A conference organized by Georgetown University Qatar (GU-Q) seeking to explore the global, historical, theological and political dimensions that lead to practices of Islamophobia, kicked off Saturday with the participation of academics, artists, government officials and media members from around the world.

"There is an international dimension to Islamophobia which makes it in a way even more worrisome that now it becomes a kind of global currency that everyone, each nation-state can manipulate and can make use of," Fırat Oruç, an associate professor at Georgetown University Qatar, told Daily Sabah on Saturday on the sidelines of the conference.

Many Muslims living in non-Muslim countries, particularly in the West, have seen an increase in violence against their communities in recent years. From the United States to Europe, from China to India, Muslim communities have been under attack from extremists both at the individual level as they walk on the streets or at an institutional level through embedded Islamophobia in the structural policies. While extremists have torn up and burnt copies of the Quran, Islam's holy book, in some cities in European cities, in places like France governments have been at work to implement policies that would target dresses worn by Muslim women in schools.

A new phase of Islamophobia?

The term Islamophobia has become more popularly used following the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. and the events that followed with the imagery constructed about Muslims. However, the recent violence and attacks against Muslims, particularly in the West, have triggered the question of whether Islamophobia has entered a new phase.

"The Islamophobia discourse keeps reinventing itself. At some point it is the ‘terrorist’ figure, at another point, it is the certain Muslim figure ‘disrupting public order.’ But that is the thing, it keeps reinventing itself. The moment you respond to one question of Islamophobia, they are quick at finding another context to reinvigorate the Islamophobia discourse," Oruç added.

John Esposito, a prominent academic from Georgetown University, told Daily Sabah that the mass immigration in the recent decade has also contributed to Islamophobic discourse.

"A major catalyst is mass immigration with what happened in Syria, etc. For many of the European countries, until a short period of time ago, to be in that country was to have a long lineage in that country, to be white, to be let’s say Christian and to speak one language. All of a sudden, you are dealing with people of different languages, colors, also across the spectrum."

The 2022 edition of the European Islamophobia Report prepared by scholars and researchers says politics remains the driving force of Islamophobia. The 584-page report includes the effects of the ongoing war in Ukraine, the coverage of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar by European media, and how anti-Muslim legislation and measures in countries such as France and Austria developed. For instance, France's "systematic obstruction policy," according to the report, continued with the seizure of dozens of Muslim institutions. In Denmark, discrimination and hate speech against Muslims increased amid an ongoing debate for a ban on Islamic attire. In Germany, 364 Islamophobic crimes were registered by the police. A nongovernmental organization (NGO) focusing on anti-Muslim racism in Austria reported 1,000 cases of anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2022.

In his opening keynote speech, Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool, founder of the World for All Foundation, explained: "Mobility defines our age. We all welcome the mobility of capital and goods. At the push of a button, we can move millions and receive goods."

He added that the "response" to mobility has created all kinds of "isms and phobias," which have been exacerbated by many crises, including economic crises, environmental crises and endemic conflicts.

"We create isms and phobias for every difference. We dress it up as an anxiety of the unknown, activating the surveillance state, sophisticating punishments at every event, and perfecting the policies of immigration, as if they are normal laws that we need to implement. All of those things have morphed into what today can only be described as mainstream extremism."

He added: "When you call it a fear, a phobia, you place the burden on the victim. It is a double burden, to survive discrimination and to prove that they are not so fearful."

Roots of Islamophobia

The root causes of Islamophobia are widely discussed among Muslim victims of the phenomenon, scholars and politicians.

"Many different layers, the media, the sociologic, the political, the economic layer as well as the academic layer somehow coalesce in the production" of the Islamophobia discourse, said Fırat Oruç.

Esposito added that Islamophobia is constructed through an industry that portrays Muslims through the acts of a very small percentage of individuals identified as Muslims. "The faith of a vast majority of people, the second largest global religion, is seen through the lenses of what includes a very, very small percentage of Muslims," Esposito said and added that there is also an industry that through some Western government, media and social media produces the Islamophobia.

Commenting on Islamophobia through experiences in South Africa, Ambassador Rasool told Daily Sabah that Islamophobia in South Africa is as old as the existence of Islam in South Africa.

"In my own understanding of Islamophobia coming from South Africa, I trace the practice of Islamophobia, even if we did not have the term Islamophobia, right back to the advent of colonialism. Because the Muslim world was particularly a fertile ground from which to gain slaves, for example West Africa, from which to gain goods such as in South Asia and from which to gain more slaves that could settle in places like Cape Town from South East Asia. So wherever the West encountered Muslims, they were dealing with a dual mission: how to dispose of them and also how to civilize and Christianize them. Because that was the fig leaf under which they could justify conquest. Because these were the wild savages, the non-believers that they needed to also convert and for as long as they did not succeed in that they would demonize both the religion and the people that would practice that religion. So, I would say certainly in the South African example in the 1600s and I would go further to say that the memory of the Crusades was particularly a traumatic memory for the Christian, Western imagination to digest the fact that they launched one Crusade after the other to tame these Muslims to take away their holy sites and they did not succeed."

Rasool added that throughout history the West has tried to subjugate the "Muslim imagination" and the failure has created a "fear of Islam," which was ultimately turned into "aggression" once the West became powerful. He added that also at the core of Islamophobia is an issue of "power" and "power relations."

The conference will continue through Sunday, Oct. 1, with leading scholars and academics exploring the dynamics that now drive contemporary Islamophobic practices and their global connections. Alongside the sessions, public workshops and a GUQ student-led forum will explore appropriate responses to help stem the spread of Islamophobia on university campuses.