Where should we start in combating Islamophobia?

BAKU

Of course, one must begin first by correctly understanding Islamophobia as a concept and by thoroughly learning its source as a phenomenon. Because the concept contains the element of "fear," it can be misleading from the outset. For, as we say on every occasion, interrogating people over their fears may not always be justified. Pure fears about something stem from people's experiences of that thing and from the perceptions formed together with those experiences.

Today an image produced every day in the world through tons of false and distorted news about Muslims gives people, inside their own homes, a shortcut and of course superficial experience of Islam or Muslims. Not a real experience, but an experience sufficient to produce "fear."

As Muslims are portrayed as monsters who thirst for blood for the sake of their bigoted beliefs, who can behead without blinking, who bomb here and there with a savage appetite and cause the deaths of innocent civilians, such an experience of Islam is being given to millions of people who have never in their lives actually met a Muslim.

Those responsible for the perceptions formed through these inauthentic experiences are of course not those who fear, but those who frighten. Here the source of Islamophobia is of course not those who can naturally fear because of these perceptions, people who can also hate because they fear. Whomever people saw this much claim or imputation of violence about, they would fear them. There is no point in criticizing people because they are afraid.

The source of Islamophobia cannot be these people, who have themselves become an object, even a victim, of this fear industry.

THE ISLAMOPHOBIA INDUSTRY

But there is an Islamophobia industry made up of think tanks, political centers, and communication and media organizations that produce this fear and carefully fabricate and disseminate this news.

When an industry operates, its consumers, its final recipients, also become victims. The first victims of Islamophobia are not, as is supposed, Muslims, but the masses who are made blind, deaf and insensitive to Islam's life-giving message and thereby deprived. Of course those masses are not aware of this deprivation and do not directly experience any victimization. But Muslims all over the world can be the target of an Islamophobic attack at any moment, can be subjected to discrimination solely for being Muslim, and can suffer victimization. In particular, a refugee Muslim woman in a non-Muslim society is subjected to discrimination three times: because of being a woman, ethnic identity and being Muslim.

In 2022 the UN General Assembly, emphasizing the need to take concrete action in the face of the growing hatred, discrimination and violence against Muslims, proclaimed 15 March the International Day to Combat Islamophobia. As of today, on the occasion of the first observance of this day, meetings are being held in many places.

The Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) of Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University held this year, around these days, the fourth of the Islamophobia conferences it has organized since 2018. The conference brought together 51 speakers from 12 countries. Together with the previous meetings, each of which I had followed closely, I was observing closely that one of the most effective steps in the struggle against Islamophobia was thus being taken: producing discourse, conducting research, bringing together the academic and intellectual circles interested in the subject, and ensuring the formation of a network that will exert pressure on intellectual and political environments and make its voice heard, keeping records and building an archive.

The fourth of these conferences bore the title "Examining the Cultural and Geopolitical Dimensions of Islamophobia in Muslim-Majority Countries." So one source of the Islamophobia industry is Muslim-majority countries.

Of course this sounds strange. Islamophobia in Muslim-majority countries? Is enmity toward Islam made to happen? But in the light of what we have lived through for so many years in the example of Turkey, whose population is reckoned to be 99 percent Muslim and which these days constitutes a hope for the entire Islamic world, should we be surprised at this? Did the secularism applied in this country not operate by producing and constantly keeping alive all fears against Islam in all its dimensions?

When we dig deep into the matter, it is not at all surprising to see that the greatest source of Islamophobia is in fact the very societies whose peoples are Muslim. The colonialism these countries were subjected to could be sustained only by purging Islam from political and social life. That is, because the number one threat to colonialism has always been Islam and Muslims, leaving Islam and Muslims somehow confronted with a problem of legitimacy has been an important element of the power equation established. That is why the most important fields of application of the Islamophobia industry were set up in Muslim-majority countries themselves.

The director of CIGA, Prof. Sami al-Arian, who has organized the conference for 4 years with a team he built through extraordinary effort, distinguishes 4 areas in which this industry has been established and produces:

1. Authoritarian regimes that use Islam for their own purposes;

2. The role of foreigners or colonialists in serving colonial economic or geopolitical interests;

3. Secular elites at the intellectual and cultural levels, and

4. Entrenched structures in Muslim societies such as the judicial system, the media, academia, the political class and the bureaucracy.

Each of these is an area that needs to be evaluated separately. In particular, today, the incitement by Muslim countries' own governments and ruling elites of the fear of Islam in order to gain acceptance and legitimacy for themselves in the eyes of the West. This is the strongest source that feeds fears in Western societies, which are relatively more unfamiliar with Islam, and turns them into hatred.

On the occasion of 15 March, the International Day to Combat Islamophobia, the Baku International Multiculturalism Center and the Center for Analysis of International Relations (AIR) are also holding a conference "Islamophobia as a Special Form of Racism and Discrimination: New Global and Transnational Challenges."

On this occasion we are in Azerbaijan. We will try to share our impressions of this conference in our next article.