Islamophobia, also referred to as anti-Muslim or anti-Islamic sentiment, is the irrational fear of, hostility towards, or hatred of the religion of Islam or Muslims in general. Islamophobia is characterised as a form of religious or cultural bigotry in which Muslims are stereotyped as a geopolitical threat or a source of terrorism. Muslims, with diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds on a worldwide scale, are often inaccurately portrayed by Islamophobes as a single homogeneous racial group.
The causes of increased Islamophobia across the world since the end of the Cold War are many. These include the quasi-racialist stereotypes against Muslims that proliferated through the Western media since the 1990s, the "war on terror" campaign launched by the United States after the September 11 attacks, the rise of the Islamic State in the aftermath of the Iraq War, terrorist attacks carried out by Islamist militants in the United States and Europe, anti-Muslim rhetoric disseminated by white nationalist organizations through the internet, and the radicalisation of Christian nationalist and far-right groups with growing hostility towards Muslims in the United States and the European Union.
A study conducted in 2013 revealed that Muslim women, especially those wearing headscarves or face veils, are more vulnerable to suffer from Islamophobic attacks than Muslim men. Due to the racialised nature of Islamophobic discrimination and attacks suffered by numerous Muslims in their daily lives, several scholars have asserted that Islamophobia has explicit racist dimensions. On 15 March 2022, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution by consensus which was introduced by Pakistan on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation that proclaimed March 15 as 'International Day To Combat Islamophobia'.
The exact definition of the term "Islamophobia" has been a subject of debate amongst Western analysts. Detractors of the term have proposed alternative terms, such as "anti-Muslim", to denote prejudice or discrimination against Muslims. It has been alleged, often by right-wing commentators, that the term is sometimes used to avoid criticism of Islam, by removing the distinction between racism and criticism of religious doctrine or practice. However, academics, activists and experts who support the terminology have denounced such characterisations as attempts to deny the existence of Islamophobia.
Etymology and definitions
The term Islamophobia came into widespread use in the 1990s after it was defined by the Runnymede Foundation. While earlier uses of the term have been found, they did not have the current meaning.
Islamophobia has been described as a "copycat neologism," a neologism that copies an earlier neologism without regard to how that neologism was formed. Hence, it copies terms such as homophobia, which is prejudice against homosexuals. These earlier terms may have been copycat neologisms of hydrophobia, which is an historical term for rabies, a lethal illness that causes insanity.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word means "Intense dislike or fear of Islam, esp. as a political force; hostility or prejudice towards Muslims". It is attested in English as early as 1923 to quote the French word islamophobie, found in a thesis published by Alain Quellien in 1910 to describe "a prejudice against Islam that is widespread among the peoples of Western and Christian civilization". The expression did not immediately turn into the vocabulary of the English-speaking world though, which preferred the expression "feelings inimical to Islam", until its re-appearance in an article by Georges Chahati Anawati in 1976. The term did not exist in the Muslim world, and was later translated in the 1990s as ruhāb al-islām (رُهاب الإسلام) in Arabic, literally "phobia of Islam".
Alternative names
There are a number of other possible terms which are also used in order to refer to negative feelings and attitudes towards Islam and Muslims, such as anti-Muslimism, intolerance against Muslims, anti-Muslim prejudice, anti-Muslim bigotry, hatred of Muslims, anti-Islamism, Muslimophobia, demonisation of Islam, or demonisation of Muslims. In German, Islamophobie (fear) and Islamfeindlichkeit (hostility) are used. The Scandinavian term Muslimhat literally means "hatred of Muslims".
When discrimination towards Muslims has placed an emphasis on their religious affiliation and adherence, it has been termed Muslimphobia, the alternative form of Muslimophobia, Islamophobism, antimuslimness and antimuslimism. Individuals who discriminate against Muslims in general have been termed Islamophobes, Islamophobists, anti-Muslimists, antimuslimists, islamophobiacs, anti-Muhammadan, Muslimphobes or its alternative spelling of Muslimophobes, while religiously intolerant individuals motivated by a specific anti-Muslim agenda or bigotry have been described as being anti-mosque, anti-Shiites (or Shiaphobes), anti-Sufism (or Sufi-phobia) and anti-Sunni (or Sunniphobes).
