Islamophobia is an anti-war issue

Islamophobia is an anti-war issue

Nick Megoran, GPS, Newcastle University.

Intro and definition
Thank you, assalom alaykum, and I'd like to welcome all our speakers and members of the audience in the name of the 'Politics, Space, Power' research group of Newcastle University, which is co-sponsoring this event with Tyneside Stop the War Coalition. I believe strongly that universities are not there primarily to generate income, as Vince Cable seems to think, but to generate ideas, and to challenge those ideas and trends that are damaging to the welfare of us all.

And one of those is: Islamophobia. I was asked to give a brief introduction to the idea of Islamophobia and its global context in ten minutes, which is quite a difficult task! A good place to start is the 1997 Runnymede Trust report, which defined 'Islamophobia' as dread, hatred and hostility towards Islam and Muslims, perpetuated by derogatory stereotypes.

The word 'Islamophobia' was apparently first used in print in 1991, but the realities it refers to have been around for longer.

It refers to things like verbal and physical abuse of Muslims in the street; publishing insulting cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in Denmark and elsewhere; discrimination in the workplace and by the police; burning Qur'ans; attacks on mosques; legislating against the building of minarets in Switzerland, or styles of female dress seen as demonstrations of Muslim piety in France, etc: but it can also be far more subtle.

For example, in 2001 academic Jack Shaheen wrote a book called Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. He looked at some 900 Hollywood films that had Arabs in them from 1896 until the end of the 20th century. All but six, he found, had negative images of Arabs: as villainous, greedy, sex-mad, or lazy. This was, he claimed, Hollwood's 'undeclared war on Arabs' - "taken together, news and movie images wrench the truth out of shape to influence billions of people." And that is why Islamophobia in the media is so pernicious.

The limits to Islamophobia
But it is important to recognise that Islamophobia is an idea used to explain a lot of different and complicated phenomena, and like any concept or theory idea has its limitations and dangers.

The first danger is 'overstating'. We must be cautious about generalizing. For example, in Britain local media, based on local knowledge, may be much better at reporting on Muslims and Muslim issues than national media. This was a criticism made of the original Runnymede report.

Secondly, we must beware of particularising and missing the broader picture. In some cases, verbal attacks on Muslims and Islam are part of a broader attack on religion, particularly Christianity, in the UK by militant atheists like Christopher Hitchens in his 2007 book, God Is Not Great: see, for example, some of the homophobic hatred directed against the Pope in his recent (2010) visit. If we describe every attack on Muslims and Islam as 'Islamophobia' we miss both the bigger picture the potential for coalitions and alliances.

The third danger is that it can be used to delegitimize criticism. People must be free to debate Islamic theology and morality, the historical reliability of present textual editions of the Qur'an in print and histories of the early Islamic movement, Muslim practices, even the existence of God, etc, without being accused of being Islamophobic, as long as they do so in a spirit of respect and open-mindedness. I know that many Muslims debate these topics amongst themselves with great vigour.

Fourthly, we must be careful not to follow conservatives like Samuel Huntington's 'clash of civilisations' by building up a simple idea of 'Islam versus the West' - and we can do this if we see Islamophobia as the driving force of every Western engagement with Muslims. Alliance and co-operation have been as prevalent as conflict. The Soviet Union supported Muslim national liberation movements; a Muslim 'Turkestan Legion' fought in Hitler's army; Iran and Egypt joined France and the USA in support of the South African apartheid regime; the CIA backed Bin Laden in Afghanistan; George W. Bush allied closely with Saudi Arabia and numerous other majority-Muslim governments against Al-Qaeda, NATO intervened in the former Yugoslavia in support of Muslim Bosnians and Kosovans, etc etc. In a very different vein, the anti-War and inter-faith dialogue movements in Britain are likewise very good examples that Islamophobia isn't the only act in town. It only benefits extremists on all sides to pretend the modern story is defined by 'the West vs Islam'.

An anti-war issue
These caveats notwithstanding, Islamophobia - the irrational dread, fear and hatred of Islam - is a major problem in the UK today, and is not only an important anti-racism issue, but an important anti-war issue for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it is the historical perspective in which European colonial powers engaged with, and overran, much of the Middle East and South Asia. The idea that Muslims, like Hindus, animists, Ethiopian and Eastern Christians, or others, were backwards, helped justify imperialism.

Secondly, it matters today, because post-9/11, this historical deep-seated cultural propaganda was given steroids by the narratives accompanying neo-imperial interventions like the grotesque invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Thirdly, it matters because our dubious allies in the 'war on terror' use European and North American fears about Islam to justify grotesque crackdowns on Muslims who call for justice and oppose authoritarianism in their own societies. We've seen this from governments in majority-Muslim lands like Egypt, to governments in countries like China.

Fourthly, Islamophobia matters because it is used to justify the erosion of civil liberties in Britain and America, from hideous camps like Guantanamo, to attempts to extend detention without trial here.

Fifthly, and crucially, Islamophobia is an issue because of unequal power relations: it isn't just things like offensive cartoons and minaret bans - these take place in the context of massive, bloody, colonial Western intervention in the Middle East and South Asia today and in the past.

And finally it matters because, before wars can be fought, they must be thought: in order to go to war with others, our governments must first persuade us that they are dangerous, radically different, threatening to us. That is why one of the key tasks of the anti-war movement is to expose and oppose and discredit the demonization and vilification of others; and that is why resisting 'Islamophobia in the media' is vital to the anti-war movement in Britain today.