Reading Islamophobia in Hegemonic Neoliberalism Through a Discourse Analysis of Donald Trump's Narratives

This paper uses the Wittgensteinian method of discourse analysis to analyze the narratives of Islamophobia in Donald Trump’s speeches and interviews. Theoretically, the analysis is informed by hegemonic neoliberal ideology. It argues that to sustain itself, hegemonic neoliberalism must contrast itself against other belief systems that it unilaterally denounces as inferior. After having done so, hegemonic neoliberalism then seeks to neoliberalize those belief systems. In this vein, this paper contends that hegemonic neoliberalism has an Islamophobic “face” because it “otherizes” Islam and Muslims in order to justify its neoliberalization of Islam and Muslims. Thus, this paper defines neoliberal Islamophobia as the conceptualization of Islam and Muslims as antithetical to neoliberal values. In all, Trump’s speeches and interviews contain five Islamophobic narratives: (1) radical Islam is the sole cause of terrorism; (2) radical Islamic terrorism is a global existential threat; (3) Muslim refugees and immigrants are a threat to American security; (4) the proposal to suspend entry of Muslim refugees and immigrants to the US; and (5) the faux humanitarian policy of establishing safe zones for Muslim refugees in Syria. The paper concludes with policy implications.     

The Role of Labeling and Bias in the Portrayals of Acts of “Terrorism”: Media Representations of Muslims vs. Non-Muslims

Several high-profile negative events involving Muslim perpetrators have recently been covered by the media. We investigated whether the same negative actions are more likely to be labeled “terrorism” when they are committed by Muslims than when they are committed by White non-Muslims. In Experiment I (n?=?60), using a real article about a Muslim perpetrator and a modified version about a non-Muslim perpetrator, we found that participants were more likely to identify a crime as terrorism when it was perpetrated by a Muslim. The label “terrorism” also mediated the effect of Muslim identity on negative judgments of the behavior. In Experiment II (n?=?60), we replicated the results of Experiment I and clarified that the effects persisted when we used a real article about a non-Muslim perpetrator and a modified version about a Muslim perpetrator. We discuss implications for cross-group communication and representations of Muslims in the media.     

The Individual and the Ummah: The Use of Social Media by Muslim Minority Communities in Australia and the United States

How are perceptions of self and ummah (community) reflected in social media use by members of Muslim minorities in two Western countries, Australia and the United States? This paper explores the use of social media by members of minority communities for the purposes of self-representation and community-building, and perceptions of social media use among members of Muslim minority communities, as a means for them to challenge the narrative of Islam found in mainstream media associated with homogeneity, violence and militancy. The paper is based on analysis of responses of a targeted sample of members of representative Muslim student organizations at two tertiary institutions in Australia and the United States. Asian countries of origin are strongly represented in the migrant and international student communities of these two countries. The survey respondents were asked about their use of social media in relation to how they engage in public discourse about Islam, and how it is used in the negotiation of their religious and secular identities.     

Islam,Moderation, Radicalism,and Justly Balanced Communities

If media outlets and political rhetoric are to be believed, then the way to counter “radical” Islam is through “moderate” Islam. Seemingly, “moderate” Islam is that which “radical” Islam is not. In appointing “moderate” Islam as an antidote to “radical” Islam, the implication is that, conceptually at least, the two terms are contradistinctive. Yet, while much is, perceivably, known about “radical” Islam, with its associated ills of an unequivocal Islamic worldview, very little attention has been afforded to this signifier, “moderate”. Inasmuch as this term is bandied around, even scholars of Islam will acknowledge that, within Islamic education, understandings of and debates on conceptions of moderation, and moderate Muslim communities, have been somewhat overlooked. What, therefore, is a “moderate” Islam? What is a “moderate” Muslim community and how would it act? What are the implications for a “moderate” community in relation to pluralist societies? And, can such a “moderate” community offer a practical response not only to “radical” Islam, but, perhaps, more importantly, to increasingly antagonistic, liberal contexts?     

News Media Coverage of Islam and Muslims in Australia: An Opinion Survey among Australian Muslims

Existing research has explored the ways the mainstream news media covers Muslims and Islam, but few studies have examined Muslims’ reactions to this reporting. Studies that have investigated this issue have identified that the responses of Muslims to news media coverage tend to be largely negative because of the lack of Muslim news sources, the stereotypical representation of Muslims in news coverage, the portrayal of Muslims as the enemy within, and the conflation of Muslims with terrorism. This paper further explores the attitudes of Muslims to news media coverage of Islam and Muslims by drawing on data from 14 focus groups (N?=?104 participants) conducted with Australian Muslims. Similar to previous research, findings reveal that Australian Muslims are highly critical of news media coverage of Islam and Muslims and express concern about the divisiveness that such portrayal can have for Australian society. However, the study participants also had positive comments to make about the news media. Possible solutions to negative news media portrayals of Muslims are considered.     

