Prejudice Against Islam

By S.M. Mesum Abbas Rizvi

CIS Department

2
 Prejudice Against Islam

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction ------------------------------------------------------------------ 4
2. Dimensions of Islamophobia ---------------------------------------------- 6
1) Private Islamophobia ---------------------------------------------------- 6
2) Structural Islamophobia ------------------------------------------------- 7
3) Dialectical Islamophobia ------------------------------------------------ 9
3. Violence Against Muslims Around the World -------------------------- 10
1)Chapel Hill Shooting ----------------------------------------------------- 11
2)Discrimination on Hijab ------------------------------------------------- 12
3) Verbal Assaults ---------------------------------------------------------- 13
4) Islamophobic Monks ---------------------------------------------------- 13
4. Aftermath of 9/11------------------------------------------------------------ 15
5. Need for Tolerance and Compassion ------------------------------------- 16
6. Conclusion ------------------------------------------------------------------- 17
7. References -------------------------------------------------------------------- 18

3
 Prejudice Against Islam

1. Introduction:

All praises are for Allah who created the pious selves of Panjitan-e-Pak(A.S.). Indeed,
He is the sole creator who created everything from nothing.

He is the Originator of the heavens and the earth! When He

decrees a matter, He simply tells it, “Be!” And it is! (2:117)
Prejudice against Islam or more commonly known as Islamophobia, is not a recent
social evil, in fact it could be seen throughout the history bearing different faces. What
is Islamophobia? And how did this idea find its way in our and western culture?
This definition was given by Prof. Imran Awan and Dr. Irene Zempi in the report to the
46th Session of Human Rights Council which they recommend should be adopted by
the United Nations as a working definition of Islamophobia [1]:
“A fear, prejudice and hatred of Muslims or non-Muslim individuals that leads to
provocation, hostility and intolerance by means of threatening, harassment, abuse,
incitement and intimidation of Muslims and non-Muslims, both in the online and
offline world. Motivated by institutional, ideological, political and religious hostility
that transcends into structural and cultural racism which targets the symbols and
markers of a being a Muslim.”
The significance of this definition is two-fold: firstly, it emphasizes the link between
institutional levels of Islamophobia and manifestations of such attitudes, triggered by
the visibility of the victim’s (perceived) Muslim identity. Secondly, this approach also
interprets Islamophobia as a ‘new’ form of racism, whereby Islamic religion, tradition
and culture are seen as a ‘threat’ to the British/Western values. Accordingly, this
conceptual framework indicates that victimization can be ‘ideological’ and institutional
(for example pertaining to ideas and concepts that victimize individuals or groups) or
it can have material consequences for those who are victimized (for example through
verbal and physical abuse). Within this framework, Islamophobia can be interpreted
through the lens of cultural racism whereby Islamic religion, tradition and culture are
seen as a ‘threat’ to ‘British values’ and ‘national identity’, whilst ‘visible’ Muslims are
viewed as ‘culturally dangerous’ and threatening the ‘British/Western way of life’. The
notion of cultural racism is largely rooted in frames of inclusion and exclusion,
specifying who may legitimately belong to a particular national, or other community
whilst, at the same time, determining what that community’s norms are and thereby
justifying the exclusion of those whose religion or culture assign them elsewhere. From
this premise, there is such a strong attachment to ‘our’ way of life that creates
boundaries between ‘them’ and ‘us’ founded upon difference rather than inferiority,
however it would be inappropriate to say that inferiority doesn’t play any part in any
cultural or religious racism. In light of popular debates about British values and national
identity, immigration and community cohesion, color racism has ceased to be
acceptable; nevertheless, a cultural racism which emphasizes the ‘Other’, alien values
of Muslims have increased. In this context, cultural difference is understood as ‘cultural
deviance’ and equated with the notion of cultural threat. Racism takes many forms and
links this reality to contemporary perceptions of Western superiority and to this end,
legitimized violence towards Muslims. This new form of racism can be interpreted as
racism of ‘reaction’, based on the perceived ‘threat’ to traditional social and cultural

4
 Prejudice Against Islam

identities. This form of racism can also be understood as a racism of ‘surveillance’ on

the premise that cultural difference slides into the demonization and stigmatization of
‘Other’ cultures in the interests of protecting ‘us’ (the non-Muslim Self) from ‘them’.
This line of argument suggests that the key element of contemporary racism is the
attribution of negative cultural characteristics to ‘Other’ minority groups. These
‘negative attributes’ of (western) society can only be terminated by collective goodwill
of leaders and sense of equality among common individuals of majority. In this context,
Islam and Muslims find themselves under siege. Muslim men have emerged as the new
‘folk devils’ of popular and media imagination, being portrayed as the embodiment of
extremism and terrorism, whilst Muslim women have emerged as a sign of gender
subjugation in Islam, being perceived as resisting integration by wearing a headscarf or
face veil. Such stereotypes provide fertile ground for expressions of Islamophobia in
the public sphere. Following this line of argument, Islamophobia manifests itself as an
expression of anti-Islamic, anti-Muslim hostility towards individuals identified as
Muslims on the basis of their ‘visible’ Islamic identity. Expressions of Islamophobia
include verbal abuse and harassment, threats and intimidation, physical assault and
violence (including sexual violence), property damage, graffiti, offensive mail and
literature, and offensive online and internet abuse.
Metro Detroit, a major metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Michigan, has the largest
and most diverse Muslim American and Arab American communities in the United
States. The diversity and expansiveness of these communities stems from two
centuries’ worth of immigration history. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, immigrants
from Eastern Europe, the Ottoman Empire and British India moved to the area for new
economic opportunities or to escape unrest. A strong economic draw was the
automotive industry, particularly the Ford Motor Company. Many of these immigrants
found a home near Ford’s plant in Highland Park. In 1921, a group of Arab, South
Asian and European Muslims established the first purpose-built mosque across the
street from this Highland Park plant. Mosques, as well as the churches built by Christian
Arabs, became support networks for newly arrived people.
The growth of these communities waned with the passing of the 1924 Immigration Act,
which extended “national origins” quotas that drastically cut the number of immigrants
into the United States from places outside Western Europe for the next four decades.
This was just one of many examples in which immigration restrictions targeting Middle
Eastern and Muslim populations had been part of broader pieces of legislation. With
the introduction of former President Richard Nixon’s 1972 government surveillance
program, Operation Boulder, the government’s attitude began shifting towards viewing
Arab Americans and Muslim Americans as terrorists and security threats. This was
obviously one of many Islamophobic acts seen in U.S. till today.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Muslims and Arab Americans
became the center of targeted hate, anger and racism. According to the FBI [2], hate
crimes against Muslims in the U.S. spiked … from 28 such incidents nationwide in
2000 to 481 in 2001. During this time Islamophobia was on the rise. This was backed
by many policies and government practices that led to racial profiling and rhetoric that
pushed more fear and hate.
Decades later in 2017, former President Donald Trump furthered an Islamophobic
narrative when he signed an executive order that banned foreign nationals from seven
predominantly Muslim countries from visiting the country for 90 days, suspended entry
to the country of all Syrian refugees indefinitely, and prohibited any other refugees from
coming into the country for 120 days — exemplifying how deeply embedded the notion
of viewing Arabs and Muslims as security threats is in American history.

