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Islamophobia in Muslim Majority
Societies

In the last decade, Islamophobia in Western societies, where Muslims constitute

the minority, has been studied extensively. However, Islamophobia is not
restricted to the geography of the West, but rather constitutes a global phenom-
enon. It affects Muslim societies just as much, due to various historical, eco-
nomic, political, cultural and social reasons.
Islamophobia in Muslim Majority Societies constitutes a first attempt to open
a debate about the understudied phenomenon of Islamophobia in Muslim
majority societies. An interdisciplinary study, it focuses on socio-political and

­
historical aspects of Islamophobia in Muslim majority societies.
This volume will appeal to students, scholars and general readers who are
interested in Racism Studies, Islamophobia Studies, the Middle East and North
Africa (MENA) region, Islam and Politics.

Enes Bayraklı is a faculty member in the Department of Political Science at

Turkish–German University, Istanbul, and Director of European Studies at the
Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research – Turkey (SETA).

Farid Hafez is currently Senior Researcher in the Department of Political

Science and Sociology, University of Salzburg, Austria, and Senior Researcher
at Georgetown University, USA.
Routledge Advances in Sociology

247 Intergenerational Family Relations

An Evolutionary Social Science Approach
Antti O. Tanskanen and Mirkka Danielsbacka

248 Performing Fantasy and Reality in Contemporary Culture

Anastasia Seregina

249 The Philosophy of Homelessness

Barely Being
Paul Moran and Frances Atherton

250 The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse

Investigating the Politics of Knowledge and Meaning-making
­
Edited by Reiner Keller, Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Wolf J. Schünemann
­
251 Christianity and Sociological Theory
Reclaiming the Promise
Joseph A. Scimecca

252 Ageing, Diversity and Equality

Edited by Sue Westwood

253 Cinematic Tourist Mobilities and the Plight of Development

On Atmospheres, Affects and Environments
Rodanthi Tzanelli

254 Bicycle Utopias

Imagining Fast and Slow Cycling Futures
Cosmin Popan

255 Islamophobia in Muslim Majority Societies

Edited by Enes Bayraklı and Farid Hafez

For more information about this series, please visit:

www.routledge.com/Routledge-Advances-in-Sociology/book-series/SE0511
­
­
­
Islamophobia in Muslim
Majority Societies

Edited by
Enes Bayraklı
and Farid Hafez
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 selection and editorial matter, Enes Bayraklı and Farid Hafez;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Enes Bayraklı and Farid Hafez to be identified as the authors
of the editorial matter, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
­
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
­
A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-1-138-61300-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-46485-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Contents

Notes on contributors vii


Acknowledgements xii

Introduction 1

E B F H z
nes
ayraklı
and
arid 
afe
1 Making sense of Islamophobia in Muslim societies 
5
E B , F H z Lé F
nes
ayraklı
arid
afe
and
onard
aytre 
2 ‘Religion-building’ and foreign policy 21
­

H B z
atem
a
ian 
3 Islamophobia in the contemporary Albanian
public discourse 45

R z B
e
art 
eka 
4 Post-coloniality, Islamization and secular elites: tracing
­
Islamophobia in Pakistan 59

S F A S
yed
urrukh
Zad
li 
hah
5 The politics of Islamophobia in Turkey 71

A A
li
slan 
6 Islamophobia in satirical magazines: a comparative case
study of Penguen in Turkey and Charlie Hebdo in France 93

Müş rr Yardı and na Easa - aas
e
ef
m
Ami
t
­D
7 Paradoxical Islamophobia and post-colonial cultural
­
nationalism in post-revolutionary Egypt 107
­

M K
ay
osba 
vi Contents

  
8 Old wine in new bottles: secularism and Islamophobia
in Egypt 125


D A E
eina
bdelkad
r
9 Internalized Islamophobia: the making of Islam in the
Egyptian media 137


S EL z
ahar
ahed 
10 The confluence of race and religion in understanding
Islamophobia in Malaysia 161

M N O
ohamed
awab 
sman
11 Securitization of Islam in contemporary Ethiopia 175


J M
emal
uhamed
12 Islamophobia from within: a case study on Australian
Muslim women 199

D I K N
erya
ner
and
aty
ebhan 
Index 216

Contributors

Deina Abdelkader is Associate Professor in the Political Science Department, a

Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University
(2016–current), previously a Visiting Scholar at Alwaleed Islamic Studies
Program, Harvard University (2014–2016). She is the author of Social Justice
in Islam (IIIT, 2000) and Islamic Activists: The Anti-Enlightenment Demo-

­
crats (Pluto Press, 2011). She has also authored a number of articles, includ-
ing ‘Coercion, Peace and the Issue of Jihad’ in the Digest of Middle East
Studies, and a book chapter, ‘Modernity, Islam and Religious Activism’, in
The New Global Order and the Middle East (Routledge, 2016). She served as
the chair of the Religion and International Relations Book Award for the
Religion and International Relations Section of the International Studies
Association (2015), and she is one of two women on the North American
Muslim Jurisprudential Council. She is a co-founder and co-director of the
­
­
Cohort for the Study of Islam and International Relations (COIRIS). Her
areas of foci are democratic transitions in the Muslim world and Islamic Polit-
ical Activism.
Ali Aslan studied Political Science and International Relations at the University
of Delaware, USA, where he received his PhD in 2012. He is a member of
faculty at Ibn Haldun University, and works as a researcher at Society and
Media Directorate at SETA Istanbul. His academic interests include Political
Theory and Turkish politics.
Enes Bayraklı earned his BA, MA and PhD from the Department of Political
Science at the University of Vienna, and conducted research for his PhD
thesis at the University of Nottingham in UK between 2009 and 2010. He
took office as a eputy irector at Yunus Emre Turkish Cultural Centre in
D
D
London in 2011–2013. He also served as the founding Director of Yunus
Emre Turkish Cultural Centres in Constanta and Bucharest during the period
of August–December 2012. He has been a faculty member in the Department
of Political Science at Turkish–German University since 2013. He is also dir-
ector of European Studies at the Foundation for Political, Economic and
Social Research (SETA). Since 2015 he is the co-editor of annual European
­
Islamophobia Report. He also has appeared on Turkish national and
viii Contributors

  
international media on numerous occasions to discuss various issues such as
anti-Muslim racism and Turkish Foreign Policy. His fields of research include

­
the Transformation of Turkish Foreign Policy, Foreign Policy Analysis and
Islamophobia.
Hatem Bazian is Provost, Co-founder and Professor of Islamic Law and Theo-

­
logy at aytuna College, the 1st Accredited Muslim Liberal Arts College in
Z
the United States. He is a teaching Professor in the Departments of Near
Eastern and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Between
2002 and 2007, he also served as an adjunct Professor of law at Boalt Hall
School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to
Berkeley, he served as a visiting Professor in Religious Studies at Saint
Mary’s College of California 2001–2007 and adviser to the Religion, Politics
and Globalization Centre at University of California, Berkeley. He is prolific
writer having authored four books (two more are underway), numerous chap-
ters in edited volumes, hundreds of articles and published studies on various
subjects. In spring 2009, he founded at Berkeley the Islamophobia Research
and Documentation Project at the Centre for Race and Gender, a research unit
dedicated to the systematic study of Othering Islam and Muslims. In spring
2012, he launched the Islamophobia Studies Journal, the only academic
journal dedicated to the slamophobia tudies field, which is published
I
S
bi-annually through Pluto Press.
­
Rezart Beka is currently a PhD student in Arabic and Islamic Studies at
Georgetown University. He obtained his first M (with summa cum laude)
A
in nterdisciplinary tudies of eligions and Cultures from the Pontifical
I
S
R
Gregorian University, Rome, Italy in 2011 and his second MA (with summa
cum laude) in the Study of Contemporary Muslim Thought and Societies at
Faculty of Islamic Studies (FIS) of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU),
Doha, Qatar in 2016. He holds a BA in Sociology from University of
Tirana, Albania. He has authored three books in Albanian, The Pontifical
Man, (Erasmus Publishing, 2007) and ‘Critical Commentary’ (with foot-
notes) on Rahmatullah Al-Hindi’s Work Truth Revealed (Erasmus Publish-
­
ing, 2004) and a number of articles such as ‘Comunione Matrimoniale
Secondo i Testi Fondanti del Islam’ (in Italian) Periodica de Re Canonica,
Vol. 100, No. 3–4 2011, ‘Jesus and Muhammad: The New Convergences’
(in Albanian) Një No. 2 2010, ‘The Development of Islamic Medicine’ (in
Albanian) Pena No. 1 2008.
Amina Easat-Daas earned her PhD at Aston University, Birmingham, UK and
­
studied Muslim women’s political participation in France and Belgium. She
is currently part of the European Commission-funded Counter-Islamophobia
­
­
Kit research project team at the University of Leeds. Her research interests
include the study of Muslim women, Muslim youth, Islamophobia and
countering-Islamophobia in Europe, ‘European–Islam’. She has presented her
­
research findings to the European Parliament, The Carter Centre and the
 Contributors ix

  
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) among others

­
and has appeared on international media on numerous occasions to discuss
anti-Muslim current affairs.
­
Sahar El Zahed is a Candidate of Philosophy in Islamic Studies at University of
California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is interested in Islamophobia, Orientalism,
the media representation of Islam and Muslims in countries with a Muslim
majority and social media.
Léonard Faytre graduated from Sciences Po Paris University with degrees in
both Political Science (BA) and Urban Policy (MA) in 2013. After moving to
Istanbul the same year, he continued his studies and completed a second MA
in Argumentation Theories (Münazara) at Alliance of Civilization Institute
(Ibn Haldun University) in 2018. His researches focus on Political Theory,
French Foreign Affairs and French Immigration Policy. Beside French, he
speaks fluently English, Turkish and rabic. Currently, he works as esearch
A
R
Assistant at the European Studies Department of SETA Foundation.
Syed Furrukh Zad Ali Shah is Assistant Professor at Faculty of Contemporary
Studies, National Defence University Islamabad Pakistan. He received PhD
as the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) doctoral candidate from
the University of Erfurt Germany in 2016 on cultural politics of Islamophobia
in Western Europe, which is titled ‘Spaces of Engagement: Relocating Euro-
pean Islamophobia in Muslim Diaspora Enclaves’. He holds a MPhil in Inter-
national Relations (2004) from Quaid-i-Azam University, researching on
­
‘Genocide: How to Reckon with Past Wrongs’. As Assistant Professor of
International Relations, he taught at National University of Modern Lan-
guages & Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, and Fatima Jinnah University
­
in Pakistan (1996–2011) and at University of Erfurt, Germany (2012–2016).
His research interests are focused on Muslims in the West, Islamophobia
Politics and Political Islam.
Farid Hafez is currently Senior Researcher at the University of Salzburg,
Department of Political Science and Sociology. He is also Senior
Researcher at Georgetown University’s ‘The Bridge Initiative’. In 2017, he
was Fulbright Visiting Professor at University of California, Berkeley and
in 2014, he was Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, New York. Since
2010 he has been the Editor of the Islamophobia Studies Yearbook, and
since 2016 the Co-editor of the European Islamophobia Report. He serves
­
as an adviser and reviewer for a number of boards and journals. He has
received the Bruno Kreisky Award for the political book of the year for his
anthology Islamophobie in Österreich (Studienverlag, 2009) co-edited with
­
John Bunzl. Currently, his research focuses on Muslim youth movements in
Europe. He earned his PhD in Political Science from the University of
Vienna. Hafez has more than 80 publications and regularly publishes in
leading journals and publishing houses.
x Contributors

  
Derya Iner is Senior Lecturer and Research Coordinator at the Centre for
Islamic Studies, Charles Sturt University, teaching and researching subjects
on contemporary issues related to Islam, Islamic cultures and Muslims. She
completed her PhD in Cultural Studies and Gender Studies in Wisconsin-

