The Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project (IRDP), an initiative of the Center for Race & Gender, focuses on a systematic and empirical approach to the study of Islamophobia and its impact on the American Muslim community. Led by Dr. Hatem Bazian, the IRDP highlights research and projects that explore the maintenance and extension of existing power paradigms by bringing together academics, thinkers, practitioners and researchers from around the globe who engage, question and challenge the existing disparities in economic, political, social and cultural relations.

Today, Muslims in the U.S., parts of Europe, and around the world have been transformed into a demonized and feared global “other,” subjected to legal, social, and political discrimination. Newspaper articles, tv shows, books, popular movies, political debates, and cultural conflicts over immigration and security produce ample evidence of the stigmatization of Islam within dominant culture. The challenge for understanding the current cultural and political period centers on providing a more workable and encompassing definition for the Islamophobia phenomenon, a theoretical framework to anchor present and future research, and a centralized mechanism to document and analyze diverse data sets from around the U.S. and in comparison with other areas around the world.

DEFINING ISLAMOPHOBIA

Participants in 2013 Annual Conference on Islamophobia

The term “Islamophobia” was first introduced as a concept in a 1991 Runnymede Trust Report and defined as “unfounded hostility towards Muslims, and therefore fear or dislike of all or most Muslims.” The term was coined in the context of Muslims in the UK in particular and Europe in general, and formulated based on the more common “xenophobia” framework.

The report pointed to prevailing attitudes that incorporate the following beliefs:

• Islam is monolithic and cannot adapt to new realities
• Islam does not share common values with other major faiths
• Islam as a religion is inferior to the West.
  It is archaic, barbaric, and irrational.
• Islam is a religion of violence and supports terrorism.
• Islam is a violent political ideology.

For the purposes of anchoring the current research and documentation project, we provide the following working definition:

Islamophobia is a contrived fear or prejudice fomented by the existing Eurocentric and Orientalist global power structure. It is directed at a perceived or real Muslim threat through the maintenance and extension of existing disparities in economic, political, social and cultural relations, while rationalizing the necessity to deploy violence as a tool to achieve “civilizational rehab” of the target communities (Muslim or otherwise). Islamophobia reintroduces and reaffirms a global racial structure through which resource distribution disparities are maintained and extended.