5
 Prejudice Against Islam

Basically prejudice is a consequence of fear and hatred towards a particular individual,

idea or belief. And this fear and hatred is fueled by none other than political leaders of
the west and the media that displays a direct and indirect renunciation for Islam by
linking Islam to terrorism especially after the 9/11 and such.

2. Dimensions of Islamophobia:
Dimensions of Islamophobia is best described by Khaled A. Beydoun in his book
American Islamophobia.

Private Islamophobia:
Private Islamophobia is the fear, suspicion, and violent targeting of Muslims by private
actors. These actors could be individuals or institutions acting in a capacity not directly
tied to the state. An example is Fox News, which has built its brand in great part around
demonizing Muslims, capitalizing on “scaremongering about Islam” to help solidify
and even expand its share of the American television news market during an era of
rising Islamophobia.[3] The Gatestone Institute in New York City, a rightwing think
tank focusing on the Middle East, Muslims, and Islam’s incompatibility with Western
societies, is another example of a purveyor of private Islamophobia.
Private Islamophobia can target specific individuals, Muslims and non-Muslims as seen
in Chapel Hills. For example, the wave of armed and unarmed anti-Muslim protests
held across the United States in September 2015 were staged in front of, and targeted,
community mosques—centers where Muslims congregate and worship, particularly on
Fridays, Islam’s holy day.[4] Islamophobes also vandalized, desecrated, and burned
down mosques, the most salient symbols of Muslim American life, during the same
year, which witnessed a horrific uptick in attacks on U.S. mosques.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reported seventy-eight attacks on
U.S. mosques in 2015, the highest number since the immediate aftermath of the 9/11
terror attacks.[5] Many of these attacks took place in heavily concentrated Muslim
neighborhoods and enclaves, indicating that the culprits were not necessarily targeting
specific institutions, but rather the entire communities that surrounded them. Muslim
Americans, and the faith they practice, were under attack, and the most visible
representations of Islam bore the brunt of the frightening uptick in hate crimes recorded
in 2015.
Non-Muslims are also vulnerable to private Islamophobic violence. Since Muslim
identity is racialized as Arab or Middle Eastern, an embedded caricature of Muslims
guides how private Islamophobes imagine and identify adherents of the faith. A wide
swath of non-Muslim groups and communities, most notably non-Muslims from South
Asia, the Arab world, Middle Eastern nations, and Latinx states, and particularly Sikhs,
are often profiled as Muslims and victimized by private Islamophobes. Muslim men are
stereotypically perceived as brown, bearded, and turbaned—a getup few Muslim
American men actually comport with but one that aligns with the physical appearance
of a specific non-Muslim demographic, Sikh men. In America, the trouble with wearing
turbans, a spiritual mandate for Sikh men, is their nexus to the ingrained stereotype of
the Muslim terrorist and the hatred that stereotype activates.
The murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh gas station owner in Mesa, Arizona, six days
after the 9/11 terror attacks is a lasting reminder of how Sikhs—a non-Muslim faith
group with origins on the Indian subcontinent—are often the victims of private
Islamophobia. Sodhi, who wore a turban and kept a full beard in line with his religious

6
 Prejudice Against Islam

convictions, fit the caricature of the Muslim terrorist subscribed to by many Americans.
Frank Roque, the man who killed Sodhi, was guided by this caricatured portrait and
shouted, “I stand for America all the way!” after taking Sodhi’s life. Sodhi, a non-
Muslim, became the first victim of private Islamophobic murder in the wake of
9/11.[6][7][8]
Well after 9/11 and the violent murder of Sodhi, Sikh men continue to be routinely
perceived as Muslims and targeted by private Islamophobia.[9] Arjun Sethi, a Sikh
American civil rights lawyer and professor, states, “In post-9/11 America, Sikhs have
become an easy target. Our articles of faith—a turban and beard—make us acutely
vulnerable to profiling and bigotry, Islamophobia and hate violence. But we continue
to resist and push back, alongside other communities of color, in particular Muslim
Americans.”[10]
This private dimension of Islamophobia dominates popular and even scholarly
understandings of the term and is the form that monopolizes mainstream media framing
and coverage of Islamophobia. However, if we confine our understanding of
Islamophobia to the irrational actions of hatemongers like Frank Roque, or the
economic or political agendas of institutions like Fox News or the Gatestone Institute,
how do we account for the laws and policies that similarly cast Muslims as
unassimilable, suspicious, and potential terrorists? Are these policies part and parcel of
the broader system of Islamophobia, or are they distinct and exempt from
condemnation?