­
Madison (USA). Her research focus on Islamophobia, especially women and
children’s experience with Islamophobia, Western Muslim Youth and Reli-
gious identity, and early twentieth-century Ottoman intellectual history. She

­
is the chief investigator and editor of the Islamophobia in Australia
2014–2016 report, whose second issue is in progress.
May Kosba is a doctoral student in the Cultural and Historical Studies of
Religion at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA, from which she
holds an MA in Islamic Studies at the Centre for Islamic Studies.
Jemal Muhamed is a PhD candidate in Political Science and International Rela-
tions at Istanbul Sabahattin aim University. He earned his undergraduate
Z
degree in Political Science and International Relations in 2013 from Dire-

­
Dawa University in Ethiopia. After working as a graduate assistant at Samara
University for two years, Muhamed joined Addis Ababa University, where he
obtained his master’s degree in Peace and Security Studies in 2017. Since
then, he has served as an instructor in the department of Civics and Ethical
Studies at Samara University in Ethiopia where he offered various courses for
undergraduate programs in International Relations, International Organiza-
tions and Law, Peace and Conflict, esearch Methods, Federalism and Local
R
Government, Politics of Development, and Civics and Ethics. While complet-
ing his PhD, he is also an Associate Researcher at the Centre for Islam and
Global Affairs at Istanbul Sabahattin aim University. His research interests
Z
include peace and security, conflict management, and democratization and
transnational politics in the North-East (Horn) of Africa in broader contexts
­
of the Middle East and international politics.
Katy Nebhan is a historian with a particular interest in Australian masculinities
and the development of minority communities within a distinctive Australian
culture. She has worked on heritage preservation in New South Wales and
has written on the Afghan cameleers, Australian Muslim history and popular
culture. She is currently working on a research project at Centre for Islamic
Studies and Civilisation, Charles Sturt University.
Mohamed Nawab Osman is the Coordinator of the Malaysia Program at RSIS.
He also coordinates RSIS’ Seminar Series on Muslim Societies in Asia. His
research interests include the domestic and international politics of Southeast
and South Asian countries, transnational Islamic political movements and
Islamophobia Studies. He has written various papers, books and journal
articles relating to his research interests. He is the author of Hizbut Tahrir
Indonesia: Identity, Ideology and Religo-Political Mobilisation (Routledge,
­
2018) and Islam and Peace-Building the Asia-Pacific (World cientific,
­
­
S
2017). Some of his articles have been featured in prominent journals such as
 Contributors xi

  
Contemporary Islam, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Islamophobia
Studies, Sociology of Islam, Southeast Asia Research, South Asia and Con-
temporary Southeast Asia.
Müşerref Yardım graduated from the Eastern Languages Department at the
Liège University (Belgium) and has an MA in Islamic Civilization from
orbonne University (France). fter completing her Ph in the field of
S
A
D
Sociology of Religion at Strasbourg University (France) in 2010, she worked
for three years at the nstitut Européen des Etudes eligieuses et cientifiques
I
R
S
in Brussels. Since 2014 she has been working as an Assistant Professor in the
Sociology Department of Necmettin Erbakan University, Faculty of Social
Sciences and Humanities. Her specialisms include Islamophobia, Colonialism,
Multiculturalism, Racism, Discrimination, Othering and Hate Speech within
European Media.
Acknowledgements

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all scholars who contributed to
this book, and Hacı Mehmet Boyraz, Zeliha Eliaçık and eyda Karaoğlu for their

Ş
valuable assistance throughout the publication process of this book.
Introduction
Enes Bayraklı and Farid Hafez

In the last decade, many studies explored Islamophobia in Western societies,

where Muslims constitute the minority. Muslim societies, however, have been
nearly neglected as hotspots of Islamophobia. One of the reasons for this is the
obvious fact that Muslims make up the majority in most of these countries. But
can Islamophobia be exclusively explained based on a majority–minority
relation?
This book shows how anti-Muslim racism plays a significant role in predomi-
­
nantly Muslim societies and participates in Muslim countries’ public policy,
state ideology, elite/masse relations and media orientation. Therefore, Islamo-
phobia does not only define the relationship between majorities and minorities
(as it can be observed in Western societies), but more specifically, one between
the powerful versus the powerless. While this relationship is often manifested by
antagonizing Westernized Muslim elites versus conservative Muslim masses,
Islamophobia in the form of epistemic racism is as much existent within Islamic
discourses that are based on a Eurocentric outlook of the world.
Therefore, it can be argued that Islamophobia in the Muslim world and
Islamophobia in the West stem from similar ideological and epistemological
backgrounds. This can be seen from the similarity between the Islamophobic
discourse and debates of Muslim societies with those of Western societies.
Nevertheless, there are differences based on the historical, social, demographical
and political contexts of the respective societies as well.
Rich in case studies covering different Muslim majority countries, this book
constitutes an unprecedented attempt to make sense of Islamaphobia and a must
read for anyone interested in contemporary Muslim societies. It is a must read
for anyone interested in contemporary Muslim societies.
This book presents a critical perspective on an underexposed topic whose
importance is related to larger issues of international relations, emphasizing the
crucial role played by colonial power up to the present day.
In this study, Islamophobia is defined as anti-Muslim racism. It is about a
­
dominant group of people aspiring to seize, stabilize and widen their power by
means of defining a scapegoat – real or invented – and excluding this scapegoat
from the resources, rights and definition of a constructed ‘we’. Islamophobia oper-
ates by constructing a static ‘Muslim’ identity, which is attributed in negative terms
2 Enes Bayraklı and Farid Hafez

  
and is generalized for a whole group of Muslims, often placed in opposition to
ruling governments. In Muslim countries, Islamophobia can especially be under-
stood as a way of regulating and disciplining Muslim subjects who are perceived as
a threat to the dominant groups in power, thus framing Islamophobia as political.
Islamophobia, as a form of racialized governmentality, aims at undermining a
power-critical Muslim identity that especially questions the assumptions of a
­
Western epistemological hegemony that is shared by Muslim elites.
In the first chapter entitled ‘Making sense of Islamophobia in Muslim soci-
eties’, Enes Bayraklı from the Turkish German University, Farid Hafez from
Salzburg University and Georgetown University and Léonard Faytre from Ibn
Haldun University discuss different approaches that allow us to better under-
stand Islamophobia in Muslim majority societies. They argue that anti-Muslim

­
racism does not only result from a majority–minority relation, but from a power
relation between powerful and powerless groups as well. By focusing on the
ideological and political ruptures between Westernized secular Muslim elites
and conservative Muslim masses, the authors explain how Muslims can actually
be Islamophobes. They suggest to look at Islamophobia through the lenses of
world-systems theory, epistemic racism and secularism. They draw on the con-
­
cepts of self-Orientalization and self-Westernization to explain how some seg-
­
­
ments of Muslim societies approach their identity, their tradition and their own
world-view through an alien outlook, namely Western Orientalism. The authors
­
underline this process in order to explain the possibility of Muslim self-hatred.

­
The latter is not only rooted in colonization, but more generally in the encounter
with the powerful modern secular West at the turn of the nineteenth century. As
a result, Islamophobia is conceived here as a form of racialized governmentality
that aims to undermine a distinct Muslim identity.
The second chapter entitled ‘Islamophobia in Muslim majority states: ‘religion-
­
building’ and foreign policy’ written by Hatem Bazian from the University of
California, Berkeley advances debate drawing on Talal Asad’s critical reflections
on secularism. Hatem Bazian starts his chapter by proposing a distinct and histor-
ically focused notion of Islamophobia in Muslim majority societies. He locates
Islamophobia primarily as a ‘process emerging out and shaped by the colonial-
­
Eurocentric hegemonic discourses dating to late 18th century’, which also emphas-
izes the role of internalization by post-colonial elites.
­
In the third chapter entitled ‘Islamophobia in the contemporary Albanian
public discourse’, Rezart Beka from Georgetown University explores the ways
Islamophobia is manifested in the post-communist Albanian public discourse.
­
The chapter traces the extent to which Albanian public intellectuals have utilized
global Islamophobic paradigms, like Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, the
idea of ‘Islamofascism’ or the narrative of a ‘European Judeo-Christian identity’
­
to apply them to the Albanian context.
In the fourth chapter titled ‘Post-coloniality, Islamization and secular elites:
­
tracing Islamophobia in Pakistan’, Syed Furrukh Zad Ali Shah from the National
Defence University, Islamabad identifies how secular elites, influenced by the
Western episteme of secular modernity, carry Islamophobic prejudices towards
 Introduction 3

  
Islam in the Pakistani context, apart from its civic critique. The chapter is a valu-
able contribution to the book since, according to the author, Islam in Pakistan
has frequently and fervently been employed by the state establishment to develop
the ideological foundations of the post-colonial polity.

­
In the fourth chapter, Ali Aslan from Ibn Haldun University, with his contri-
bution titled ‘The politics of Islamophobia in Turkey’ argues that Islamophobia
was central to the construction and reproduction of a modern nation-state in

­
Turkey. The author contends that the politics of Islamophobia was specifically
exploited for that goal, constructing Islam and Muslims as the enemy of the
newly established secular regime and keeping religion and the religious outside
of the state. According to Aslan, Islamophobia first served to replace the
Ottoman Empire with the secular–nationalist Turkish Republic and was later
deployed to produce a secular–nationalist reality. However, this second phase
produced an autocratic and alienated political order, which was opposed by the
democratic bloc that included the religious–conservative masses and the notables
in the aftermath of the 1940s. As a result of this, this century-long political

­
struggle ended with the victory of the democratic forces and the dismantlement
of the Kemalist bureaucratic tutelage in Turkey in the 2000s.
The sixth chapter, ‘Islamophobia in satirical magazines: a comparative case
study of Penguen in Turkey and Charlie Hebdo in France’, written by Müşerref
Yardım from Necmettin Erbakan University and Amina Easat-Daas from Leeds
­
University, critically analyses and compares the nature of Islamophobic cartoons
from a Turkish magazine, Penguen, and a French magazine, Charlie Hebdo.
This chapter highlights the commonalities and the differences between Islamo-
phobia in Western and Muslim societies through the comparison of two cases.
May Kosba from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley contributes to
the work with the seventh chapter titled ‘Paradoxical Islamophobia and post-
­
colonial cultural nationalism in post-revolutionary Egypt’. The chapter debates
­
that, in the years following the aftermath of Egypt’s 2011 revolution, the country
has witnessed a rise in the demonization of al-Ikhwan or the Muslim Brother-
­
hood. Kosba asserts that the current Egyptian government and its allies have
generated a fear of Islamists in the media and in religious institutions, particu-
larly a fear of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was the main force behind the
first freely elected s in the history of modern Egypt. She also argues that this
fear-mongering narrative has often resulted in Islamophobic language, policies
­
and actions, familiar to those in the West and that have contributed to the rise of
Islamophobia in the form of a widespread anti-Ikhwan sentiment.
­
Deina Abdelkader from Harvard University, in the eighth chapter titled ‘Old
wine in new bottles: secularism and Islamophobia in Egypt’, presents the
struggle between the secular and religious divide in Egypt, which culminated in
the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. The roots of Western liberal
democracy are also discussed in this chapter in juxtaposition to similar roots of
the principle of ‘the Common Good’. The last part of the chapter focuses on
tying the historical and ideological roots to what has transpired since the
Egyptian revolution of 2011.
4 Enes Bayraklı and Farid Hafez

  
In the ninth chapter entitled ‘Internalized Islamophobia: the making of Islam
in the Egyptian media’, Sahar El Zahed from the University of California inves-
tigates and elaborates on the ways in which various meanings of Orientalism
inform the making of Islam and Muslims among the secularized intelligentsia
and policy-makers in Egypt. Through an analysis of segments from five leading
­
Egyptian TV programmes and a presidential speech, El Zahed explores the ways
in which such programs and speeches engage in so-called ‘Self-Orientalism’.