I Do,I Don’t,I Don’t Know: A Study on Inter-religious Marriage in an Iraqi-Shi’a Muslim American Community

In living in heterogeneous Western societies, Muslim immigrant communities are surrounded by individuals from a host of different religious backgrounds. This paper examines the willingness of the Iraqi-Shi’a Muslim community of Dearborn, Michigan, to marry individuals from four different groups, namely another sub-branch of Shi’a Islam, another branch of Islam, the “people of the book” faiths, and those not part of “people of the book” faiths. The paper will test whether spending more time in the United States will make individuals more susceptible to the idea of marrying outside of their sub-branch of Twelver Shi’a Islam. In order to answer this question, the participant community has been divided into two waves, with interviews being conducted with 25 participants from each wave. The results reveal that the first wave is more interested in marrying outside of their sub-branch and religion, while the recently arrived second wave appeared more resistant to the idea of such intermarriages.     

Preventing Religious Radicalization in Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Role of the BiH Islamic Community

The goal of the paper is to identify the Islamic Community’s methods of preventing religious radicalization in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The roots of radicalism and extremism are explained by examining “Islamic revival” and studied within the Bosnian context. Although BiH appears in many international reports as a potential “cradle of terrorism”, the situation on the ground is quite different and there are many instances of combined efforts by the government and religious institutions in preventing religious radicalization in BiH. The analysis focuses on the Islamic community’s efforts to contend the spread of illegal mosques that sometimes promote radical Islam in BiH. Although there are radical individuals with different and sometimes radical understanding of Islam, the majority of Bosnian Muslims oppose any form of religious radicalization. The Islamic Community plays the most important role in preventing the spread of radical Islam in BiH, and this paper analyzes its efforts to homogenize Bosnian Muslims and prevent radicalization.     

Muslims as Victims of Security Dilemma in the West

Islam is the second largest religion after Christianity in the world, and Muslims are the fastest-growing ethnocultural minority communities in the Western world. However, Muslims, especially living in Western countries, have increasingly become the victim of a contemporary form of racism and xenophobia—that is Islamophobia. Survey reports conducted across Western nations have underlined the fact that a significant number of respondents are critical of the Muslim minority community and that this negative trend poses a challenge for these Muslim minorities’ ethnocultural freedom and equality. Today, mainstream Muslims in the West are victims of both Islamic State of Iraq and Syria-like terrorism and Islamophobics. Within this context, this study analyses the causal relationship between the West’s sense of insecurity and Islamophobia through the lens of the realist concept of security dilemma using a qualitative approach.     

Legal Representations of Muslim Slaves by American Courts and Legislative Bodies: 1650–1861

This paper is the first specific exploration of Muslim slaves in front of American courts and legal mechanisms more broadly from the seventeenth century through the nineteenth century. As hundreds of thousands of slaves who came to America had Muslim backgrounds, many of those Muslim slaves found themselves in front of legal regimes and American courts. However, the Muslim identities of these slaves, despite the importance that their religious beliefs might have had for them, were rarely discussed in the case law or not mentioned at all. Drawing from Patterson’s notion of the “socially dead” slave, this paper draws on numerous examples from cases like Amistad to cases dealing with wills and estates to note that the ties to Islam in these cases were obfuscated and minimized. The social death of Muslim slaves in the way that the court documented their experiences silences the voices of American Muslim slaves who reacted in unique ways to their condition of slavery.     

The Muslim Continuum: An Analytical Model of Religiosity and Socio-Political Diversity in Muslim Minority Environments

This paper examines the challenges facing Muslim societies in the early part of the twenty-first century. The paper examines tensions between “liberal” interpretations of Islam and extreme views within a globalisation paradigm and how these are changing. Specifically, the work investigates how the spotlight on Islam and its adherents in a post-9/11 world has manifest among Muslim individuals, groups and societies and how these may change to accommodate or react to the shifting global frame of mind towards Islam and the Muslims. Analysis is provided within the context of Muslim minority dwellers, with focus on Muslims living in Britain. The paper further proposes a fundamentalism continuum based on Dekmejian’s¹ model and analyses its impact on the Muslim Diaspora.     