Structural Islamophobia:
Structural Islamophobia is the fear and suspicion of Muslims on the part of government
institutions and actors. This fear and suspicion are manifested and enforced through the
enactment and advancement of laws, policy, and programming built upon the
presumption that Muslim identity is associated with a national security threat. These
laws, policies, and programs may be explicitly discriminatory, like the first and second
Muslim bans, which explicitly restricted immigrants from Muslim-majority nations
from entering the United States.[11][12] Others may seem neutral, having been framed in
generally applicable terms, when in practice they are disproportionately enforced
against Muslim subjects and communities. Although thought to be a novel form of
bigotry against Muslims, close investigation of structural Islamophobia illustrates that
it is anything but that. Again, Islamophobia is the modern spawn of Orientalism[13], “a
master discourse that positions Islam—a faith, people, and imagined geographic
sphere—as the civilizational foil of the West.” Connecting Islamophobia to Orientalism
is a vital first step toward understanding that Islamophobia is deeply entrenched, fluidly
remade and reproduced, and deployed by the state to bring about intended or desired
political ends.
Structural Islamophobia is manifested by historic policy and state action against Islam
and Muslims, and most visibly today, by the abundant laws, policies, and programs
enacted to police Muslims during the protracted war on terror. Following 9/11, law
scholar Leti Volpp observed how terror attacks involving a Muslim culprit spur the
immediate “redeployment of Orientalist tropes.”[14] These tropes are embedded within
popular representations of Muslims, such as news coverage or depictions in film. But
more saliently, they are embedded within the institutional memory of government
agencies, including the judiciary[15],the legislature, and the executive branch—most
notably, in the Department of Homeland Security and anti-terror law enforcement
during the protracted war on terror. These foundational stereotypes, which portray
Islam as harmful for the American values and society and Muslim identity as foreign,

7
 Prejudice Against Islam

subversive, and harboring an inherent propensity for terrorism, move state agencies to
enact policies that profile and closely police Muslim citizens and immigrants. Such
policies assign the presumption of guilt to Muslims at large, and in turn diminish the
civil liberties of Muslim Americans.
While a number of government policies fit within the structural Islamophobia
classification, the PATRIOT Act[16], counterradicalization programming, and first and
second Muslim bans are four of the most vivid examples. In the aftermath of 9/11, the
Bush administration established the Department of Homeland Security with the mission
of not only expanding its domestic counterterror program, but also entirely overhauling
and restructuring it in specific response to “Islamic extremism.” Modern American
national security and the counterterror state were remade to reflect the belief that
Muslims pose a threat, and to reflect how that threat is imagined and exaggerated.
Structural Islamophobia is not exclusive to the federal government; it is also advanced
on the state and city levels. However, state and city governments typically follow in the
footsteps of the federal government, as illustrated by war-on-terror policy and strategy.
President Obama ushered in the second phase of the war on terror. His administration
extended the restrictive immigration policies enacted in the wake of 9/11 by President
Bush (the National Security Entry and Exit Registration System, or NSEERS) and
formally installed counter-radicalization policing in 2011, which expanded the
surveillance state and “localized” state scrutiny of Muslim subjects by enabling local
law enforcement to monitor “homegrown radicalization.” Although Obama was
heralded as a progressive president who declared that “America and Islam are not
exclusive, and need not be in competition” during his celebrated Cairo speech on June
4,2009,[17] his administration expanded the surveillance of Muslims beyond the degree
established by the Bush administration.
Finally, structural Islamophobia was made more transparent and brazen during the third
phase of the war on terror, ushered in by the Trump administration on January 20, 2017.
By issuing the executive orders on immigration, promising to enact a Muslim Registry
(and to revitalize NSEERS), remaking Countering Violent Extremism into the more
hardline Countering Islamic Violence, and seeking to designate the Muslim
Brotherhood as a terrorist organization—a measure that would severely cripple Muslim
American civic and advocacy organizations with tenuous, imagined, or fabricated ties
to the transnational political group—Trump made the war-on-terror objectives of the
state the most explicitly anti-Muslim they have ever been. However, the Trump
administration should not be viewed as a marked departure or outlier, but rather as a
more transparent and brazen step in a progression that has been, in great part, enabled
by the stated war-on-terror aims and programs of the previous two administrations.
Perhaps the best way to think about structural Islamophobia is by analogizing it to
structural racism. Both are cultures embedded within government institutions. Both
have pre-existing narratives and propagate stereotypes based on understanding people
in flat, damaging, and subhuman terms, stories that are then institutionalized at every
level of public and private organizations, institutions, and agencies. These stories are
manifested in seemingly benign decisions or routine functions that bring about a
discriminatory end, and sometimes through actions whose explicit intention is to bring
about a discriminatory end.
How do we explain the relationship between private and structural Islamophobia? How
does the latter endorse or influence the actions of individuals and actors that participate
in the former? What do we make of the dynamic, or dialectic, between the state and its
polity with regard to authorizing and emboldening Islamophobia? And how does the
fluid exchange between government structures and citizens perpetuate Islamophobia as

8
 Prejudice Against Islam

a broad system of bigotry and violence? Let’s explore these and additional questions
next.