Debate on the term and its limitations
In 1996, the Runnymede Trust established the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia (CBMI), chaired by Gordon Conway, the vice-chancellor of the University of Sussex. The Commission's report, Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, was published in November 1997 by the Home Secretary, Jack Straw. In the Runnymede report, Islamophobia was defined as "an outlook or world-view involving an unfounded dread and dislike of Muslims, which results in practices of exclusion and discrimination." The introduction of the term was justified by the report's assessment that "anti-Muslim prejudice has grown so considerably and so rapidly in recent years that a new item in the vocabulary is needed". and the editor of Islamophobia: a challenge for us all, said that "the disadvantages of the term Islamophobia are significant" on seven different grounds, including that it implies it is merely a "severe mental illness" affecting "only a tiny minority of people"; that use of the term makes those to whom it is applied "defensive and defiant" and absolves the user of "the responsibility of trying to understand them" or trying to change their views; that it implies that hostility to Muslims is divorced from factors such as skin color, immigrant status, fear of fundamentalism, or political or economic conflicts; that it conflates prejudice against Muslims in one's own country with dislike of Muslims in countries with which the West is in conflict; that it fails to distinguish between people who are against all religion from people who dislike Islam specifically; and that the actual issue being described is hostility to Muslims, "an ethno-religious identity within European countries", rather than hostility to Islam. Nonetheless, he argued that the term is here to stay, and that it is important to define it precisely.
The exact definition of Islamophobia continues to be discussed, with academics such as Chris Allen saying that it lacks a clear definition. According to Erik Bleich, in his article "Defining and Researching Islamophobia", even when definitions are more specific, there is still significant variation in the precise formulations of Islamophobia. As with parallel concepts like homophobia or xenophobia, Islamophobia connotes a broader set of negative attitudes or emotions directed at individuals of groups because of perceived membership in a defined category. Mattias Gardell defined Islamophobia as "socially reproduced prejudices and aversion to Islam and Muslims, as well as actions and practices that attack, exclude or discriminate against persons on the basis that they are or perceived to be Muslim and be associated with Islam". Some social scientists have adopted this definition and developed instruments to measure Islamophobia in form of fearful attitudes towards, and avoidance of, Muslims and Islam, arguing that Islamophobia should "essentially be understood as an affective part of social stigma towards Islam and Muslims, namely fear." In their books, Deepa Kumar and Junaid Rana have argued that formation of Islamophobic discourses has paralleled the development of other forms of racial bigotry. Similarly, John Denham has drawn parallels between modern Islamophobia and the antisemitism of the 1930s, as have Maud Olofsson and Jan Hjärpe, among others.
Others have questioned the relationship between Islamophobia and racism. Jocelyne Cesari writes that "academics are still debating the legitimacy of the term and questioning how it differs from other terms such as racism, anti-Islamism, anti-Muslimness, and anti-Semitism." Erdenir finds that "there is no consensus on the scope and content of the term and its relationship with concepts such as racism ..." and Shryock, reviewing the use of the term across national boundaries, comes to the same conclusion.
Some scholars view Islamophobia and racism as partially overlapping phenomena. Diane Frost defines Islamophobia as anti-Muslim feeling and violence based on "race" or religion. Islamophobia may also target people who have Muslim names, or have a look that is associated with Muslims. According to Alan Johnson, Islamophobia sometimes can be nothing more than xenophobia or racism "wrapped in religious terms". Sociologists Yasmin Hussain and Paul Bagguley stated that racism and Islamophobia are "analytically distinct", but "empirically inter-related".
The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) defines Islamophobia as "the fear of or prejudiced viewpoint towards Islam, Muslims and matters pertaining to them", adding that whether "it takes the shape of daily forms of racism and discrimination or more violent forms, Islamophobia is a violation of human rights and a threat to social cohesion".
Origins and causes
History of the term
The earliest traces of Islamophobia date back to the inception of Islam among the ruling elites of Mecca, the Quraysh. They became aggressive towards Muslims and began to mock, insult, and later begin to fight the earliest Muslims. They regarded Muhammad as a crazed man. One early use cited as the term's first use is by the painter Alphonse Étienne Dinet and Algerian intellectual Sliman ben Ibrahim in their 1918 biography of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Writing in French, they used the term '. Robin Richardson writes that in the English version of the book the word was not translated as "Islamophobia" but rather as "feelings inimical to Islam". Dahou Ezzerhouni has cited several other uses in French as early as 1910, and from 1912 to 1918. These early uses of the term did not, according to Christopher Allen, have the same meaning as in contemporary usage, as they described a fear of Islam by liberal Muslims and Muslim feminists, rather than a fear or dislike/hatred of Muslims by non-Muslims. On the other hand, Fernando Bravo López argues that Dinet and ibn Sliman's use of the term was as a criticism of overly hostile attitudes to Islam by a Belgian orientalist, Henri Lammens, whose project they saw as a "'pseudo-scientific crusade in the hope of bringing Islam down once and for all. He also notes that an early definition of Islamophobia appears in the 1910 Ph.D. thesis of Alain Quellien, a French colonial bureaucrat:
<blockquote>For some, the Muslim is the natural and irreconcilable enemy of the Christian and the European; Islam is the negation of civilization, and barbarism, bad faith and cruelty are the best one can expect from the Mohammedans.</blockquote>
Furthermore, he notes that Quellien's work draws heavily on the work of the French colonial department's 1902–06 administrator, who published a work in 1906, which to a great extent mirrors John Esposito's The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?.