Do Muslims See Australia as Their Homeland? The Notion of watan al-asli and watan al-sukna in Islam

Abstract

The concept of “country” or homeland in Islam was defined by Muslim jurists in the eighth century in the light of the sacred text. They set three categories: watan al-asli, the country of birth, the country of one's spouse or the place of permanent residence; watan al-sukna, the country of temporary residence and employment; and watan al-safari, the country that is traveled to. Accordingly, for Muslims immigrating to Australia, their new country falls into one of these categories. Muslim contact with Australia stretches back centuries. However, although early Muslims arrived on Australian shores before Europeans, they did not settle. It was not until the late 1960s, when Muslims came in mass immigration, that permanent communities were established. Since then, particularly over the last two decades, Muslims have become gradually more visible. This increase in prominence has raised anxiety from some segments of the Australian community. There are groups who view Islam as an obstacle for integration. The loyalty of Muslims to Australia is being debated, discussed and questioned by some intellectuals, politicians, media and other Australians with little or no knowledge of the Islamic theological perspective of the “notion of country”. In this article, I will argue that the “notion of country”, a concept of which even the majority of Muslims are not aware, supports integration. This article will also explore the concept of “homeland” in Islamic theology and jurisprudence and discuss the findings of a survey on Muslims’ views about Australia as home.     

Muslim Women in Australia,Britain and the United States: The Role of “Othering” and Biculturalism in Identity Formation

When Muslims migrate to Western countries, they bring their identity and culture with them. As they settle in their host countries, some Muslims encounter structural inequality, which is often revealed through media representation, unequal labour market status and racial profiling. Through the dynamics of structural inequality, some Muslim women remain doubly disadvantaged. Within their ethnic/religious community, Muslim women are expected to follow their cultural traditions and in the wider society their overtly Muslim appearance is often questioned. The discussion of identity formation in this paper is based on interviews with Muslim girls and women in Australia, Britain and the United States, aged between 15 and 30 years. Though the cultural and political contexts of these three countries are different, the practice of “othering” women have been similar. Through their life stories and narratives, I examine the formation of the participants’ identities. It was found that for many of these women their sense of identity shifted from single to multiple identities, thus revealing that identity formation was a flexible process that was affected by a variety of factors, including the relevance and importance of biculturalism in the women’s identity formation.     

Releasing the “Terror Genie”: Man Haron Monis and the “Sydney Siege”

The threat of “Islamic terrorism” has become a feature of the Australian political landscape. This has taken the form of unconfirmed suggestions of promised beheadings by groups, the threat of lone-wolf attacks, and the radicalisation of Islamic youths fighting in Syria and Iraq. This paper argues that the Islamic terror genie has been used to effectively transform the Australian political landscape through a series of plotted suggestions. The excuse for such policy excludes the necessity for evidence in a public forum. Law and order issues that involve Muslim figures who so happen to embrace, erroneously, an Islamic stance, end up being swept up in this current. The Man Haron Monis hostage case (or the “Sydney Siege”) provided a classic example of this problem, illustrating the misunderstandings, deceptions and delusions that have come to characterise the response of Australia’s security and media establishment.     

The Secular and the Religious in the Management of Islam in Singapore

This article examines the Singaporean model of “secularism” and its impact on the relations between the Singaporean government and the minority Muslim community in Singapore. While the Singaporean state defines itself as secular, its policies do not depict a strict dichotomy between religion and state. This paper argues that the obscure nature of secularism in Singapore has led to tensions on several issues between the government and Muslim community due to differing perceptions of what Singaporean secularism means. The first section of the paper deals with the concept of secularism as defined by the Singaporean state and examine the historical factors that led to the provision of special rights to Muslims in Singapore. The paper will then analyse the legal positions of institutions such as the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura, MUIS) and the Syariah court which are tasked with managing Islamic affairs in Singapore. Lastly, the paper will analyse how the unique definition of secularism in Singapore led to tensions between the government and the Muslim community. These cases included the headscarf controversy that erupted in 2002 and 2013, the madrasah controversy in 1999, foreign policy issues and terrorism. The paper concludes by drawing a trajectory of the future relations between the Singaporean government and the Muslim community.     

The Swiss Minaret Ban Referendum and Switzerland’s International Reputation: A Vote with an Impact

In 2009, Switzerland prohibited the constructions of minarets on a nationwide basis due to a popular referendum. Immediately, the status of Switzerland as an ambassador for diplomacy and neutrality was questioned by the international community. This paper discusses the short-term impact of the vote on Switzerland’s international reputation by analyzing Switzerland’s ranking in the National Brand Index (NBI) between 2005 and 2015. The analysis shows that the general international reputation of Switzerland as well as its people’s and government’s reputation experienced a decline after the vote. The Swiss, in particular, suffered a loss in reputation abroad, while the reputation of Switzerland’s government maintained a high ranking. An explanation for these differences is the way the Swiss Federal Council acted before and after the vote. The Council opposed the initiative from the very beginning and started a campaign to assure that the good relations with other countries, especially Muslim countries remain intact. These efforts paid off, as the analysis of the NBI shows. By actively reaching out to important parties such as the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Swiss government could maintain its position in the top three of the NBI ranking. This was possible due to Switzerland’s long-term strategy in “image-cultivation” abroad. Meanwhile, the Swiss people who voted for the ban with 57 yes-votes experienced a downward trend in their international reputation.     