Dialectical Islamophobia:
The final dimension of Islamophobia is the least detectable, but it is the very thread that
binds the private and structural forms together. Dialectical Islamophobia is the process
by which structural Islamophobia shapes, reshapes, and endorses views or attitudes
about Islam and Muslim subjects inside and outside of America’s borders. State action
legitimizes prevailing misconceptions, misrepresentations, and stereotypes of Islam and
communicates damaging ideas through state-sponsored policy, programming, or
rhetoric, which in turn emboldens private violence against Muslims (and perceived
Muslims).
Islamophobia at its core is the presumption of guilt assigned to Muslims by state and
private actors. But it also must be understood as a process, the one by which state
policies endorse popular tropes. This ongoing process is most intense during the
aftermath of terrorist attacks like the 9/11 attacks or the April 15, 2013 Boston
bombings, points in time when structural Islamophobic policies are typically enacted,
advanced, or zealously lobbied for.
Moments of national mourning, particularly after a terror attack committed by Muslims
or individuals perceived as outsiders, also spark a desire to exact revenge and perpetrate
violence against anybody and everybody perceived to be Muslim, or more generally,
not American. This mass anger, typically enforced through acts of vigilante violence
directed at innocents, is also often endorsed and emboldened by formal policy that
deems Muslims to be suspicious and to be members of a faith that ties them to the terror
acts. For example, four days after a suicide bombing in England’s Manchester Arena
on May 22, 2017, a man shouted that “Muslims should die,” then lunged toward two
girls, one of whom was Muslim, on a train in Portland, Oregon, with knife, and fatally
stabbed two of the men who stepped in to defend the girls.[18] Only hours after an ISIS-
inspired attack in London on June 3, 2017, a headscarved Muslim American woman,
Rahma Warsame, was savagely assaulted by an Islamophobe in Ohio, leaving her with
missing teeth and a broken nose and jaw.[19]These victims were a continent away from
the terror incidents that drove Islamophobes to attack them.
Stories like these are all too common, particularly in the wake of terror incidents, and
exhibit the Islamophobic base narrative that holds all Muslims guilty of every terror
attack. Expectations that Muslims disavow or apologize for acts of terror[20] highlight
this narrative. Mainstream media coverage is replete with headlines such as “Muslims
Must Do More against Terrorism” and “Why Aren’t Muslims Condemning ISIS?”
confirming the baseless tie between terrorism and Muslim identity, and further
emboldening the private backlash against any and every Muslim.
The state’s rubber-stamping of widely held stereotypes of Islam and Muslims, through
the enactment of surveillance programs, religious and racial profiling, restrictive
immigration policies, and the war-on-terror campaign, is the cornerstone of dialectical
Islamophobia. This exchange—by which citizens absorb the suspicion and
demonization the state assigns to Muslims by way of (structural Islamophobic) law or
state action—is an ongoing dialectic that links state policy to hate and violence
unleashed by private citizens.
While cases of private Islamophobias are generally framed as a deviant act committed
by one deviant actor entirely divorced from the state, dialectical Islamophobia reveals
an underlying thread that connects the (seemingly) deviant actions of hatemongers with

9
 Prejudice Against Islam

the state’s repeated message that Muslim identity alone is grounds for suspicion that
justifies vigilante action by private citizens. If the law is laden with damaging
stereotypes of Islam and Muslims, and American citizens are expected and instructed
to obey the law, the dialectic between the state and the citizen—and the hostility the
state authorizes—is made clear.
Most of the attention devoted to Islamophobia fixates on sensational stories of private
Islamophobia. Stories about “intensifying calls for the exclusion of Syrian refugees,”[21]
anti-Muslim rallies spearheaded and staged by fringe militants, mosque arsons, and the
spike in violence against hijab-clad Muslim women that took place after Trump’s
presidential victory[22] dominate mainstream news, social media, and even academic
research. This preoccupation with sensational stories of private Islamophobia
obfuscates the process by which structural Islamophobia authorizes and mobilizes
private bigotry toward Muslims. Like other forms of bigotry, Islamophobia is
contingent on media representations, political rhetoric, and most saliently, formal law,
policy, and programming. The fluid expansion of structural Islamophobia, through the
advancement of the war on terror, communicates to the broader citizenry that Islam is
to be viewed with suspicion. And under a president who openly states, “I think Islam
hates us,”[23] it is easy for many people to believe that Islam is utterly irreconcilable
with American culture, and that those who identify as Muslims are not part of the
collective “US” or “we.” Structural Islamophobia marks Muslims and Muslim
Americans as, at best, possible threats, and at worst, as terrorists in our midst. These
state designations prompt the passions and stir the suspicion of private citizens,
increasingly motivating them to take action.
Therefore, structural Islamophobia should also be viewed as a latent call to action
transmitted from the state to its citizens. The state is alerting the people to be on the
lookout for suspicious Muslims, and when the time comes, to take action. Craig Hicks,
a perpetrator, was just acting on what war-on-terror policy and such instructed him
about the threat posed by Muslims like Deah, and particularly Deah’s new bride Yusor
and her sister Razan, who wore “the flag of Islam” around their heads. Even if they
were backpack-toting, pizza-eating, wide-eyed college kids, driven by the very same
aspirations held by non-Muslim students at high schools and college campuses across
the country, Yusor, Razan, and Deah were ultimately Muslims, which meant that
according to the highest laws of the land, they were members of an enemy bloc bent on
menacing the world. As Muslims, the three students gruesomely murdered in Chapel
Hill were said to be part of an enemy race, a caricature of Muslims embedded within
the memory of political institutions centuries before it was implanted in the mind of
Craig Hicks.[24]

3. Violence Against Muslims Around the World:

Islamophobics can be seen channeling their extreme hate on law abiding Muslims
through physical violence. The kind of acts and the degree of violence seen in the
history of U.S. and Europe are unexplainable to an impartial mind. Recently a Muslim
was told not to pray at a Canadian train station.[51]

Chapel Hill Shooting:

Yusor Abu-Salha was far more than the headscarf she carefully wrapped around her
head every morning and removed every night. The twenty-one-year-old was a fresh