­
­
The following chapter, titled ‘The confluence of race and religion in under-
standing Islamophobia in Malaysia’ and written by Mohamed Nawab Osman
from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, discusses Islamophobia
in the context of Malaysia by examining the historical and contemporary struc-
tures of power that enabled the rise of Islamophobia, the factors that rendered
Islamophobia increasingly normalized, as well as the manifestations of Islamo-
phobia in Malaysia. The chapter proposes that Islamophobia in the Malaysian
context needs to be understood from the lens of racism since previously held
cultural and racial biases against the Malay–Muslim majority populace in
Malaysia have now translated into bias against the Islamic faith.
In his chapter ‘Securitization of Islam in contemporary Ethiopia’, Jemal
Muhamed from Sabahattin Zaim University focuses on Islamophobia in Ethiopia.
He argues that Islam has been securitized in Ethiopia through the implementation
of legislative changes and institutional practices towards Ethiopian Muslims that
affect the latter in different ways.
In the last chapter entitled ‘Islamophobia from within: a case study on
Australian Muslim women’, Derya Iner and Katy Nebhan from Charles Sturt
University explore the internal Islamophobia within the Muslim community in
Sydney and thereby unpack the intersections between internal and external Islamo-
phobia. The chapter gives voice to those Australian Muslim women who are strug-
gling with Islamophobia from Muslims within a larger context of a minority status.
We hope this book will be a reference study to gain an insight into the various
aspects of Islamophobia in Muslim majority contexts and will encourage further
studies and debate in this area.
Istanbul and Salzburg, August 2018
1 Making sense of Islamophobia in
Muslim societies
Enes Bayraklı, Farid Hafez and Léonard Faytre

Introduction
The vast literature in the emerging field of Islamophobia Studies has been focus-
ing on Islamophobia in what many people refer to as the ‘West’ in a geographic
way of understanding. Or at least, Islamophobia was analysed in terms of
Western political forces, which represent powers that are located there such as
US foreign policy, although its scope reaches countries such as Iraq and Afghan-
istan. This book is a first attempt to shift the discussion to a different context. It
is not meant to redefine Islamophobia as such, but rather to look at how Islamo-
phobia plays a role in a context where Muslims are not the minority in a society,
but constitute the majority of a society. Muslims are in the minority status in
many ‘Western’ countries, where this goes hand in hand with less economic and
political power. Even in countries with a large Muslim population, however,
Islamophobia can play a significant role.
In this chapter, we try to disclose the main dynamics that make sense of
Islamophobia in predominantly Muslim societies. By ‘Muslim societies’, we
refer to societies with a Muslim majority population. First, we suggest framing
the notion of the ‘West’ not as a territorial category, but as one of power. With
the global hegemony of the United States as the super power on the globe, Islam-
ophobia can be understood as a continuation of an already existing global struc-
ture of racialization where ‘culture’ and ‘religion’ have replaced ‘biology’
(Mbembe, 2014, p. 7) The whole world is home to Islamophobia, especially in
the form of epistemic racism. The latter, which is seen as one of the most hidden
forms of racism, is defined by Ramón Grosfoguel as a tradition in which ‘the
“West” is considered to be the only legitimate tradition of thought able to
produce knowledge and the only one with access to “universality”, “rationality”,
and “truth” ’ (Grosfoguel, 2010, p. 29).
This does not mean, on the other hand, that Islamophobia is expressed in the
same form in every context. Obviously, in the political context of a kingdom or
an autocratic state, Islamophobia may function differently but, in essence, the
phenomenon is connected to the global political context that is very much struc-
tured by the post-colonial order and related to contemporary US hegemony in
­
the world. Second, since many of the political elites in Muslim societies have
6 Enes Bayraklı et al.

  
been educated in the centres, some even in the higher learning institutions, of the
global North, many among these Westernized elites think along the same pat-
terns as ‘white men’. This is true for formerly colonized countries such as Egypt,
Pakistan or Algeria, as well as self-Westernized countries such as Turkey and

­
Iran before the revolution. Therefore, the regulation of Islam in many Muslim
countries has become a way of regulating an identity that was regarded as a
threat to the Western-like secular nation-state. Third, this reflects a notion of

­
­
Islamophobia that was suggested by Salman Sayyid in his writings. According
to Sayyid, Islamophobia is about making it impossible for a Muslim political
identity to exist. For him, the challenge of being Muslim today is that there is no
epistemological or political space for its identity (Sayyid, 2014, p. 8). Accord-
ingly, the inclusion of Islam in Western epistemology as a concept would
destabilize the colonial order. Sayyid wants to introduce a post-positivist, post-

­
­
Orientalist and decolonial perspective to create exactly this space. Christian
political identity, such as Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party, may be
regarded as part and parcel of our current political order, whereas this is not the
case on behalf of Islamic political identities. This aspect is strongly connected to
the fourth aspect of Islamophobia, which is self-Orientalization, meaning non-
­
­
Westerners’ appropriation of a Western understanding of the world. One could
here intervene to argue that this framing may support a non-critical support of

­
political Islam. This is not the case since both forms of Islamophobia – con-
ceived as a form of epistemic racism and self-Orientalization – can be found
­
among those actors propagating an ideology of political Islam or Muslim theolo-
gians who reproduce Western dominance by attempting to imitate it and hence
become nothing more than a reflection of Western patterns of thought.
While epistemic disobedience (Mignolo, 2009) becomes a necessity to relo-
cate the subaltern Muslim subject in the world, this also invited reductive –what
some called nativist or fundamentalist (Ali, 2002, p. 126) – perspectives to
counter the influence of colonialism and fight it back. We argue that the problem
at hand is more complex. Since racism, such as, in our case, anti-Muslim racism,
­
is not about an intentional act but is structural and works unconsciously, it can
also be part of Islamist discourses who often mirror the essentialist and reduc-
tionist identity politics of their Western counterparts.

World-systems theory, epistemic Islamophobia

­
and secularism
Islamophobia is another form of epistemic racism, since Islam is excluded and
denigrated and perceived as antithetic to the modern secular tradition by the
dominant West (Grosfoguel, 2010, p. 29). In his reflection on the Formations of the
Secular (2003), Talal Asad demonstrates how Muslims in Europe are both present
and absent from the secular Europe. Present on one side, because of Muslim immi-
gration to the Old Continent and their subsequent place in the European public life
(work, education, media etc.). Absent on the other, because Muslims are perceived
as carrying values that contradict those of the European sacrosanct principle,
 Islamophobia in Muslim societies 7

  
namely the subordination of the divine authority by the worldly power (i.e. secular-
ism). In this regard, ‘Muslims may be in Europe but are not of it’ (Asad, 2003,
p. 164). We argue that this observation does not only speak to Muslims in Europe,
but to those in many Muslim majority societies as well.
In Local Histories/global Designs (2000), decolonialist author Mignolo helps
us understand the roots of epistemic Islamophobia in Muslim societies through
his reflection on the notion of coloniality. By drawing on Quijano’s notion of
‘coloniality of power’ (Quijano, 2000) that assumes a hierarchical structure of
the whole world between the dominating-made product (from the white Western

­
man) and the dominated-made product (from any non-white Western man) in
­
­
every social sphere (ontology, epistemology, language, sign, economy, politics,
etc.), Mignolo introduces the concept of ‘world views in collision’. In fact,
Mignolo profoundly demonstrates how the encounter between European local
cultures and non-European worlds at the beginning of the sixteenth century did
­
not only lead to the ‘transition from one culture to another’ (that is Malinowski’s
concept of ‘acculturation’) or to the complex interbreeding of cultures (that is
Ortiz’s concept of ‘transculturation’) but rather to coloniality of power, which
‘presupposes the colonial difference as its condition of possibility and as the
legitimacy for the subalternization of knowledges and the subjugation of people’
(Mignolo, 2000, p. 16).
Mignolo describes this Europeanization of the world as an offensive process
that colonizes any sphere of the ‘being’ and that deeply reshapes the colonized’s
approach to the world, namely his understanding of ontology (definition of
human being and of its relation to the inner and supra-worlds), of psychology
­
(subconsciousness, self-representation), of linguistics (discourse, use of certain
­
concepts), of epistemology (definition of knowledge, divine and secular know-
ledge), to politics (state, nation, secularism), of economy (capitalism, industry,
centre–periphery) etc. At the end of this destructive process, the colonized is not
allowed to ‘be’ outside the Europeanized world. Put differently, Mignolo draws
an intrinsic link between Europeanism (i.e. Western colonial design of the
world), Orientalism (i.e. Western approach to the non-Western world), and self-
­
­
Orientalism (i.e. the adoption of an Orientalist approach by non-Westerners/
­
natives/indigenous).
Another decolonial author, Ramón Grosfoguel, argues that Islamophobia takes
root in Western imperialism at the global scale, leading to ‘self-valorisation’ of
­
Western epistemological tradition and rising it up to the rank of ‘universality’,
‘neutrality’, ‘rationality’ and ‘philosophy’. This is a global phenomenon. Starting
from the fifteenth century (the destruction of Al-Andalus and the conquest of the
­
American continent) onwards, the ‘West’ claimed intellectual superiority over
other civilizations following its growing political domination (slavery, coloniza-
tion, Westernization, etc.). One of the results of this long global process was the
creation of the ‘world-system’ we all live in, which is yet again designed and domi-
­
nated by the Western framework and world-view. For Grosfoguel, we all live in a
­
world-system characterized as the ‘modern colonial Westernized Christian-centric
­
­
capitalist patriarchal world-system’ (Grosfoguel, 2012).
­
8 Enes Bayraklı et al.

  
In this definition, globalization does not only involve ‘international division
of labour and a global inter-state system’ but also

­
as constitutive of the capitalist accumulation at a world-scale, a global

­
racial/ethnic hierarchy (Western versus non-Western peoples), a global

­
patriarchal hierarchy (global gender system and a global sexual system), a
global religious hierarchy, a global linguistic hierarchy, a global epistemic
hierarchy, etc.
(Grosfoguel, 2006)

This epistemic racism/sexism is the underlying discourse (in the Foucauldian

sense) of the world we live in. In this context, the Islamic civilization’s know-
ledge, values and way of life are automatically dismissed as ‘particularistic’,
‘provincialist’, ‘subjective’, ‘undemocratic’, ‘irrational’ and ‘non-universal’.

­
From this perspective, the Westernized political, cultural, etc. elites in Muslim
majority countries can either be regarded as part and parcel or as operating
within the epistemological framework of a racial structure. Indeed, post-colonial

­
political elites work within the frame of the nation-state, a system that goes back
­
to the Westphalian concept of sovereignty (seventeenth century). Again, the
broad context in which elites are involved represents itself in the European local
experience that became hegemonic on a global scale. This intellectual ‘depend-
ency’ or ‘captive mind’ (Alatas, 2005) is particularly obvious for those cultural,
political and other elites who were educated outside of their native homelands in
Western universities. With this hegemony of knowledge production in the
centres of the global North, a non-Muslim perspective on Islam has become the
­
starting point for many Muslim thinkers and policy-makers, as will be later dis-
­
cussed in this chapter.

