Islamophobia upsurge

Today marks the annual International Day to Combat Islamophobia, designated after the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution sponsored by 60 member-states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The UN defines Islamophobia as a fear, prejudice and hatred of Muslims that leads to provocation, hostility and intolerance using threatening, harassment, abuse, incitement and intimidation of Muslims and non-Muslims, both in the online and offline world. It also recognises that the phenomenon is motivated by institutional, ideological, political and religious hostility that transcends into structural and cultural racism and targets the symbols and markers of being a Muslim. Islamophobia can be seen as a subset of the anti-immigrant and anti-minority mania that has swept much of the West in recent years. Most would trace the Islamophobia problem in that part of the world back to the 9/11 attacks, but the roots of the phenomenon go back to decades earlier before September 2001 to the colonial era. The dominant perception of Muslims in the West has tended to be that of a backwards, violent group of people that were incompatible with ‘Western civilisation’.

This view of Muslims coloured the responses to events like the ‘nakba’ in 1948, through which Israel commenced its illegal and barbaric removal of Palestinians from their homeland and its ongoing occupation of Palestinian land, contributing to the West’s pro-Israel bias. Meanwhile, those who dared resist Zionist colonisation and other acts of Western imperialism in the Muslim world were unfairly branded as terrorists long before 9/11 and similar attacks in the West. Years of Muslim migration to the West and increasing global interconnectedness have, instead of mitigating the problem, seemingly only reinforced false and dangerous stereotypes of Muslims. An old problem is now, arguably, at a higher level than ever before. Anti-Muslim propaganda has had a disproportionate impact on the rise of the far right across Europe. US President Donald Trump has won elections twice not in spite, but, in large part, because of his Islamophobia. His administration has now begun targeting foreign Muslim students for taking part in ‘illegal protests’ and for spreading ‘anti-Semitism’ with deportation. This is being done to seemingly punish Muslim students for having the temerity to protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza and at least one student of Palestinian background has already been arrested under this policy.

This is happening just weeks after the US vice president lectured Europe about freedom of speech and the EU’s allegedly censorious hate speech laws. His own administration’s blatant targeting of a religious minority for exercising their right to speech in a manner that it wrongly deems to be too dangerous shows that no one should take lessons on freedom from the US and how the Western far right is all excited about rights until it comes to Muslims and other minorities. And it is not just in the West where this phenomenon has taken root. Islamophobia has gone global and one need look no further than our Eastern neighbours and what it is doing in IIOJK to see this. Amidst all of this, international rights bodies remain either silent or impotent. As such, despite days to combat Islamophobia being held, it seems that there are few Muslims and other immigrants can count on to actually step up for them in a way that keeps them safe.