10
 Prejudice Against Islam

college graduate, having just earned a degree in biology from North Carolina State
University. She had plans to attend the University of North Carolina School of
Dentistry—her top-choice program. She had just married twenty-two-year-old Deah
who was working toward a career in dentistry. He himself was a second-year student at
the UNC School of Dentistry and had helped his wife piece together a compelling
application so that she could follow in his footsteps. In fact, the young couple frequently
talked about establishing their own dental clinic and one day lending their skills to help
poor patients in the Middle East, as well as serving neglected patient communities at
home in North Carolina. These are dreams that young people in their early twenties
often have. But anybody who knew Yusor and Deah also knew that these two possessed
the drive and work ethic to convert these dreams into reality. Yusor’s younger sister,
nineteen-year old Razan, who roomed with the young couple in their Chapel Hill
apartment, certainly believed that her older sister and brother-in-law would one day
make good on their dreams. Razan, who loved watching Animal Planet, had dreams of
her own, which included becoming an architect, something she began to work toward
as a freshman at the NC State School of Design. Yusor, Deah, and Razan were three
young Muslim Americans with their entire lives ahead of them, with dreams not unlike
those held by other young people their age. On February 10, 2015, the dreams of these
three Muslim American students were permanently deferred and violently put to rest.
Sometime before 5:00 p.m. on that day, a forty-four-year-old neighbor, Craig Hicks,
executed Yusor, Razan, and Deah.[25] The two girls were shot in the head and Deah
was sprayed with bullets by Hicks after an alleged “dispute over a parking spot,” several
news outlets reported. Yet the execution-style murder of the three students, and the
blood that poured from their heads and stained their apartment carpet, evidenced that
this was no parking dispute, but a hate crime—a hate crime aimed squarely at the faith
of the three. The gruesome facts, and the history of tension between Hicks and the three
students, revealed that hate was at the heart of this murder. One didn’t need a law degree
to draw this conclusion. Although they lived next door to him, Hicks did not regard
Yusor, Razan, and Deah as neighbors. In fact, he did not even perceive them primarily
as college students. He perceived them, rather, as outsiders, interlopers, and
foreigners—above all, as enemies of the state who warranted the suspicion and scowls
he routinely darted their way when they crossed paths in the hallway, the common
areas, or in the parking lot—and on that Tuesday afternoon inside the Finley Forest
Condominiums in Chapel Hill, he believed they deserved extra-judicial punishment in
the name of patriotism. Hicks decided to take the law into his hands by executing them.
While the students grew accustomed to Hicks’s stares and scowls, they likely could
have never imagined that their hate-filled neighbor would become their reaper.
However, the ideas and images Hicks consumed about Islam, terrorism, and the hijab
on television would mobilize his hate into unspeakable violence. But what role did war-
on-terror law and policy, founded on the narrative that Muslim identity correlates with
terror suspicion, have on the murder of these three Muslim American students? Was
Hicks’s fear and hatred of Islam irrational, or was it fueled by the stereotypes of the
faith and its followers he regularly heard on the radio and watched on television, and,
therefore, rational? Furthermore, was he a deviant actor whose horrific acts were the
result of his own motives alone? Or was Hicks collaborating in the broader national
project of policing, prosecuting, and punishing Muslims—the formal mission of the
war on terror, that ambiguous and unconventional war authorized by counterterror laws
like the USA PATRIOT Act, Countering Violent Extremism, and, two years after the
triple murder, the Muslim ban enacted by President Trump? Could Hicks’s murder of
the three students, fondly remembered as “our three winners” by their family members

11
 Prejudice Against Islam

and Muslim American activists, be tied to formal state policy? To what degree does a
broadening and deepening body of national security, immigration, and local law
enforcement policy—policy that holds Muslim identity as presumptive of terror
suspicion— encourage Hicks and other hatemongers to express their private
Islamophobia through words or slurs, violence, or votes? What are the connections
between the state policies and structures tasked with policing Muslim citizens and
immigrants and the acts of individuals who target, victimize, and in the case of Yusor,
Razan, and Deah, murder Muslims?
The media coverage following the murders at Chapel Hill profiled Hicks as an irrational
actor who was not influenced by the legal structures that aimed to cast Muslims as
presumptive terrorists, a characterization that aligns with the prevailing understanding
of Islamophobia as a “dislike of or prejudice against Muslims” generally exhibited by
individuals. However, this narrow framing not only overlooks the state’s role in
authorizing and emboldening the unfathomable acts (of private Islamophobia)
undertaken by individuals like Craig Hicks, but it also overlooks the mutually
reinforcing relationship between the state and media institutions. Furthermore,
understandings of Islamophobia that tie it exclusively to private actors also fail to
acknowledge that Islamophobia is structural. It is propagated by law and perpetuated
by policy, policy that fluidly communicates damaging stereotypes and
misrepresentations about Muslims to the broader polity, which has the effect of
endorsing popular views and misconceptions, and at the extreme, emboldening hate and
violence directed at Muslims and individuals incorrectly perceived as Muslims.
Framing Islamophobia as more than merely hate held or violence inflicted by private
individuals, and tying it to government structures and legal pronouncements and
policies, is vital for uncovering and understanding the roots of Islamophobia.

Discrimination on Hijab:
Islamophobics usually tend to assault verbally or physically based on what they
perceive as Muslims. This woman out of the blue, in a public transport, started to
severely criticize a Muslim woman on wearing a Hijab.[26] The offender went on to ask
the women that “Why you wear it for a man who marries a six-year girl?”, then another
passenger steps in and asks her to mind her own business. Islamophobia’s main root
could be found in ignorance. How could one hate something, one which he knows
nothing of? Like accusations on Prophet S.A.W.W. has become a common trend.
Without doing proper research on Islam they tend to make wild accusations to our
dearest and insulting them out of the blue which can be seen as nothing more than a
way to hurt someone instead of a constructive argument or freedom of speech which
they pose it as in their self-defense. But how these people get so much hatred, is their
hatred to be tied to them solely and we are to turn a blind eye on all these events as it is
done by a single person and has no ties anywhere or it is cultivated in the roots of the
society by its leaders? Countries banning Hijab in Europe like Austria, Denmark,
France, Germany, Netherlands, Bosnia and Herzegovina, what could be seen by the
actions of these countries? How a Hijab offend the law of any country when all these
countries uphold the charter of U.N. of which Article 1 clearly defines one of the
objectives of the UN as promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for
fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.
Now the States General of the Netherlands enacted a ban on face-covering clothing,
popularly described as the "burqa ban", in January 2012.[27] The burqa ban came into
force on 1 August 2019 in schools, public transport, healthcare, and government

12
 Prejudice Against Islam

buildings. Now these are obviously the actions of legal bodies, there is no perpetrator
now to shift the blame solely on that individual, these authorities are the main cause for
spreading hatred and causing prejudice and violence. When the ban was enacted some
transports and non-Muslims also protested against it [28] which is strongly implying that
hatred is coming from none other than the individuals who swore to do right by the
citizens, Muslim citizens. This could be seen in Austria as well when in 2017, a legal
ban on face-covering clothing was adopted by the Austrian parliament.[29][30]
Headscarves were also banned in 2019 from primary schools, but Kippas worn by
Jewish boys and the turban worn by Sikh boys were exempted in the legislature. [31] In
2019, Austria banned the hijab in schools for children up to ten years of age. The
Austrian legislators said their motivation was promoting equality between men and
women and improving social integration with respect to local customs, and parents who
send their child to school with a headscarf would be fined €440 ($427 or £386 as of
2022).[32] Now if this could not be seen as an Islamophobic act on behalf of authorities
then I don’t know what is.