Centre–periphery relations and the birth of Westernized

elites in Muslim societies
In what is often imagined as the ‘Muslim world’ (on the evolution of this term,
see Aydin, 2017), the collision of world-views during the modernization and
­
Westernization process (Mignolo, 2012) led to the decreasing role of Islamic
normative perspectives in favour of the modern nation-state world-view, with
­
­
more and less conflicts, resistance, and disturbance according to each country.
Hallaq argues that,

beginning in the nineteenth century and at the hands of colonialist Europe, the
socio-economic and political system regulated by the Sharīʿa was structurally
­
dismantled, which is to say that the Sharīʿa itself was eviscerated, reduced to
providing no more than the raw materials for the legislation of personal status
by the modern state. Even in this relatively limited sphere, the Sharīʿa lost its
autonomy and social agency in favour of the modern state.
(Hallaq, 2013)
 Islamophobia in Muslim societies 9

  
As a result, the establishment of European domination over other ontologies,
epistemologies and ways of life (materialized today by globalization) took place
in a geographic space where ‘the Islamic normative structure [is used to] serve
both as a religion and as a way of life for its adherents’ (Hussain, 1984). This
ontological contradiction between Western modernization and Islam is still
structuring most of the political conflicts in the region.
How did the anti-Islamic tradition of Westernization manage to prevail in
­
predominantly Muslim societies? The first answer is to point out the role of
colonization in the destruction of Islamic normative structures and the shift to
the European nation-state model through the establishment of modern admin-
­
istration, military and education by force. Yet Westernization took place in
non-colonized countries such as Turkey, Iran and – to a lesser extent –
­
Afghanistan as well. Therefore, besides colonization, one should underline the
decisive role played by secularized Muslim elites in the rise of the European
modern nation-state model as both a practice (establishment of modern institu-
­
tions, bureaucracy or schools for example) and an ideology (modernization as
civilizational path, discourse and world-view). Dahl defines a ‘ruling elite’ as
­
‘a group of people who to some degree exercise power or influence over other
actors in the system’ (Dahl, 1958) while Hussain adds that, according to elite
theory, it is those who concentrate political power and ‘who guide the destiny
of their country’ (Hussain, 1984).
The neo-Marxist centre–periphery perspective defines secularized and West-
­
ernized Muslim elites as intermediaries between European dominant powers and
Muslim dominated peoples. Indeed, in the centre–periphery theory, while

the metropolis expropriates economic surplus from its satellites and appro-
priates it for its own development, thereby creating the polarization of the
capitalist system into metropolitan centre and peripheral satellites, […] the
existence of the third category [here Muslim countries’ elites] means pre-
cisely that the upper stratum is not faced with the unified opposition of all
the others because the middle stratum is both exploited and exploiter.
(Hussain, 1984)

The centre–periphery perspective offers a useful framework to understand eco-

nomic relations between dominant and dominated countries worldwide. Com-
pleted by post-colonial considerations on European imperialism, the
­
centre–periphery perspective draws a general outlook in which predominant
Western countries directly or indirectly shape Muslim countries through the
complex mediation of secularized and Westernized Muslim upper-class elites. It
­
is possible to categorize the constitution of such elites in history through two
main dynamics:

a Colonization: Elites first suffered capitalization of the indigenous economy,

as well as Westernization of values through the occupation of their country
by a foreign power. Then, they either fought colonial power by reclaiming
10 Enes Bayraklı et al.

  
European Enlightenment values (Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Senegal) or
worked with it to remain at the head of the country (Malaysia, Iraq, Jordan).
b Self-Westernization: Domestic elites got engaged in the capitalization of the
­
economy and Westernization of values without being subjected to any
foreign colonization in the long run because they believed it to be in the best
interest of their countries and they thought it impossible to resist the advance
of Western powers without modernizing and Westernizing their societies
(Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan).

Although the process of Westernization in each of these countries from the end
of the eighteenth century until today is complex and differs in every case, almost
all the secularized elites of these countries engaged in a radical reconsideration
of the Islamic tradition/world-view/way of life that they consequently considered
­
to be an obstacle to the establishment of a modern state, the only path to
civilization.
The Malaysian sociologist Syed Farid Alatas shows how Westernization (or
modernization) constitutes an ideological dynamic of change, an ‘attitude or
mentality that subordinates the traditional to the modern’ (Alatas, 2005). Even
though Muslim elites may have supported modernization in the last two centu-
ries in order to better protect indigenous regimes (military, administrative and
educational modernizations to balance European technological advance in Qajar
and Ottoman states), to reclaim independence (resistance movements in Algeria,
Senegal, Tunis, Egypt) or for purely pragmatic interests (exploitation of rubber
in Malaysia, elites of the brand new states of Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, etc.), their
engagement in reform has never gone without ideological motives, a burden of
civilizational rehab put by Muslim elites on their respective societies.
In other terms, the use of European modern state-based instruments to
­
reform political, economic and military apparatuses also involved a set of
moral principles that came with modernity (Hallaq, 2013.) For instance, an
assertive secularism against an ancient regime theocracy (Young Turks,
Kemalism, Reza Shah Iran), nationalism against the Islam-based Ummah
­
(pan-Arabism, race-based nationalist movements), modern military rule
­
­
against the Ulema clergy (Pakistan and Algerian armies), communist people’s
sacralization against divine sacralization (Afghan communist People’s Demo-
cratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) party, Iraqi and Syrian Baath parties)
being concomitantly carried on – often in paradoxical ways entangled with
references to Islam – in most Muslim countries. Therefore, after having been
the first subjects of European conquests and/or domination, Muslim elites
became the main agents of the diffusion of European standards over Muslim
societies. Put differently, the Muslim elites were in an ambivalent position as
both ‘exploited’ (by European countries) and ‘exploiter’ (of Muslim masses).
This position led to the violent opposition between secular Muslim elites and
conservative Muslim masses. In his article ‘Centre–Periphery Relations: A
Key to Turkish Politics?’, Şerif Mardin (1973) interprets this opposition as
continuity with the traditional Ottoman cleavage between urban orthodox
 Islamophobia in Muslim societies 11

  
dwellers (the centres of power) and rural heterodox nomads (the periphery).
According to Mardin, the traditional urban–elite/rural–masses opposition has
been replaced by one of the modern secular–elite/conservative–masse: ‘In this
newfound unity [the Kemalist Turkish modern state], the periphery was chal-
lenged by a new and intellectually more uncompromising type of bureaucrat’
(Mardin, 1973, p. 179).
Education and the military constituted two major institutions in the birth and
development of Westernized elites in Muslim countries. The historian Benjamin
Fortna (2002) demonstrated how the spread of European education in the
Ottoman Empire in the middle of the nineteenth century – through either Euro-
pean and US missionary schools or Westernized domestic schools (mekteb) – led
to the wide diffusion of materialism and positivism paradigms among Muslim
elites. This ontological shifting from divine authority (metaphysics) to mundane
priorities (physics) goes back to ‘a new psychology that emerged in Europe in
early modernity’ (Asad, 2014) and thus directly challenged the civilizational role
of Islam as a tradition that structures society upon spiritual and non-material

­
principles. Niyazi Berkes (1964) gives an account of the nineteenth-century

­
Westernized military, medicine and engineering schools. He describes Ottoman
students as progressively disconnected from traditional paradigms and values,
permissive to European ideas of anti-clericalism, scientism and distrust of
­
masses. Berna Kılınç (2005) notes that

it was in this period that a new system of schools for the education of
bureaucrats was introduced, which led to the eventual eclipse of the tradi-
tional religious school system (medrese) along with the diminution of the
political influence of the learned clergy (ulema).

Sarfraz Husain Ansari (2011) also underlines the impact of the elite’s education
upon the modernist and anti-clerical vision of Pakistan’s first statesmen
­
(Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan, but also Ayub Khan who studied at
Sandhurst Military Academy in the UK). Similarly, Albert Hourani (1983) links
the French and military education of North African elites at the end of the nine-
teenth century to their liberal and modern stance (for instance, the Egyptian
Ismail Pasha who ascended to the throne in 1863 or Khayr al-Din who became
­
the Grand Vizier of the Beylik of Tunis (1873–1877)).
Since secularist and anti-traditionalist reforms were widely unpopular among
­
Muslim masses, the use of political violence by ruling elites became the main
instrument of holding grip on political power at the turn of the twentieth century
and onwards, materialized for example by the Kemalist regime in Turkey
(1923–1950), the Shah regime in Iran (1923–1946), the communist rule in
Afghanistan (1978–1989), the military rule in Algeria, Tunisia, Pakistan and
Egypt etc. This authoritarian turn of Westernized Muslim elites emphasized the
polarization between the secular military bureaucratic ruling class and the
Islamist conservative masses, resulting in an unresolvable dispute over funda-
mental values in those countries (secular versus religious, people’s authority
12 Enes Bayraklı et al.

  
versus elites authority). This was an unprecedented division in Muslim societies
since Islam constituted ‘the medium of communication between the elite and the
mass cultures’ until the beginning of the twentieth century (Kadıoğlu, 1998).
As a result, the birth and growth of Westernized elites encountered many con-
testations not only from the masses but also – and foremost – from a counter
elite that promoted the Islamic tradition. Those trends, commonly called ‘Islam-
ism’ or ‘political Islam’, contest the full imitation of the European modern state
and of its resulting paradigms. According to the country, the counter elite is
composed of Muslim clerics (Ulema), young revolutionaries and conservative
entrepreneurs or intellectuals (Weiner and Banuazizi, 1994). They are reclaim-
ing the right to define the collective ‘we’ and to rule the country. Yet, while
these movements claim a kind of restoration of the ancien régime – or at least
greater acceptance of Islam in the public and political space – they are all acting
within the framework of the modern state and politics (see the Islamic Republic
of Iran, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-Justice and Development (AK) Party’s rule
­
in Turkey, Ennahdha Party in Tunisia, Muhammed Morsi’s Presidency in Egypt
etc.). For this reason, both Talal Asad and Wael Hallaq interrogate the capacity
of Islamic political movements to ‘restore’ or ‘recover’ the Islamic tradition as a
complete world-view against the Western nation-state model. (Asad, 2014;
­
­
Hallaq, 2013) In any case, conservative counter-elites contribute to the legitimi-
­
zation of the very existence of Muslim conservatists in the society and to their
reinclusion into the collective discourse and political arena, interrogating and
destabilizing the dominant global structure.

Self-Orientalization
­
According to Bezci and Çiftçi (2012), the notion of self-Orientalism refers to the
­
adoption of a Western Orientalist approach by non-Western indigenous people.
­
Accordingly, self-Orientalism reflects the continuation of colonialism in non-
­
­
Western countries. It is the reason why Georgiev (2012) discusses ‘self-
­
orientalization’ and not ‘self-Orientalism’, pointing out an ongoing process that
­
keeps shaping non-Western countries up to this day.
­
Discussing the psychological implications of colonialism upon the colonized,
Franz Fanon has already put an emphasis on what racism does with its victim
and explored how colonial subjects came to identify with their oppressors (see
his Black Skin, White Masks 2008([1952]) ). Hamid Dabashi (2011) draws on
Fanon’s insights and departs from where Fanon ended his work, analysing the
role of native informers in the imperial project of the United States and Europe
in his Brown Skin, White Masks. Dabashi especially looks at those intellectuals
who migrated to the West and were often used by the imperial powers to misrep-
resent their home countries. While Dabashi reveals the important strategic role
of native informants inside the ‘empire’, one cannot dismiss the important role
of those persons outside the empire who legitimize Western hegemony in
Muslim societies as Muslims. One can claim here that there is an intrinsic link
between the legitimizing of Western hegemony and Islamophobic discourse.
 Islamophobia in Muslim societies 13

  
In other terms, the promotion of the Western way of life in Muslim societies by
Westernized elites goes in parallel with hate attacks on Islam, which is con-
ceived as an ontological threat. Yassir Morsi shows through three case studies
presented in his Radical Skin, Moderate Masks – also drawing on Fanon’s epic
work – the complexity of navigating through the contemporary world that is
shaped by the norms of the white man as a Muslim (Morsi, 2017).
In fact, many of the most vocal Islamophobes within the global North have
been Muslims who regularly draw on their insider perspective to further support
Islamophobic discourses. This is also true when it comes to Muslim countries.
For decades, Muslim elite supporters of authoritarian governments continually
argued to Western leaders that free elections would bring Islamists to power.
They portrayed themselves as defenders of secular regimes. Paradoxically, this
rhetoric legitimizes extreme political violence against the Islamic conservative
opposition such as the massacre of Muhammad Morsi’s supporters in Egypt in
the summer of 2013. At that time, domestic elites such as the Egypt’s former
Mufti, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, called for the murder of the supporters of the first
freely elected president of Egypt, depicted as ‘heretics and traitors’ and ‘dogs of
hellfire’, (Osman, 2013; Asad, 2014) thus using a rather ‘religious language’.
Imogen Lambert (2017) underlines the paradox between the Western liberal
approach to secularism and its authoritarian implementation in Muslim coun-
tries. By discussing the notion of ‘liberal Islamophobia’, the author first shows
how European liberals/leftists are condemning racism in the West (including
anti-Muslim racism) while supporting authoritarian Islamophobic regimes in the
­
Middle East. She then demonstrates that this ambivalent position corresponds to
the hate of Islam among liberal intellectuals in Muslim countries:

