Introduction: The Origins of Islamophobia

One central topic in the growth of the sociology of Islam has been the ubiquitous critical research agenda on Islamophobia. The value and meaning of the concept has generated an extensive academic and public debate (Cesari 2006). Academic responses to this public fear have been defined as an ‘industry’ (Lean 2012). Apart from its domestic manifestations, it has also been seen as fundamental to American foreign policy (Jacobs 2006). Islam is viewed as a crucial component in the ‘clash of civilizations’ that was first announced by Samuel Huntington in Foreign Affairs in 1993. Violence against the Muslim world is also a global problem from the attack against a mosque in New Zealand to random attacks on Muslims in the United States and to constitutional attempts to change the legal status of Muslims in India (Kumar 2012). The attack on the Twin Towers and its aftermath were defining moments in the spread of Islamophobia (Cesari 2010). While not denying violence against Islam, much discussion in the media and the academy often exaggerates the extent and level of confrontation with Islam (Halliday 1996). Despite US military conflicts in the Middle East and Asia, Muslims are a long-standing and relatively successful community in the United Sates with a substantial and influential middle class in such cities as New York, Detroit and Newark (Alba and Nee 2003; Bilici 2012; Bleich 2011).

One cannot deny the widespread presence of Islamophobia in Europe and North American. In Why the West fears Islam, Jocelyne Cesari (2013) assembled an exhaustive list of reports from sociological surveys conducted between 1990 and 2012 showing, among other issues, that respondents believed that Islam was incompatible with Western societies. Respondents typically expressed fear of Muslims in their midst. Sociology can usefully undermine false and damaging claims about Islam such as the idea that radical Islam had infiltrated British schools (Holmwood and O’Toole 2017). For political movements in defence of Islam, the concept of Islamophobia functions legitimately and effectively, but it often obscures the complexity of the issues and the historical transformations of Muslim relationships with the West. Muslims do not constitute an ethnic group and their communities are diverse, geographically dispersed and often internally fragmented along religious lines.