Verbal Assaults:
From South to North America from France to Sweden we could see the prejudice in the
actions of legal and local bodies against Muslims, which is in fact a direct and indirect
source of hatred of common citizens. This 34-year old pregnant woman, who was a
Muslim of course, was taking a London bus with her mother and 3-year-old child when
suddenly a woman starting to call her names and also called her ‘ISIS’, she also said,
“Go home and make a bomb on the internet”. As if this wasn’t enough, the offender
went on to threaten her to kick her in the uterus and kill the child.[33] The Muslim woman
was a Moroccan-Italian who arrived in the U.K. six months prior this incident. She told
the Evening Standard she didn’t understand what the woman was yelling. This is not
new, over 500 incidents were reported in 2015 in the U.K. Many of the cases weren’t
even reported and a very few were even recorded, still we can find videos and images
of these abuses on social media platforms every day, a couple being abused[34], a fasting
Muslim being called names at[35], a woman abusing a Muslim while he’s praying[36] and
many more[37][38][39][40].

Islamophobic Monks:
This can also be seen in Myanmar, where Muslims comprises of less than ten percent
of the total population of the country, where they receive hate and prejudice from the
Islamophobic Monks and who, most of them, renounce Islamic laws and call it a danger
to their ideology and practices. In July 2014 a Buddhist woman, Phyu Phyu Min, filed
a police report in Myanmar’s second largest city, Mandalay, charging that two Muslim
co-workers raped her.[41] Before long, a local website picked the story up. “It started
from a website called Thit Htoo Lwin with a story that a cook from a house was raped
by two brothers,” says, Maung Maung, a local Muslim leader. It wasn’t until a
prominent Buddhist monk named Ashin Wirathu more commonly known as The
Buddhist bin Laden.[42] published the claim on his Facebook page that the allegations
went viral. Wirathu, known for his anti-Muslim rhetoric, wrote this subject line: “The
Mafia is Spreading and Coming to Town”. He is well-known for his Islamophobic and
anti-Muslim attitude more so than for his Buddhist religion.[42][43][44][45][46] The
consequences were lethal for his actions. Within 24 hours, on July 1st, 2014, angry
Buddhist mobs armed with sticks, knives, and torches marched through the streets of
Mandalay. They circled the local mosque, Muslim-owned businesses, and the teashop

13
 Prejudice Against Islam

where the accused worked. “There were motorcades and shouting, ‘Kill the
Kalars.’ Kalars means Muslims,” says Samar Nyinyi, a Muslim civic leader who
witnessed the violence. “Folks from the cars spit on Muslims openly in the daytime and
after that, folks came with swords and spears.” One Buddhist and one Muslim man
were killed in the ensuing two days of violence, dozens were injured, Muslim shops
ransacked, and a mosque badly burned. But the original allegation of rape that
seemingly incited the violence – the one that Wirathu posted on his Facebook page –
was part of a carefully orchestrated lie. The rape never happened. Phyu Phyu Min later
rescinded her original rape allegation. The government announced that the rape case
did not take place at all. They provided evidence for that and itself said that it wasn’t
true. It said the report was fabricated. Phyu Phyu Min is now in jail, serving a minimum
21-year sentence for fabricating the rape.[47]
This is not the first time allegations of rape have been used to incite communal violence
in Myanmar. Claiming that a Buddhist woman has been raped, an “honor crime” in the
country, has become common to mobilize anti-Muslim mobs. These, in turn, often lead
to retributive rape. In June 2012, violent clashes broke out after a young Buddhist girl
was allegedly raped and murdered by three Muslims.[48] In retaliation, 10 Muslims were
lynched. State media further stoked anti-Muslim sentiment by invoking the derogatory
word “Kalar” in their coverage. Fueled by media and clerics deadly riots that followed
left around 200 dead. Later, human rights organizations documented widespread and
systematic rape of Rohingya women by military and security forces. In August 2013, a
Muslim man was arrested for the attempted rape of a Buddhist woman. Eye-witnesses
said they were arguing but denied he tried to rape her. When police refused to hand him
over to Buddhist mobs, they burned down Muslim homes and shops.
In many of these cases, Facebook was used as a vehicle to publicize the unverified rape
allegation. Since Facebook became legal in Myanmar, after the country emerged from
military rule in 2010, its popularity has not only spiked but also gave rise to a new era
of hate speech. But anti-Muslim propaganda is not only spread online. Facebook is
important, but they do have many other channels, including distributing pamphlets,
VCD videos, and organizing speeches in very rural villages. They now have a new
channel called the ‘Dammah School’ – it’s like a Sunday school, and they are
organizing young people and kids from Buddhist society in many rural places and
teaching them to hate other religions, that Muslims are the terrorists, they are rapists
and they will invade your country and the usual tirade.
Nationalist monks are appealing to these irrational fears of the Buddhist population,
and then adding in this layer – this idea that the Muslims are coming for our women.
The tragic irony is that rape is a crime that’s rarely prosecuted in Myanmar, yet, it’s
used to instigate violence against entire populations of people. Wirathu is attempting to
leverage fears of a Muslim takeover for political gain. The influential monk who played
a role in sparking the resulting violence, still posts on Facebook. Whipping up hatred
has become a Wirathu trademark. He is a prominent figure in the Ma Ba Tha, a
Buddhist monk-led organization that commits itself to preserving the religion in
Myanmar. The group interprets Islam as a serious threat, working to pass discriminatory
legislation while threatening those who promote interreligious harmony. Wirathu was
jailed in 2003 for hate speech that incited anti-Muslim riots.[49] But since his release in
2010, he’s kept busy acquiring political power and military backing. President Thein
Sein has even called him the “Son of the Lord Buddha”.[50] This is the one thing that
can truly make people commit truly horrific crimes, he’s attempting to leverage fears
of a Muslim takeover for political gain and inciting people to violence, and furthermore
he’s not being held accountable for it.