Of course, Egyptian liberals are not alone in their hostility to social and
political groups with connections, however remote, to Islam. The Syrian and
Lebanese secular left are guilty of much of the same. They similarly
opposed the Muslim Brotherhood, were unapologetic about their support for
the 2013 coup, and slandered the Rabaa martyrs. While some claim to
support the Syrian revolution, for example, they continually disown Islamist
factions such as Ahrar Al-Sham, Jaysh Al-Islam, and other mainstream
­
­
‘Muslim groups’ in the Free Syrian Army (FSA) for no clear reason other
than their Islamic orientation.
(Lambert, 2017)

Yet, while Muslim Islamophobes operating in the West have been discussed
widely, there is little research on Muslim Islamophobia in Muslim majority
countries. One can argue here that this form of racism takes its roots from the
‘double-consciousness’ concept that is developed by W. E. B. Du Bois in his
­
The Souls of Black Folk (1903):

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always

­
looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by
14 Enes Bayraklı et al.

  
the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever
feels his two-ness, – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two

­
unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged
strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American
Negro is the history of this strife – this longing to attain self-conscious

­
manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this
merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to
Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and
Africa. He wouldn’t bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white
Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world.
He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an
American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having
the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.

In other terms, the epistemic racism that comes with Western hegemony also
presents an irreconcilableness between being Muslim and being in the globalized
Western world today. This double-consciousness still plagues the Muslim
­
subject as any other subaltern subject, as it is constantly questioning its identity,
whether it belongs to a traditional world-view or to a globalized Western one.
­
The Muslim subaltern subject is continuously confronted with the question of
what is the place of the representative of a passive, backward, uncivilized and
primitive, or more specifically undemocratic, unmodern, radical and extremist
religion?
Facing this identity crisis between alien Western modernism and traditional
Islam, elites of many Muslim countries attempted to develop alternative senses
of belonging at the turn of the twentieth century. In his study on the discourse of
the Aryan race in Iran (2011), Reza Zia-Ebrahimi shows that domestic elites
­
constructed their nationalist discourse upon the Aryan origin myth. Zia-Ebrahimi
­
explains that one reason for the persistence of this narrative lies in the trauma of
the encounter with Europe and in the strategies designed to manage it. In the
same way, Egyptian secular elites stressed on the Pharaonic heritage and on Pan-
Arabic aspirations (Asad, 2014), Turkish Kemalists presented the pre-Islamic
­
­
Hittite and Sumerians as ancestors of Turks, (White, 2013) while Tunisian elites
underlined the non-Muslim legacy of the Phoenician civilization (Baram, 1990).
­
Self-Orientalism and double-consciousness are such powerful dynamisms that
­
­
they also impacted leading Muslim figures. Mehmet Akif Kireçci (2007) has
shown in his PhD thesis that nineteenth-century Muslim scholars such as Al-
­
­
Tahtawi, Taha Husayn and Ziya Gökalp adopted the paradigm of modernity in
their understanding of Islam. According to Kireçci, these supporters of ‘Islamic
Renaissance’ (Nahda) constitute examples of self-Orientalism among the Islamic
­
clergy. Yet, such intellectual imbrications are self-contradicting for Grosfoguel,
­
since he conceives ‘self-Orientalism’ (and the related notions of modernity,
­
civilization, secularism, etc.) as the epistemic roots of Islamophobia in Muslim
societies (2010). Likewise, in his article on the historical background of Islamo-
phobia in Turkey, Mencet (2018) identifies self-Orientalism as both the result of
­
 Islamophobia in Muslim societies 15

  
Western imperialism and the main cause of contemporary Islamophobia. He
argues that self-Orientalism is still widespread in many spheres of the Turkish

­
society such as literature, press, arts and bureaucracy. Consequently, one can
observe the open and constant expression of Islamophobia in this predominantly
Muslim country.

Governing Islam in Muslim countries

From the perspective of Muslim societies, the encounter with colonial powers
has been accompanied by ‘cultural imperialism’ (Laouri, 1976, p. 100). This
shaped the way Muslim societies entered into modernity and how the latter con-
strued their modern nation-states. (Akhbari et al., 2017) In the edited volume
­
Colonial and Post-Colonial Governance of Islam: Continuities and Ruptures,
­
(Maussen, Bader and Moors, 2011) the authors trace current post-colonialist

­
state policies towards Islam back to their colonialist experience and public policy
of Islam in use during this period. The authors map different configurations of
opportunities for Muslim life and distinguish between different modes in the
governance of Islam:

First, there is the regulation of religious education and religious authority

[…]. Second, there are institutional arrangements and practices that aim to
regulate property and facilities […]. Third, authorities in colonial and post-

­
colonial contexts contribute to arranging the relations between Islam, law
and social life. This includes the recognition and/or codification of Islamic
law and the balancing of religiously based legal claims with systems of cus-
tomary law (adat) […]. Fourth, there are attempts to create, recognise and
possibly institutionalise organisational platforms to speak for Islam and
Muslim populations, for example, in the form of Muslim councils.
(Maussen, Bader and Moors, 2011, p. 18)

All of these three dimensions reveal the central aspect of power relations and
suggest considering state agencies as actors that discipline their Muslim soci-
eties, from education (defining what the true Islam is from a bottom-up per-
­
spective) to economic power (property issues, especially of the classical
foundations that were monopolized by state bureaucracy), legal power (reducing
the role of Islamic law in social life), institutionalizing the representation of
Islam (who then define what the true Islam is from a top-down perspective). This
­
does not mean that there is a linear development in the governance of Islam, as
various articles in this book, as well as other studies, reveal (Feuer, 2018) There
are differences in the configuration of different factors such as regime ideology,
political opposition and the religious institutional endowment.
Often, the role of Islam and Muslims in politics in Muslim majority countries
is reduced to an ideological struggle. However, rather than a struggle between
the secular and the religious, as some portray it, we argue that this is a struggle
over the Western notion of secularism itself. Hakan Yavuz has revealed in his
16 Enes Bayraklı et al.

  
work Cleansing Islam from the Public Sphere (2000) that Kemalists’ conception of
‘laïcism is not only a separation between religion and society’, but more a ‘regula-
tion of social life, education, family, economy, law, daily code of conduct, and
dress-code in accordance with the needs of everyday life and the Kemalist prin-
­
ciples’. As a result of this ideology, the Kemalist state attempted to shape a secu-
lar–national–Islam whose religiosity was confined at home and deprived of any
exterior expression and political role (Haken Yavuz, 2000). For years, the Kemalist
state used institutional tools in order to enforce this Islam policy through institu-
tions such as the Diyanet (Directorate of Religious Affairs), Imam Hatip schools
training young Muslim future imams, religious instruction in schools, etc. Sim-
ilarly, today, European governments try to regulate Islam and Muslims by institu-
tionalizing the Islamic religion (Bayraklı, Faytre and Hafez, 2018).

Similarities and differences between Western Islamophobia

and homegrown Islamophobia in Muslim countries
If we recognize Islamophobia to be ‘about a dominant group of people aiming at
seizing, stabilizing and widening their power by means of defining a scapegoat –
real or invented – and excluding this scapegoat from the resources/rights/
definition of a constructed “we” ’, (Bayraklı and Hafez, 2015) we then find many
similarities between Islamophobia in the West and in Muslim countries. Indeed,
in both contexts, Islamophobic discourses depict Muslims and their culture as a
threat to the modern secular way of life. Thus, many common anti-Muslim dis-
­
courses or/and policies can be found in both contexts.
For instance, fear-mongering about ‘creeping Sharia’ perceived as a judiciary
­
threat (‘Alcohol will be banned, and men and women will be separated in public
transport’); the manifestation of Muslim symbols in the public sphere such as
mosques, minarets, headscarves, burkinis, women beaches (headscarf ban
appeared first in Turkey and Tunisia before Europe); employment discrimination
against conservative Muslims; Halal slaughter of animals that is depicted as
cruel and barbaric; and, finally, the very presence of conservative Muslims in the
country (‘Turkey will become Iran’, ‘Egypt will become a theocracy’, ‘Europe is
invaded and will be soon Eurabia’) can be observed both in the global North and
in Muslim societies.
In sum, Islamophobia works in both Western and Muslim countries as a dis-
criminatory practice against what is perceived as ‘civilizational backwardness’
that legitimizes, if necessary, the use of violence, as can be seen with deadly
military crackdowns of free elections. This dynamic is intensified and strength-
ened by the constant humiliation of Muslims and Muslim life style in the media
and social media in Muslim countries.
Moreover, in both Western and Muslim countries, Islamophobia arises when
conservative Muslims become more visible in different aspects of social life
such as in education, employment and politics, thus challenging the establish-
ment either through civic movements or political parties. In this case, both
Western and Muslim Islamophobes often argue that they are only fighting
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 “Oh, I could not choose but go
Into the woodlands hoar.

“Into the blithe and breathing air,

Into the solemn wood,
Solemn and silent everywhere!
Nature with folded arms seem’d there,
Kneeling at her evening prayer!
Like one in prayer I stood.

“Before me rose an avenue

Of tall and sombrous pines;
Abroad their fanlike branches grew,
And where the sunshine darted through,
Spread a vapour soft and blue.
In long and sloping lines.

“And falling on my weary brain,

Like a fast falling shower,
The dreams of youth came back again;
Low lispings of the summer rain,
Dropping on the ripen’d grain,
As once upon the flower.”