Austrian Muslims Protest Against Austria's Revised “Islam Act”

Austria legally recognized Islam in 1912 and has thus been characterized as a “liberal” country regarding the inclusion of Muslims. But when the law was revision in 2015, it was largely criticized as discriminatory, anti-constitutional, and authoritarian towards the Muslim minority. The paper asks how a number of different social movement organizations and networks have framed their political participation, protest, and activism. It asks what demands were expressed regarding justice, criminalization, alienation, discrimination, and other contested issues. The paper also ponders the implications of political inclusion versus distance from the system for Muslim agency, as the protest movement ranged very widely from state-affiliated institutions to state-independent individuals.     

The “Trojan Horse” Plot and the Fear of Muslim Power in British State Schools

In 2014, an alleged “Trojan Horse” plot to Islamise education in a number of schools attended predominantly by diverse Muslim pupils in the inner city wards of Birmingham raised considerable questions. Ofsted investigations of 21 schools explored these concerns at the behest of the then Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove MP. At the head of this so-called plot, a certain Tahir Alam, once a darling of New Labour’s policies on British Muslim schools, faced the brunt of the media and political furore. Based on a series of face-to-face interviews with Alam in 2015 and 2016, this paper provides a detailed insight into the allegations, the context in which they emerged and the implications raised for young Muslims in the education system. Ultimately, as part of the government’s counter-terrorism policy the accusations of the “Islamisation” of education in these “Trojan Horse” schools foreshadowed the additional securitisation of all sectors of education. However, there was neither the evidence nor the legal justification to ratchet up anti-extremism education measures that eventually followed; namely the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015. The consequences of the negative attention heightened existing Islamophobia but, paradoxically, they also limited the opportunities for de-radicalisation through education.     

Charlie Hebdo: Differences in Corporate and Alternative Media Coverage

In the following mini-study, quantitative content analysis was used to investigate differences in the United States print media’s coverage of the Charlie Hebdo shooting. Four articles were analyzed, two from the corporate media and two from independent sources. The four articles did not disagree on the existence of terrorism, but they differed in terms of their assumptions regarding the cause(s) of terrorism as well as in terms of how the terrorist subject is configured discursively. Blaming Islam in general, or all Muslims, in relation to terrorist acts perpetrated by a few criminals can have drastic results, such as Islamophobia.     

Cultural Explanations of Patriarchy,Race, and Everyday Lives: Marginalizing and “Othering” Muslim Women in Canada

The image of the “oppressed” Muslim woman is one that has become deeply entrenched in Canadian society. It is fuelled not only by the over decade-long “War on Terror”, but also by the increasing use of cultural explanations of patriarchy, which posit gender inequalities in Muslim communities as simply being a result of Muslim cultures and religion. While scholars have cited the problems of such an approach, the impact of these representations on Muslim women’s everyday lives and their access to important social institutions has not been extensively studied. In a bid to fill this gap, this study draws on 56 in-depth interviews with Canadian Muslim women to illustrate how misperceptions of Muslim women as oppressed and passive victims of their culture and communities works to marginalize and increasingly “other” them in mainstream Canadian society.     

Melbourne's Islamic Museum of Australia: The “White-Washed ‘I’” as an Apollonian Celebration of Liberal Myths

Abstract

This paper examines how the Melbourne's Islamic Museum of Australia tells a story of an “Australian Islam” through its use of material and artistic objects; how it symbolizes and synthesizes the assumed binary of East and West, through spatial expressions that narrate a religious community's “growing up” in a changing urban and Australian context. Furthermore, it looks at how the curators, intentionally or otherwise, deal politically with the Muslim community's affective relationships that are shaped by their experiences as a minority that endures a persistent Islamophobia in the community. By examining the role the Museum's material artefacts play in intercultural relations within a multicultural Australia the paper draws from Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, to argue that the Museum reflects an Apollonian sense of art that attempts to regulate and control the wilder excesses of a Dionysian and communal spirit. The Apollonian view translates to an expressive and abstract celebration of liberal myths about progress and individuality that purposely relegates the more dangerous struggles of Muslim immigrants dealing with the conditions of a Dionysian post-colony to the shadows.