14
 Prejudice Against Islam

These types of clerics and monks, for their own personal gain, spreads hatred and causes
death and persecutions to God knows how many and when these hatemongers are
appreciated by political powers their ideas get fortified in the minds of the common and
give courage to all persecutors of Islam to do what they do best.

4. Aftermath of 9/11:
After 9/11, Muslims and people of Arab and South Asian descent became targets of
government practices that result in racial profiling and it continued since the War on
Terror continued and, events like Manchester Arena bombing and Westminster Bridge
attack worsened things even more for Muslims.
In June 2002, then Attorney General John Ashcroft announced a “Special Registration”
requirement that all males from a list of Arab and Muslim countries report to the
government to register and be fingerprinted. In May 2011, the Obama Administration’s
Department of Homeland Security announced that it was indefinitely suspending the
program under which this requirement was established. According to a statement that
same month from the American Civil Liberties Union, the program never received a
single terrorism-related conviction despite tens of thousands of people forced to
register.
The Trump administration exacerbated these preexisting problems by further
propagating anti-Muslim prejudice. On the topic of the racial profiling of Muslims,
former President Donald Trump stated, “I think profiling is something that we’re going
to have to start thinking about as a country.”[52] On January 27, 2017, Trump
signed Executive Order 13769 which banned citizens of seven predominantly Muslim
countries from visiting the United States for 90 days, indefinitely prohibited the entry
of all Syrian refugees into the U.S., and blocked the entry of all other refugees for 120
days.[53] The Supreme Court ultimately upheld Trump’s travel ban[54], though President
Joe Biden rescinded the policy on his Inauguration Day.[55]
The total number of reported hate crime incidents in the U.S. decreased by over 18
percent between 2000 and 2009, but during the same period, the percentage of hate
crime incidents directed towards Muslims increased by over 500 percent. Furthermore,
the number of assaults against Muslims in the U.S. peaked at 127 in 2016[56], which
exceeded the previous peak of 93 assaults in 2001. Think tank New America has found
that anti-Muslim activity, including hate incidents against mosques and Islamic centers,
media reports of anti-Muslim violence, and anti-Muslim actions and statements by
government officials, has “increased markedly since late 2015.”[57] Additionally,
according to South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), there have been
“over 484 incidents of hate violence and 252 incidents of xenophobic political rhetoric
aimed at South Asian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Middle Eastern, and Arab American
communities around the country” since 2016.[58] Even France and Austria, in
2022, maintained their efforts to criminalize politically-active Muslims and Islamic
organizations and institutions.[59] Dr. Farid Hafez noted that France’s systematic
crackdown on French Muslim society resulted in “as many as 24,887 Muslim
organizations and businesses placed on a secret blacklist and under strict monitoring,
and 718 Muslim-owned organizations and businesses including at least 4 schools, 37
mosques, 210 businesses, and two organizations closed. About €46 million ($46.2)
were confiscated by the French government.”[60] Rights activists noted that these actions
were contributing to towards a “systematic suppression of Muslim civil society” across
the continent.[61]

15
 Prejudice Against Islam

5. Need for Tolerance and Compassion:

Islamophobia is structural but those who are part of the ‘big scheme’ are also people,
so why so hate towards Islam? Why not just leave it alone like any other religion? The
answer to these questions lie in itself, why one calls something wrong before even
familiarizing oneself with it? Why without even thinking straight answer is ‘you’re
wrong’? Because, in his heart, he knows it’s right and he don’t want to leave what he
has because of the developed affection towards it. The same thing is for Islam when
one’s views are proven wrong or one feel it’s right; their conscience tells it’s right,
resorting for revolting against it seems to be right as a proof their affection to their
current belief. So the more oppressed party is right greater the opposition is, and nothing
is more right than Islam.
Ahmed Maeno, a Japanese converted Muslim, when asked on an interview by Towards
Eternity that, “What do you think the reason is to people attack Islam so violently, so
ruthlessly”, he went on to reply, “In my opinion one of the reasons for that is because
they know, they understand that Islam is true and because they understand straight away
inside themselves … Islam is truth, they know they have to accept it but if they accept
it would be burden on them.”[62]
Even a Marine who served in Somalia, Philippines and Middle East said he had
developed an extreme hate towards Islam and consequently towards Muslims got his
opinion changed when he chose understanding over extremism.
Richard McKinney planned to make an IED and blow up Muncie Islamic Center in his
own words he says, “I was gonna make my own IED and I was gonna set it across the
Islamic center over in a bank’s parking lot and I was gonna dial it in. And just watch
the show.”[63] Filled with such hatred what really stopped McKinney from committing
such atrocity.
His daughter came home from school one day started praising this Muslim boy and his
family for their excellent behaviour and kindness towards her. First he went on an
Islamophobic rant but when he saw his daughter alienated from him he just saw in his
conscience and decided to give the Muslim community one more chance. The same
Islamic center he wanted to blew up, he went there for answers and they handed him
the Qura’an.[64] Ever since then he was surprised and shocked how when he thought he
found a problem in Islam, they clear it. Now he’s a practicing Muslim.
That is all, all one need to do is give another chance, they won’t regret it.
People are encouraged to be inquisitive about everything but what they really miss out
is the impartial perspective they need to maintain while dealing with any idea that is
alien or dear to them. Nowadays these Orientalists go about making themselves the
standard for the world while rhetorically promoting more than 200 illegal settlements
of Israel in Palestine, giving a silent treatment to Kashmir-issue and ignoring Muslims
around the globe.
Not until and unless a society is willing to listen and believe that “I can be proven
wrong”, hate could never end and peace could never be attained. Hazrat Ali (A.S.) once
said:
Peace could never be attained unless there is justice.
We can see the bias behaviour of superpowers in the U.N., how the whole stood up with
Ukraine but when it comes to Muslims everyone is silent and the world, it has no peace.