He told her of his happy progress, from that first dawning of hope to the full
joy of steadfast faith. He ran over the history of the past year, in which from
day to day he had looked forward to this meeting; and he told with what joy
he had slowly added coin to coin, until he had saved a sufficient sum to
carry him home. Then, when he had finished, the sister and brother mingled
their thanksgivings and happiness together, and Christian’s heart swelled
full and overbrimming: she could have seated herself upon the floor, like
Ailie, and poured out her joy as artlessly. But it is Halbert’s turn now to ask
questions. When will little Mary be home? how long she stays. Halbert
wearies to see his little sister, but he is bidden remember that she is not little
now, and Christian sighs, and the dark cloud, that she fears is hanging over
Mary’s fate, throws somewhat of its premonitory gloom upon her heart and
face. Halbert, unnoticing this, is going about the room, almost like a boy,
looking lovingly at its well-remembered corners, and at the chairs and
tables, at the books, and last his eye falls on a card lying in a little basket,
and he starts as if he had encountered a serpent, and his eye flashes as he
suddenly cries out, almost sternly, as he lifts it and reads the name.
“Christian, what is this—what means this? Mr. Walter Forsyth a visitor
of yours; it cannot be. Tell me, Christian, what does it mean?”
“It is Mr. Forsyth’s card,” said Christian gravely; “an acquaintance, I am
afraid I must say a friend of ours. Indeed, Halbert, now that you are home
with us again, this is my only grief. I fear we shall have to give our little
Mary into his keeping, and he is not worthy of her.”
Halbert is calmed by his long trial, but his natural impetuosity is not
entirely overcome, and he starts up in sudden excitement and disorder.
“Walter Forsyth the husband of my sister Mary! Walter Forsyth, the infidel,
the profligate; better, Christian, better a thousand times, that we should lay
her head in the grave, great trial as that would be, and much agony as it
would cause us all, than permit her to unite herself with such a reptile.”
“Halbert,” said Christian, “the name misleads you; this cannot be the
man—the Forsyth who wrought you so much unhappiness and harm, and
has caused us all such great grief and sorrow; he must be much older, and
altogether a different person. This one is not even a scoffer, at least so far as
I have seen.”
“Christian,” cried Halbert vehemently, “I feel assured it is the same. Do
not tell me what he pretends to be, if he has any end to serve he can be
anything, and put on the seeming of an angel of light even. I tell you,
Christian, that I am sure, quite sure, that it is he. I met him as I came here,
and I shuddered as I saw him, and even felt myself shrinking back lest his
clothes should touch me; but little did I suspect that he was about to bring
more grief upon us. Does Mary, do you think, care for him?”
Christian could not but tell him her fears; but she said also that Mary had
always avoided speaking to her on the subject. What could they do? What
should be done to save Mary? Halbert, in his impatience, would have gone
to seek her out at once, and have pointed out to her the character of her
lover; but Christian only mournfully shook her head, such a plan was most
likely to do harm and not good.
“You must be calm, Halbert,” she said, “this impetuosity will be
injurious—we must save Mary by gentler means, she is far too like yourself
to be told in this outspoken manner—the shock would kill her.”
 But old Ailie is stealing the door of the room open timidly, to break in on
the first hour of Christian’s joy, and when she entered she did it with a look
of sober cheerfulness, widely different from her late joyful frenzy.
“Miss Mary came in a while since,” she said, “and ran straight up to her
own room, without speaking, or waiting till I telled her of Mr. Halbert’s
home coming, and she looked pale and ill like; would you not go up, Miss
Christian, and see?”
The Melvilles are Ailie’s own children, and she has a mother’s care of
them in all their troubles, bodily or mental. So at her bidding Christian rose
and went softly to Mary’s room: the door was closed, but she opened it
gently, and standing hidden by the curtains of Mary’s bed, was witness to
the wild burst of passionate sorrow and disappointed affection in which
Mary’s breaking heart gushed forth, when she found herself once more
alone. Herself unseen, Christian saw the scalding tears welling out from her
gentle sister’s dim and swollen eyes, she saw the convulsive motions of her
lithe and graceful figure, as she rocked herself to and fro, as if to ease or
still the burning grief within: and she heard her broken murmurs.
“Had he but died before I knew this, I would have mourned for him all
my life, even as Christian mourns, but now—but now!—such as he is”—
and her burst of sobbing checked the voice of her sorrow. A moment after
she started up and dashed the tears from her eyes, with some vehemence.
“Should I not rather thank God that I have been saved from uniting myself
with a godless man—with my poor brother’s seducer?” and she sank on her
knees by the bedside. Poor Mary’s grief was too great for silent
supplications, and Christian stood entranced, as that prayer, broken by many
a gush of weeping, rose through the stillness of the quiet room. She had
never, she thought, heard such eloquence before of supplicating sorrow, had
never seen the omnipotence of truth and faith till then; gradually they
seemed to subdue and overcome the wildness of that first grief, gradually
attuned that sweet young sobbing, struggling voice, to sweetest resignation,
and ere Christian echoed the solemn “Amen,” Mary had given thanks for
her deliverance, though still natural tears, not to be repressed, broke in on
her thanksgiving, and silent weeping followed her ended prayer. But when
she bent her head upon her hands again, Christian’s kind arm was around
her, Christian’s tears were mingled with her own, Christian’s lips were
pressed to her wet cheek in tender sympathy, and the voice of Christian, like
a comforter, whispered,
 “I know all, Mary, I know all; may God strengthen you, my dear sister—
you have done nobly, and as you should have done; may God bless you,
dearest Mary.”
And Mary’s head, as in her old childish sorrows, nestles on Christian’s
bosom, and Mary’s heart is relieved of half its heavy and bitter load. Poor
Mary! the days of childhood have indeed come back again, and, as the
violence of the struggle wears away, she weeps herself to sleep, for sorrow
has worn out the strength of her delicate frame, already exhausted by the
varied and contending emotions of the day, and now the tears slide slowly
from beneath her closed eyelids even in her sleep.
But Halbert is at the door anxiously begging for admittance, and
Christian leads him in to look at little Mary’s sleep. It was a child’s face, the
last time he looked upon it, a happy girlish face, where mirth and quick
intelligence rivalled each other in bringing out its expressive power; he sees
it now, a woman’s, worn with the first and sorest struggle that its loving
nature could sustain, and a kind of reverence mingled with his warm
affection as he bent over his sleeping sister; he had yielded to temptations,
oh, how much weaker, since his heart was not enlisted on the tempter’s
side; he had made shipwreck of his faith and of his peace, for years,
fascinated by attractions a thousand times less potent than those which this
girl, her slight figure still trembling with her late emotions, still weeping in
her sleep, had withstood and overcome; and Halbert bent his head, humility
mingling with his rejoicing. Had he only been as steadfast as Mary, how
much sorrow and suffering would they all have been saved.
They have left the room awhile with quiet footsteps, and there is much
gladness in those two hearts, though trembling still mingles with their joy;
for, if Christian fears the effect of this terrible shock on Mary’s health, at
least she is delivered; there is great happiness in that certainty, she has
found out Forsyth’s true character, though it passes all their guessing and
conjectures to tell how.
And now Halbert is asking about his father, and James and Robert, and
expressing his fears as to how they will receive him, the truant son. His
brothers will be rejoiced; but Christian shakes her head half doubtful, half
smiling, when Halbert, “and my father”—she cannot say, but an hour or two
more will bring that to the proof.
 “Do you know, Christian, I feel myself like one of the broken men of the
old ballads, and I am in doubt, in perplexity, and fear, about this meeting.”
“If you are broken, if your ship has been cast ashore, we will get it
mended again,” said Christian, with more of humour and lightheartedness
than she had either felt or used for many a day. “But no more of that,
Halbert, just now. Tell me, will you go to see James to-night?”
“No, I can’t; it would be unseemly besides.”
Halbert will not leave his sister the first night of his return, and Christian
feels relieved; after a pause, he continues:
“How do you like Elizabeth now, Christian; are James and she happy
together?”
“I have no doubt they are,” said Christian, evasively; “why should they
not be?”
“But you don’t like her.”
“I never said so, Halbert.”
“Well, that’s true enough; but I inferred it.”
“Nay, you must make no inferences. Elizabeth can be very pleasant and
lovable; if she is not always so, it is but because she does not choose to
exercise her powers of pleasing.”
“So she can be lovable when she likes. But it was she, was it not, that
introduced Mary to Forsyth?” said Halbert, his brow darkening.
“You must forgive her that, Halbert; she was not aware of his character
when she received him as her cousin’s friend,” and Christian looked
distressed and uneasy, and continued; “and Halbert, you must not cherish a
vindictive feeling even against Forsyth, bad as he is, and great as is the
mischief he did you; promise me that, Halbert, promise me, now.”
“Well, I do promise you; I could not, if I would; and I now pity him
much more than hate him.”
They sat together conversing, till the shadows began to lengthen, when
Christian, compelled by domestic cares and preparations for the evening,
left her new found brother for a time.
 CHAPTER IV.

Bear a lily in thy hand;

Gates of brass cannot withstand
One touch of that magic wand.

Bear through sorrow, wrong and ruth,

In thy heart the dew of youth,
On thy lips the smile of truth.—Longfellow.

