies in readers’ minds through the construction of a “pathetic discourse”
about such minority groups, and urging them to take sides toward their troublesome problem.
In other words, by accumulating facts, evidences, stories and narrative recounts that show the
vilification and persecution of Muslim subjects due to racism and Islamophobia, the reporters
are shaping and reshaping a line of thought that is nurtured by a number of scholarships rang-
ing from anthropology, psychology to sociology and other disciplines. They, like historians,
“have to piece together stories from many sources” (Salevouris and Furay 2005, 174), dig up
and unearth out of sight “truths” and “tragedies” about Muslims and, eventually, make them
visible to the reader. In the epistemology of such print and digital media, like The New York
Times, The Washington Post and Foreign Policy, checking facts is a primary prerequisite to achieve
fairness and objectivity; so theoretical, empirical and scholarly debates are inherent in and char-
acteristic of such a “pathetic discourse.” Obviously, this explains why the reporters are capable
of influencing human thinking, feelings and behaviors (Luthra 2009, 155).
In order to eliminate the worrying phenomena of Islamophobia and racism, the
researcher recommends the following:

−− building up cross-cultural bridges between Islam and other faiths.

−− passing strict laws against discrimination and the spread of hatred based on religion,
sex, race, etc.
−− encouraging educational institutions to raise awareness among students at an early age
about the perils of bullying, stereotyping or discriminating against others.
−− monitoring the activities of the Islamophobes in social and popular media.
−− opening avenues of dialogue and understanding between Muslim immigrants, refugees
and indigenous people.
−− bolstering organizations that combat Islamophobia and racism.
−− and finally, holding ceremonial events that promote the culture of difference and pluralism.

The media, print, digital and audio-visual, should focus more on the situation of
Muslim diaspora by highlighting their successes and their misfortunes. As for European and
American governments, they are entitled to devise convenient policies and procedures to
integrate Muslims via an inclusive or a holistic approach that considers the values and spe-
cificities of the Muslim community as a whole.

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40 ISJ 5(1)

CONCLUSION
To sum up, the narrative accounts and recounts already narrated indicate not only that
Islamophobia and racism are on the rise in the United States of America and Europe but also
that these apocalyptic phenomena emanate mainly from a burgeoning tendency that tries to
tarnish all Muslims with the same brush of ridicule. Liberal societies, in either polity, should
bypass condemning the Muslim minorities simply because they share the culture and religion
of the criminals. Just as it is ludicrous to blame all Italian-Americans for mafia killings or to
rebuke all American Mexicans for drug-trafficking and smuggling, it is likewise ludicrous to
hold all Muslims guilty for any act of terror or violence performed somewhere. It may be true
to say that Muslim immigrants and refugees flooding to Europe and the United States of
America might have created huge gaps between East and West (South and North), yet they
managed to mirror the very aching realities of minority groups and the double standards of
policy makers. Undoubtedly, the incidents, previously documented, had occurred at different
settings, and in specific historical contexts, and either justified or not, should urge policy-
makers to undertake serious measures against Islamophobia and anti-Islam hostility, each of
which threatens world order and people’s security. The bad news is that verbal and physical
aggressions are virtually common in Europe and the United States of America when it comes
to Muslims diaspora, but the good news is that the overwhelming majority of Americans and
Europeans are considerate, hospitable and obliging to their Muslim friends.

ENDNOTES
1
The researcher has used the term “diaspora” to designate the scattering of Muslims in the United States of
America and Europe. Their mass dispersions inheres in the lack of stability in their countries (e.g., Syrian and
Iraqi immigrants), or their tendency to look for more opportunities of employment and education (e.g., sub-
Saharan African immigrants, albeit some of them also flee the state of chaos in their countries).

2
In Islam, there are two important religious holidays celebrated by Muslims worldwide, namely Eid al-Fitr
(festival of breaking of the fast) and Eid al-Adha (festival of slaughtering the sheep). Both festivals have
particular prayers, which are offered in an open field or large hall.

3
Social goods are anything some people in a society want and value. Being considered a Yu-Gi-Oh player or a
good Yu-Gi-Oh player is a social good for people. In that case, how they play the game and how others accept
their game play is important and consequential for them (for more details, see Gee 1999).

4
The Islamic civilization was one of the greatest contributions made by the religion of Islam. Its influence and
benefits were not limited to Muslims; its impact was felt throughout the known world. The Islamic civilization
brought into its fold people of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds. They contributed to the advancement
of knowledge and developments in various fields such as science, mathematics, and medicine. In particular,
scientific development in the Islamic world, from the 8th to the 11th century, became the basis of knowledge in
the world (for more details see Khan 2003, 16).

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