The Islamophobia conference

Globalization has a well-known consequence: different cultures, religions and ethnic groups encounter one another more, and enter into relations and interaction. At first glance and in expectation, these encounters were (are) assumed to open the door to acquaintance and more productive syntheses. In the first stages of modernization too, the first result of this encounter in the cities was not people's getting acquainted with what is different but the suppression of differences, and the bringing to the fore, in their place, of a new modern secular-national culture. Yet this process rested on a suppression that was painful and unsuited to human nature. The return of the repressed is inevitable.

Indeed, globalization is in a sense the name of an era in which the cultures and identities suppressed in the modern period return and come to light again, meeting and getting acquainted with others in the meantime. But these encounters did not always produce in people the excitement of meeting someone new. There is a simple reason for this: the segments that were made advantageous over the segments disadvantaged by the identities suppressed in the previous period do not give the same reaction in this process. Naturally, in this process some parties are freed from their disadvantaged positions while other parties lose their privileges.

This situation forms a suitable ground for the resurgence or growth of racist waves. One dimension of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and other kinds of racism today relates to this.

In fact, the sensitivity that developed against anti-Semitism after World War II was nourished by its being coded as a form of racism. However, sensitivity against anti-Semitism almost went beyond sensitivity against racism in general. So much so that it almost turned into a kind of racism itself and legitimized itself with this sensitivity. The charge of anti-Semitism became a perfect shield for many criminals, wrongdoers and racists. Criticisms of Israel's occupying, aggressive, massacring, oppressive, Zionist policies immediately run up against this shield.

Thus the sensitivity developed against anti-Semitism, its being treated as a crime, has in the end remained at the level of a sensitivity that protects only Jews or Judaism and prevents racism against them. Yet anti-Semitism is bad not only because it is against Judaism but because it is itself a form of racism. When you solve the problem of racism against Jews alone, you have not eliminated the problem of racism in the world. Indeed, the leading figures of Islamophobia, which has today become a far worse crime than anti-Semitism, especially in the US, come from among Jews known for their Zionist identities. The fears and feelings that names such as Daniel Pipes and Bernard Lewis try to spread about Islam, as perfect examples of Islamophobic discourse, also incite and encourage every kind of discrimination against Muslims. We know that the same names immediately condemn even the slightest criticism of Israel or Zionism with the charge of anti-Semitism. Clearly, while opposing racism only when it is committed against Jews, they do not shrink from displaying a far worse racism against others.

Yet the struggle Muslims wage over Islamophobia, as throughout history, has not consisted solely in condemning injustices, insults and racist attitudes directed at Muslims. Muslims must oppose not only racism done to themselves but also racism done to others. Because they are against not only the racism done to themselves but racism itself. That is why the Islamophobia debate raised by Muslims is far more likely to do what sensitivity against anti-Semitism has failed to do. And that is why the Islamophobia debate is a theme that does not remain merely a sensitivity against injustices toward Muslims but functions as a universal anti-racist sensitivity.

Unfortunately, in recent days Islamophobia as a type of racism is operating in far more intense and complex forms. Examples of campaigns against Muslims or Islam in Europe or the US are in any case continuing to increase. But more interesting and more complicated are the examples of Islamophobia that so-called Muslims produce or display in Islamic countries themselves.

We experienced most strikingly in Turkey how discourses and practices carried out in the name of secularist sensitivities produce Islamophobic examples. The discourses and practices pursued against the headscarf, which in every part of the world and every period of history represents the most important visible form of the Muslim woman, make it almost meaningless to look for Islamophobia elsewhere.

The justifications of the counter-revolutionary processes launched against the Arab Spring are prepared by the Arab state elites themselves almost entirely by resorting to Islamophobic discourses. There is an ironic look to this, but it is a fact: ultimately the greatest source of Islamophobic discourse is Muslim-looking Arab leaders. The conservative stance displayed against the rule of the Muslim Brothers works clearly by condemning and making an enemy of a particular interpretation of Islam. This othering discourse easily meets the spontaneous Islamophobia in the Western world and turns into a discourse and politics that easily finds room to exist against the political and social influence of Islam in the Muslim world.

The International Islamophobia Conference, organized in Istanbul by the General Directorate of Press and Information together with the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, was a very productive meeting at which all these subjects and more were discussed. At the meeting, attended by very valuable names known for their work in this field from all over the world, the media, legal and political dimensions of the problems produced by Islamophobia were discussed separately.