HE day wore away, and now the evening darkened fast, and old
Ailie’s beaming face, illuminated by the lights she carries,
interrupts brother and sister, again seated in the cheerful fire-light,
which, ere the candles are set upon the table, has filled the room
with such a pleasant flickering half-gloom, half-radiance. And there, too, is
Mr. Melville’s knock, which never varies, at the door. Halbert knows it as
well as Christian, and grows pale and involuntarily glides into a corner—as
he had done of old when he had transgressed—but Christian has met her
father at the door, and whispered that there is a stranger newly arrived in the
room. It fortunately so happens to-night that Mr. Melville has come home
more complacent and willing to be pleased than he has done for many a
day. Some speculation suggested by James, and agreed to with sundry
prudent demurring by the heads of the house, has turned out most
successfully, and Mr. Melville has taken the credit of James’s foresight and
energy all to himself, and is marvellously pleased therewith. “A stranger,
aye, Christian, and who is this stranger?” he says most graciously, as he
divests himself of his outer wrappings; but Christian has no voice to answer
just then, and so he pushes open the half-shut door, and looks curiously
about the room; his son stands before him, his eyes cast down, his cheeks
flushed, his heart beating.
“Halbert!”
The human part of Mr. Melville’s nature melts for the moment, the
surprise is pleasurable; but he soon grows stern again.
 “Where have you been, sir? what have you been doing? and why have
you never written to your sister?”
Halbert’s trial has taught him meekness, and his answers are in words
which turn away wrath, and his father turns round to seek his easy-chair on
the most sheltered and cosiest side of the glowing fire.
“Humph!” he says; “well, since you are home, I suppose it’s no use
making any more enquiries now, but what do you intend to do?”
Halbert looks astonished; it is a question he is not prepared to answer; he
feels that he ought not and cannot ask his father to enable him to carry out
the plan he has been dreaming of for the past twelve months, and he is
silent.
“There is plenty of time for answering that, father,” said Christian
briskly; “we can consult about that afterwards, when we have all recovered
ourselves a little from this surprise which Halbert has given us; and here
comes Robert.”
Robert came merrily into the room as Christian spoke, and not alone, he
had a companion with him whom he brought forward to introduce to
Christian, when his eye caught his brother. What! are we going to have old
Ailie’s extravagances over again. Poor Robert’s laugh is hysterical as he
tumbles over half a dozen chairs, and lays hold of Halbert, and his shout
electrifies the whole household, wakening poor sleeping Mary in her lonely
chamber. “Halbert! Halbert”—Robert is a fine fellow for all his
thoughtlessness, and is almost weeping over his recovered brother, and
Halbert’s newly acquired composure has forsaken him again, and he sobs
and grasps Robert’s hands, and thanks God in his heart. This is truly a
prodigal’s welcome, which Halbert feels he deserves not.
Robert’s companion hangs back bashfully, unwilling to break in upon,
lest he mar this scene of heartfelt family joy, which a good brother like
himself fully appreciates; but Christian’s kind and watchful eye is upon
him, and has marked him, and she comes forward to relieve him from the
awkward position in which he is placed, Marked him! yes, but what a
startled agitated look it is with which she regards him, and seems to peruse
every lineament of his countenance with eager earnestness. What can it be
that comes thus in the way of Christian’s considerate courtesy, and makes
her retire again and gaze and wonder? What a resemblance! and Christian’s
heart beats quick. But Robert has at length recollected himself, and now
brings the young man forward and introduces him as his friend Charles
Hamilton. Christian returns his greeting, but starts again and exchanges a
hurried glance with Halbert, who also looks wonderingly on the stranger.
Christian soon leaves the room, she has Mary to seek after, and attend to;
but as she passes Halbert’s chair, she bends over it and whispers in his ear,
and her voice trembles the while,—
“Is not the resemblance most striking—and the name?”
“It is most extraordinary,” answered Halbert aloud, gazing again on the
mild ingenuous face of the stranger. Christian glided away.
“What is most extraordinary, Halbert?” asked Robert, with a slight
impatience in his tone.
“Oh, nothing; at least only Mr. Hamilton’s great resemblance to an old
friend of ours long since dead.”
The young man looked towards him and smiled. Can that picture still be
hanging in its old place in Christian’s room?
Our poor Mary has slept long and calmly, and when Robert’s shout
awoke her, she started up in astonishment. She was lying in the dark room
alone, with silence round about her, and her pillow was wet with tears.
Mary raised herself in her bed, and throwing back the disordered hair which
hung about her face tried to collect her bewildered thoughts. The memory
of her grief has left her for the moment, and she is wondering what the
sound could be that came indistinctly to her ears; it sounded, she fancied,
very like “Halbert.” Who could be speaking of him, and as she repeats his
name the full knowledge of what has passed, all the momentous events and
misery of this day come upon her like a dream. Poor Mary! a heavy sigh
breaks from her parted lips, and she presses her hand over her painful eyes.
She does not see the approaching light which steals into the little room; she
does not hear the light footstep of its gentle bearer, but she feels the kind
pressure of Christian’s arm, and most readily and thankfully rests her head
on Christian’s supporting shoulder.
“I have news to tell you,” whispers Christian, “which you will be glad of
and smile at, though you are sighing now. You remember Halbert, Mary?”
Remember him! but Mary’s only answer is a sigh. Halbert’s name has
terrible associations for her to-night; she has remembered him and his
fortunes so well and clearly this day.
“Mary, Halbert has come home, will you rouse yourself to see him?”
 “Come home, Halbert come home!” and the poor girl lifted up her head.
“Forgive me, Christian, forgive me, but I have done very wrong, and I am
very, very unhappy;” and the tears flowed on Christian’s neck again more
freely than before.
“You have done nobly, dear Mary—only rouse yourself, shake off this
grief; you have done well, and God will give you strength. Let me bathe
your temples—you will soon be better now,” said Christian, parting the
long dishevelled hair, and wiping away the still streaming tears. “That man
is not worthy one tear from you, Mary: be thankful rather, dearest, for your
deliverance from his cunning and his wiles.”
A deep blush flitted over Mary’s tear-stained face, as she raised herself
and began with Christian’s tender assistance to remove the traces of her
grief. Christian wondered as she saw her begin to move about the little
room again; there was a still composure gathering about her gentle features,
which the elder sister, accustomed to think of Mary as still little more than a
child, could only marvel at in silence. Her eyes were almost stern in their
calmness, and her voice was firmer than Christian could have believed
possible as she turned to speak.
“Yes, Christian, I am thankful—thankful beyond anything I can say; but
do not ask me about anything just now,” she continued, hurriedly, as
Christian looked up to her as if about to speak. “I will tell you all
afterwards, but not to-night—not to-night, dear Christian.”
“Would you not like to see Halbert, Mary?” said Christian, taking the
cold hands of her sister in her own. “Do you care or wish to see Halbert
now, Mary?”
“Yes, yes,” was the answer, and Mary’s eye assumed a kinder and more
natural glow. “I forgot, tell him to come here Christian, I would rather see
him, I cannot meet him down stairs.”
Halbert was speedily summoned, and when his step paused at the door,
Mary ran forward to meet him with pleasure in her eyes. True, Halbert’s
tone of affectionate sympathy brought the remembrance of that scene of the
morning, and with it the tears to Mary’s eyes; but Christian rejoiced to see
how gently they fell, and hoped that the sorest and bitterest part of the
struggle was past; and so it was, for Mary went down with untrembling step
and entered the room where her father, brother, and the stranger sat with a
sweet and settled calmness, which allayed all Christian’s fears.
 It seemed now that however strange the stranger was to Christian, he
was no stranger to Mary Melville. Mr. Charles Hamilton was in truth well
known to Mary—yea, that Robert looked arch and intelligent, and his
young friend blushed as he rose to greet her on her entrance. This
acquaintanceship was soon explained, Mary had met him several times at
Mrs. James’s parties, and the casual mention which Robert and Mary had
made of him among the host of Elizabeth’s visitors had not been sufficiently
marked to attract the attention of Christian, engrossed as she was then with
such great anxiety regarding poor Mary’s unfortunate attachment.
Charles Hamilton’s qualities of head and heart were much too large for
Mrs. James Melville, and, accordingly, though she received him as a guest,
and was even glad to do so, from his social position and prospects—she
regarded him with much the same feeling which prompted her attacks on
Christian, and having noticed what poor Mary was too much occupied to
notice, the bashful attention with which the young man hovered about her
fair sister-in-law, Mrs. James had decided upon entirely crushing his hopes
by exhibiting to him this evening, at her party, the crowning triumph of her
friend Forsyth. Poor Mrs. James! how completely she had over-reached and
outwitted herself. That evening found her accomplished friend the rejected
—rejected with scorn and loathing, too—of simple Mary Melville, in no
humour for contributing to the amusement of her guests, and Charles
Hamilton in a far fairer way of success than even he himself had ever
dreamt of, for Christian’s eyes are bent on him from time to time, and there
is wonder blended with kindness in her frequent glances on his face, and
her pleasant voice has an unconscious tone of affection in it as she speaks to
him, as though she were addressing a younger brother. But the time has
come when they must prepare for Mrs. James’s party; Christian will not go,
Mary will not go, how could she? Halbert will not go, and the young
stranger’s face grows suddenly clouded, and he moves uneasily on his chair,
and at last rises reluctantly. Mr. Melville and Robert must go for a time at
least, to excuse the others that remain at home, and tell James of Halbert’s
return, and Charles Hamilton in vain hunts through every recess of his
inventive powers to find some reason that will excuse him for sitting down
again. But all fail, he can find nothing to offer as an excuse; he is intruding
on the family this night, sacred as it is—the evening of the wanderer’s
return—and when he may suppose they all so much desire to be alone; and
so he must take his leave, however loth and reluctant so to do. But while so
perplexed and disappointed Christian takes him aside, Christian bids him sit
down and speak to her a moment when Robert and his father have gone
away, and he does so gladly. Mary wonders what Christian can have to say
to him, a stranger to her till the last hour, and looks over, with interest every
moment increasing, towards the corner where they are seated side by side,
and so does Halbert too; but there is no astonishment in his face, though
there is compassionate affection beaming from his eyes. Their conversation
seems to be most interesting to both, and the look of sad recollection on
Christian’s gentle face seems to have been communicated to the more
animated features of her companion, and at length he suddenly starts and
clasps her hand.
“Christian Melville!” he exclaims, “Oh that my mother were here!”
The tears stand in Christian’s eyes—some chord of old recollection has
been touched more powerfully than usual, and Christian’s cheeks are wet,
and her eyes cast down for a moment. Mary can only gaze in astonishment,
and before she recovers herself Christian has led the young man forward to
them, and then she hurries from the room, while Halbert extends his hand to
him cordially. What is the meaning of this? both the young men join in
explanations, but Charles Hamilton’s voice is broken, half with the
recollection of his dead brother, and half with the pleasure of discovering
such a tie already existing with Mary’s family. Yes, Charles’s brother was
the original of that saint-like portrait which hangs within reach of the
glories of sunset on the wall of Christian’s room. The grave where Christian
had buried her youthful hopes was the grave of William Hamilton, and that
one name made the young man kindred to them all; and when Christian
after a time came down stairs again, she found him seated between Halbert
and Mary as though he had been familiar with that fireside circle all his
days, and was indeed a brother.
It was a happy night that to the group in this bright room, a night of great
cheerfulness and pleasant communion, just heightened by the saddening
tinge which memory gave it, and Mary, our sweet Mary, marvels at herself,
and is half disappointed that there is so little of romance in the fading of her
sorrow; but marvel as she likes, the unwitting smile plays on her lips again,
and you could scarce believe that those clear eyes have shed so many tears
to-day. She feels easier and happier even, now the weight of concealment,
which disturbed and distressed her in Christian’s presence of late, is
removed from the spirit; and she is the same open, single-minded,
ingenuous girl as heretofore; the secret consciousness that it was not right to
yield to Forsyth’s fascinating powers is gone now, and Mary Melville is
herself once more, aye, more herself than she has been for months past,
notwithstanding the bitter suffering of that very day. God has graciously
tempered the fierceness of his wind to the tender and trembling lamb, and
Christian’s confidence is restored, and she feels sure that time will make
Mary’s heart as light as ever, and efface from her memory the image of that
evil man, and blot out the traces of this day’s agony; and a smile flits over
Christian’s cheerful face as she fancies the substitution of another image in
the precious entablature of Mary’s heart. Who can tell but Charles Hamilton
may gain a right to the name of brother, which she already hesitates not to
accord, better than his present claim, precious to her mind as it is.
Mrs. James Melville’s party is sadly shorn of its lustre this year, when
we compare it with its last predecessor, only a short twelvemonth since; and
already, in spite of all the attractions of gossip, music, and flirtation, her
guests are beginning to yawn and look weary. Mrs. James was never so
annoyed in her life, all seems this night to have gone wrong. Her very
husband had deserted her—she had seen him fly down stairs three steps at a
time, and skim away through the cold street towards his father’s house.
Mrs. James was enraged to be left alone at such a time for any Halbert of
them all.
“A nice fuss was made about him, as much nonsense when he went
away as if there wasn’t another in the whole country, and now when he
thought fit and had come home——”
Mrs. James could not finish the sentence, for spite and vexation
overmastered her. Forsyth was not there, her chief attraction; Mary was not
there, and even Christian’s absence, little as she liked her, was another
source of annoyance; and this flying off of James was the finishing stroke.
We hardly think, however, that even Mrs. James would not have melted had
she seen her husband in the middle of yon cheerful group, with his beaming
joyous face, shaking Halbert’s hands over and over again, to the imminent
danger of bone and joint. We really think she could not but have helped
him.
There was a voice of thanksgiving in Mr. Melville’s house that night, of
thanksgiving which told in its earnest acknowledgment of many mercies;
thanksgiving whose voice was broken by the sobbings of one and
accompanied by the happy tears of all, for Halbert led their devotions, and
when his earnest tones rose up among them there was not a dry cheek in the
kneeling family, not James, though it might be thought his heart was
alienated from the overflowing affection of home, by the remembrance of
his own; not Charles Hamilton, permitted, nay requested, to stay, for who so
well as Halbert could give thanks for that double deliverance.
There are dreams to-night hovering with drowsy wing about the
dwelling, dreams which alight on Charles Hamilton’s young head as he
hastens home, his heart full of the last scene of the evening, and his voice
repeating—

“In dwellings of the righteous

Is heard the melody
Of joy and health: the Lord’s right hand
Doth ever valiantly;”—

dreams which enter Halbert Melville’s long shut chamber, welcoming its
old dreamer back again—dreams which float about Christian’s resting-place
—above the fair head laid on Christian’s shoulder, calm as in the happy
days of childhood; sweet, hopeful, cheering dreams, that open up long
vistas of indistinct and dazzling brightness, all the brighter for their glad
uncertainty before their eyes, and fill the hearts which tremble in their joy
with a sweet assurance that calms their fears into peace. Even Ailie
dreamed, and her visions were of a gay complexion, fitting the nature of her
doings through this eventful day, and had various anticipations of bridal
finery floating through them. Nay, the very wind which whistled past Mr.
Melville’s roof-tree had a language of its own, and admirable gleesome
chuckle, which said plain as words could speak that happy as this night had
been beneath it, there would be merrier, happier doings here next new
year’s day.
 CHRISTIAN MELVILLE.

EPOCH V.

Sweet is the sunshine lacing with its light,

The parting storm-cloud after day of sadness;
That ere the even darkens into night
O’erflows the world with glory and with gladness;
But sweeter is the flood of pleasantness,
That breaks at noonday through the clouds of morning,
While yet the long glad hours have power to bless,
And the earth brightens ’neath its warm adorning
Of scattered sunbeams. So their fate excels
In blessedness, upon whose noonday story
The heavenly sunshine of God’s favour dwells,
While yet their tongues are strong to speak His glory;
And blessed they, O Lord! who, saved and free,
Stretch out compassionate hands to draw men near to thee!