6. Conclusion:

16
 Prejudice Against Islam

Prejudice against Islam is structural or in plain words pre-planned. It is legal bodies and
authorities that are to be blamed for this violence against Muslims, as we saw in all the
incidents recently how they were framed as private Islamophobia and denied from any
ties to the state. We saw Chapel Hills, we saw Myanmar; how fake rape cases are
blamed on Muslims by clerics for political gains, we saw how unsafe a common Muslim
is in the streets of Europe and America. Islamophobia could never be erased from its
roots until every bigotry has leaved the mind of such. A close mind is curse not only
oneself but to others also. Muslims in this world should show patience and calmness
and deal with these situations with best etiquettes because as Qura’an sets the standard
for the best person; who have the best akhlaq. Be the best Muslim and who knows
maybe someone will become Ahmed Maeno or Richard McKinney because of you.

References:
1. https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/Religion/Islamophobia-
AntiMuslim/Civil%20Society%20or%20Individuals/ProfAwan-2.pdf
2. https://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/usahate/usa1102-04.htm

17
 Prejudice Against Islam

3. Nathan Lean, The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims
(London: Pluto Press, 2012), p. 66.
4. Kalia Abade, “Anti-Muslim Protests—Some Armed—Planned for at Least 20 Sites across the
Country,” Imagine 2050, September 29, 2015.
5. Sara Rathod, “2015 Saw a Record Number of Attacks on US Mosques,” Mother Jones, June
20, 2016
6. https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2021/09/us/balbir-singh-sodhi-9-11-cec/
7. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/14/balbir-singh-sodhi-murdered-family-
american-dream
8. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/brother-1st-hate-crime-murder-victim-post-
911-reflects-progress-setbac-rcna1978
9. https://www.sikhcoalition.org/images/documents/fact%20sheet%20on%20hate%20against%2
0sikhs%20in%20america%20post%209-11%201.pdf
10. https://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/06/asia/sikh-hate-crimes-us-muslims/index.html
11. https://immigrationhistory.org/item/muslim-travel-ban/
12. https://bridge.georgetown.edu/research-publications/reports/the-muslim-and-african-bans/
13. https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/faq/orientalism#:~:text=The%20most%20important%20feature%2
0of,own%20authority%20to%20represent%20themselves.
14. https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2016/02/The.Citizen.and_.the_.Terrorist.pdf
15. https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/7626729/boston-college-journal-of-law-social-
justice-vol-32-no-1-2012
16. https://www.ispu.org/the-usa-patriot-act-impact-on-the-arab-and-muslim-american-
community/
17. http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/-america-and-islam-are-not-exclusive-/471296/
18. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-muslims-portland-idUSKBN18N080
19. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/talalansari/columbus-ohio-brawl#.uxGQlAPAY
20. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/02/why-dont-more-moderate-
muslims-denounce-extremism/
21. https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/11/23/shirin-sinnar-preparing-american-muslim-
daughters-for-what-awaits/
22. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/muslim-women-wearing-hijabs-assaulted-
just-hours-after-trump-win-n681936
23. https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/09/politics/donald-trump-islam-hates-us/index.html
24. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34385051
25. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/02/11/three-killed-in-shooting-
near-university-of-north-carolina/
26. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4neOxyWXfM
27. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/8765673/Netherlands-to-
ban-the-burka.html
28. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/01/dutch-police-signal-unwillingness-enforce-
new-burqa-ban
29. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/burqa-ban-takes-effect-in-austria/tfohzpd5x
30. https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article164642964/Oesterreich-stellt-Tragen-von-Burka-
und-Nikab-unter-Strafe.html
31. https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/oesterreich-beschliesst-kopftuch-verbot-an-
grundschulen-a-1267656.html
32. https://www.tageblatt.lu/nachrichten/international/oesterreich-verbietet-kopftuecher-an-
grundschulen/
33. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4neOxyWXfM
34. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TRuprp7YwE
35. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79Hr03bxzns
36. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrpaFAloL7Q
37. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uajDK88nANk
38. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9zzmi5PPFw

18
 Prejudice Against Islam

39. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INy4gaUrCL4
40. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUXz9xEjs6I
41. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2015/10/28/rape-used-as-a-weapon-in-myanmar-to-
ignite-fear
42. https://www.arabnews.com/node/1532846/world
43. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/7/myanmar-military-frees-wirathu-notorious-anti-
muslim-monk
44. https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/who-is-ashin-wirathu-a-vitriolic-monk-freed-by-
myanmar-s-military-49865
45. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/may/12/only-takes-one-terrorist-
buddhist-monk-reviles-myanmar-muslims-rohingya-refugees-ashin-wirathu
46. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58471535
47. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-conviction-idUSKBN0MG11920150320
48. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2012/6/19/death-sentence-in-myanmar-sectarian-killing
49. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/5/29/myanmar-arrest-warrant-issued-for-anti-muslim-
monk-wirathu
50. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/explosion-injures-four-burmese-bin-laden-gives-
mass-sermon-flna6c10703204
51. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-65060730
52. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/06/trump-us-should-consider-profiling-
muslims.html
53. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/02/01/2017-02281/protecting-the-
nation-from-foreign-terrorist-entry-into-the-united-states
54. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-965_h315.pdf
55. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/27/biden-reversed-trumps-muslim-
ban-americans-support-that-decision/
56. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/11/15/assaults-against-muslims-in-u-s-
surpass-2001-level/
57. https://www.newamerica.org/in-depth/anti-muslim-activity/
58. https://saaleadingtogether.medium.com/this-week-in-hate-multiple-incidents-of-hate-
against-muslims-during-ramadan-b897deddd6dd
59. https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/austria-raids-muslim-families-suffering-two-
years
60. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/analysis/analysis-islamophobia-in-europe-is-a-growing-
structural-challenge/2733479
61. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/europe-muslim-civil-society-suppression-
governments-accused
62. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1hY190uX3s
63. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQG-oIMSbco
64. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/08/us/marine-mosque-islam-blake-cec/index.html

19