CHAPTER I.
 They thicken on our path,
These silent witness years;
A solemn tenantry, that still land hath
Wherein were spent our bygone smiles and tears;
Graven on their secret tablets silently,
Stand deed, and thought, and word,
Beyond the touch of change or soft decay,
’Stablished perpetually before the Lord!
* * * * *
Season of labour, time of hope and fear,
Kind to our households let thy varyings be;
With thee we give a sigh to the Old year,
And do rejoice us in the New with thee.—Y.S.P.

EN years have passed away, and again it is a fireside scene that

we have to depict, and a fireside conversation we have to
chronicle. The room we now stand in is large and pleasant, and
bright with the radiance of merry faces—faces of every age and
size, but all marvellously alike in features, as in happiness, from the grave
seniors down to the crowing baby, through all the gradations of stature and
sobriety that crowd around that well-spread table. The assembly is too
large, and the children too near each other in age to allow you to think them
all members of one household; and two fathers half checked, half
encouraged the merry crowd, and two mothers took sweet counsel together,
praising each other’s little ones, and exchanging domestic experiences with
each other. We must try and find in these merry faces the traits of those we
have known before. Let us see whom we have before us. A man of goodly
presence is the elder; grave, it seems, habitually, but with a smile that is like
a sunbeam, and which has an electrical effect in the saddest house it beams
in; and many, many houses of sorrow does it see, and many mourners are
cheered by the words of hope and comfort that flow from these
sympathising lips; for you will see, if you look at his apparel, and mark his
manner, that he holds a high vocation, no less than a labourer about that
glorious vine which has the Eternal Father for its husbandman; a labourer,
one who, like the bee, seeks honey from every flower, and from his pulpit,
and standing by beds of suffering, and in the dark, close, and fœtid haunts
of sin, seeks to have souls for his hire as the labour of his life and the joy of
his existence. No mere Sabbath day worker in his pulpit, but one that never
tires, that is always ready, and almost always with his harness on his back;
like a good knight of the olden time, prompt to succour the distressed. The
lady too, who sits beside him, has about her a gentle dignity that is akin to
his; but with her blooming cheek and bright eye we can boast no old
acquaintance, though when she lays her white hand on his arm and calls
him “Halbert,” we are half ashamed to say so much of Halbert Melville’s
wife.
But on the other side of the fire sits a younger lady, with a calm air of
matronly self-possession, which almost sets our memory at defiance; it is
true that her face looks so youthful in its eloquent expressiveness that, but
for that copy of it that shines at her knee, through the fair straggling locks
of a little merry girl, you might fancy her still the Mary of ten years ago; but
in the silent depths of her dark eyes sits such serene and assured happiness,
at once so calm, and deep, and full, as makes one sure this cannot be the
disconsolate inhabitant of yon dim chamber, weeping in her sleep in the
first agony of womanly woe. Yet so it is, and lightly have these ten swift
years—long, oh, how long and dreary to many—flown over her, effacing so
entirely everything but the remembrance of those passages in her history
from her mind, that when she looks back now upon that troubled time, she
half smiles, half blushes for her old self, and reckons of her brief but
agonising trial, as sick men recall to their memories the terrible dreams of
some delirious fever fit. For Mary Melville has found entire and perfect
kindred in the heart of one whom then she little recked of and cared not for,
and she wonders now how she, ever the object of Charles Hamilton’s warm
and full affection, could have overlooked his nobler qualities, and preferred
instead Forsyth’s deceptive and hollow brilliancy, and the glitter of well-
displayed accomplishments, which threw the blushing youth into the shade.
And the blushing youth of our last chapter blushes no longer when he
speaks to Mary, nor has his bashfulness been seen, Halbert says, for nine
long years and more; never since one bright autumn evening, when Mary
and he surprised Christian in her solitude by the whispered communication
of an important agreement come to between them, and which was carried
into effect, ratified and sealed, on the following new year’s day, fulfilling,
in the most joyous manner, old Ailie’s dream. At this transaction Halbert’s
presence was indispensable, albeit he was again, after Christian’s kind
persuasions and James’s spirited remonstrances had shamed their father into
liberality, finishing the long forsaken studies so disastrously interrupted of
old, with a vigour and ardour that was unquenchable. True, he did not come
to James’s wedding when it took place; but Christian, and Mary, and
Charles Hamilton were each and all immovable in their demands; they
could not do without Halbert, and so he was present at the ceremony,
exciting Charles’s wrathful contradiction, and Christian and Mary’s
curiosity, by hinting merrily of another Mary, whose presence would throw
the bride of to-day into the shade, though no one at that blithe bridal looked
on Mary Melville with more affectionate admiration than her brother
Halbert. And lo! when the time of Halbert’s study and probations was over,
and Providence had so ordered that the place of his ministry should be the
same as that of his birth, and the dwelling-place still of his nearest and
dearest kindred, then came about another bridal, and the name of Mary
Melville was resuscitated, though Mrs. Charles Hamilton’s proud husband
would never allow that the old bearer of the name was equalled by the new.
But there is no rivalship between the sisters—sisters in affection as much
as in name—and the children, whose fair heads have sprung up like flowers
beside and about them, are like one family in their cordial intercourse. But
where is Christian? Our enquiry is echoed by half-a-dozen merry voices.
“Where can Aunt Christian be?” There will be no need to ask the question a
moment hence, if indeed we can discern our old friend through the pyramid
of children that are clustering about her; the little girl that stood by Mary’s
knee has left for Aunt Christian, and now stands on a chair beside her, with
her round arms about her neck, and her rosy face beaming on her shoulders;
the sturdy boy who leant on Halbert’s chair has left that place of honour for
Aunt Christian, and he stands proudly at her right hand as prime minister,
helping at the distribution of the great basketful of new year’s dainties—for
this is again the first night of another year—which she has brought to
gladden these youthful hearts. The whole host of her nephews and nieces,
absorbed a moment since in their various amusements, have left them all for
Aunt Christian, and are gathered about her, one clinging round her waist
and one hanging at either arm, greatly impeding the action of her gift-
dispensing hand. Sure enough here is Christian, how blithe! how happy!
Time has dealt gently with her, and though he has drawn a thread of silver
through the rich dark abundance of her plainly braided hair, there is not one
in this room that would not start up in indignant surprise, if you said that
Christian was either looking or growing old.
 “Nay, nay,” said Halbert, not long ago, when some indifferent friend of
the family suggested this, “Christian will never grow old. When years come
upon her, she will glide away like a streamlet into a river, but she will not
fade. Christian’s spirit will always be young.”
And so it is; her soft clear voice stills all that little childish hubbub in a
moment. The very baby stays its scream of joy, as if it too would listen to
Aunt Christian, and little Mary on her shoulder, and strong Halbert at her
right hand, and every separate individual of their respective hosts of
brothers and sisters would dare in single-handed valour any full-grown
Goliath that would presume to interrupt the expression of Aunt Christian’s
pleasure, pleasant as it always is. It is a great day this, with these two united
families. A day of childish jubilee to the younger members, and of joyful
commemoration to the older, for Halbert looks back with glistening eyes,
and rejoices in the union of ten years ago, a beginning of happy, laborious
years to him; and Mary remembers her early trial, and thanks God most
earnestly for deliverance, and participates with her husband in the happier
recollections of their marriage day; and the other Mary, with generous
affection, sympathises with each and all; and Christian? Christian’s heart,
open at all times to generous impulses, seems to have its sluices of
overpouring and constant love thrown wide open for the free passage of its
swelling tides, each new year’s night, and if you heard her fervent
thanksgiving when she kneels before God alone, you would think that flood
of blessings had been all poured out upon her, not that its fulness had
flowed upon her friends, but that she herself was the individual recipient of
every separate gift. For Christian identifies herself with those dear ones so
entirely, that she looks upon their happiness as a peculiar blessing bestowed
upon herself. Christian has, however, now seated herself in the empty chair
waiting for her—jealously kept for her, indeed—at the brightest corner of
the cheerful fireside, and taking a little namesake of her own, a grave,
serious, thoughtful child, who has begun to lisp wisdom already with her
infant tongue, upon her knee, she joins in the conversation which her
entrance, and still more her equitable distribution of the basket of good
things had interrupted.
“Father,” questioned Halbert Melville, second bearer of the name, “do
you keep new year’s day because it is new year’s day?”
“Why do you ask, Halbert?” said his mother, smiling, as she drew the
boy towards her.
 “Because, Mamma, nobody else cares about it here; and I’ve heard Aunt
Christian say how foolish it was for people to keep their birthdays, as if
they were glad that time was going away from them, people that don’t use
their time well either,” moralised Halbert, looking earnestly in his mother’s
face, “and isn’t new year’s day just the same as a birthday and—” the boy
hesitated and seemed unwilling or unable to say more.
“And what, Halbert,” said Christian, as the boy paused and looked down,
“and what—what was it you were going to say?”
“I don’t know, Aunt Christian,” hesitated Halbert, “I don’t know whether
it’s right or not, but shouldn’t we be rather sorry when the new year comes,
than glad that the old year has ended?”
“And why sorry, Halbert?” said his father, who had hitherto been
listening in silence, “why do you think we should be sorry?”
“Because, father,” said Halbert, quickly, raising his eyes, “because you
said in your sermon last Sabbath, that when once a year was gone, if we had
not spent it well, it was entirely lost for ever, for we could never bring a
minute back again.”
“And therefore you think we should be sorry, do you, Halbert?” rejoined
his father.
“Yes, father,” was the answer, and again young Halbert’s face was cast
down, “for you say often that nobody spends their time well, or as right as
they should do.”
The elder Halbert did not answer, but he took little Christian, who had
been gazing with her large eloquent eyes at every one that spoke in turn,
and had attended diligently and earnestly to the unusual conversation, upon
her aunt’s knees. “Well, little one, do you think we should be sorry when
the new year comes?”
“I think we should be both sorry and glad, papa,” was the prompt
answer.
“Well, Christian, Halbert has told us why we should be sorry; now do
you tell us what it is we should be glad for.”
There was a murmur among a little knot at a corner of the table, and a
half-suppressed laugh before Christian had time to answer her father’s
question.
 “Who is that? what is it that makes you so merry?” said Halbert, smiling
and shaking his head at the merry urchins, who were congregated in a
group.
“It’s only our Halbert, uncle, it’s only our Halbert,” whispered little
Mary Hamilton, deprecatingly.
“Well, Mary, we are impartial to-night, so we must hear what our
Halbert has to say; come here, sir.”
And Halbert Hamilton, the wildest little rogue that ever kept nursery in
an uproar, or overcame nurse’s patience, or conquered her heart by his feats
of merry mischief, half hid himself below the table in pretended fear and
dismay at his uncle’s summons, and did not stir.
“Come, Halbert,” said Mary, his mother, as Charles drew his incorrigible
son into the middle of the little circle, “what did you say over there?”
Halbert the third looked down and blushed, and then laughed outright.
“He only said we should be glad when the new year comes, because we
have plenty of fun,” interposed Mary Melville, her wild cousin’s constant
defender and apologist.
“Quite right, my boy,” said the elder Halbert, laying his hand kindly on
the boy’s head, “the coming of plenty of fun is a very good and proper thing
to be glad for; but sit you down now, and let us hear what little Christian
has to say.” And Halbert sat down at his uncle’s feet to listen.
“Well now, Christian, what should we be glad for? Is it because there is
plenty of fun, as Halbert says?”
“No, papa,” said the little, grave girl, seriously, shaking her head
solemnly, “no, it is not that. I think it’s because we have another to be good
and do right in. Isn’t that it, Aunt Christian?”
And the little girl looked over to her aunt inquiringly, to see if her
childish conclusion was a correct one.
“Just so, my dear,” was Aunt Christian’s answer, as Halbert patted the
child’s soft cheek, and then permitted her to make her way over to her
accustomed seat.
The children were gathered now about their parents’ knees, and even
wild Halbert Hamilton was silent and attentive. “Yes, children,” said the
kind father and uncle, as he looked round upon them, “yes, children, there is
a better reason for being glad than even having plenty of fun. There is a new