The first recorded use of the term in English, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was in 1923 in an article in The Journal of Theological Studies. "Kofi Annan asserted at a 2004 conference entitled "Confronting Islamophobia" that the word Islamophobia had to be coined in order to "take account of increasingly widespread bigotry".
Increase in Islamophobia during 1990s
During the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s, far-right Serbian Orthodox Christian militants who were heavily indoctrinated with Islamophobic sentiments, perpetrated a genocide against Bosniak Muslims. Since 1989, Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević publicly disseminated Islamophobic rhetoric throughout Yugoslavia, inciting Serbian far-right militants to massacre Bosniak Muslims.
The stereotyping of Bosniak Muslims as a hostile force threatening Europe with "terrorism" in Serbian propaganda was closely linked to the rise of Islamophobic narratives in Western media and European political discourse.
Contrasting views on Islam
The Runnymede report contrasted "open" and "closed" views of Islam, and stated that the following "closed" views are equated with Islamophobia:
:#Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.
:#It is seen as separate and "other". It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them.
:#It is seen as inferior to the West. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive, and sexist.
:#It is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism, and engaged in a clash of civilizations.
:#It is seen as a political ideology, used for political or military advantage.
:#Criticisms made of "the West" by Muslims are rejected out of hand.
:#Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.
:#Anti-Muslim hostility is seen as natural and normal.
These "closed" views are contrasted, in the report, with "open" views on Islam which, while founded on respect for Islam, permit legitimate disagreement, dialogue and critique. According to Benn and Jawad, The Runnymede Trust notes that anti-Muslim discourse is increasingly seen as respectable, providing examples on how hostility towards Islam and Muslims is accepted as normal, even among those who may actively challenge other prevalent forms of discrimination.
Identity politics
It has been suggested that Islamophobia is closely related to identity politics, and gives its adherents the perceived benefit of constructing their identity in opposition to a negative, essentialised image of Muslims. This occurs in the form of self-righteousness, assignment of blame and key identity markers. Davina Bhandar writes that:
She views this as an ontological trap that hinders the perception of culture as something "materially situated in the living practices of the everyday, situated in time-space and not based in abstract projections of what constitutes either a particular tradition or culture."
In some societies, Islamophobia has materialised due to the portrayal of Islam and Muslims as the national "Other", where exclusion and discrimination occurs on the basis of their religion and civilization which differs with national tradition and identity. Examples include Pakistani and Algerian migrants in Britain and France respectively. This sentiment, according to Malcolm Brown and Robert Miles, significantly interacts with racism, although Islamophobia itself is not racism. Author Doug Saunders has drawn parallels between Islamophobia in the United States and its older discrimination and hate against Roman Catholics, saying that Catholicism was seen as backwards and imperial, while Catholic immigrants had poorer education and some were responsible for crime and terrorism.
Brown and Miles write that another feature of Islamophobic discourse is to amalgamate nationality (e.g. Saudi), religion (Islam), and politics (terrorism, fundamentalism) – while most other religions are not associated with terrorism, or even "ethnic or national distinctiveness". They feel that "many of the stereotypes and misinformation that contribute to the articulation of Islamophobia are rooted in a particular perception of Islam", such as the notion that Islam promotes terrorism – especially prevalent after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The two-way stereotyping resulting from Islamophobia has in some instances resulted in mainstreaming of earlier controversial discourses, such as liberal attitudes towards gender equality Christina Ho has warned against framing of such mainstreaming of gender equality in a colonial, paternal discourse, arguing that this may undermine minority women's ability to speak out about their concerns.
Steven Salaita contends that, since 9/11, Arab Americans have evolved from what Nadine Naber described as an invisible group in the United States into a highly visible community that directly or indirectly has an effect on the United States' culture wars, foreign policy, presidential elections and legislative tradition.
The academics S. Sayyid and Abdoolkarim Vakil maintain that Islamophobia is a response to the emergence of a distinct Muslim public identity globally, the presence of Muslims in itself not being an indicator of the degree of Islamophobia in a society. Sayyid and Vakil maintain that there are societies where virtually no Muslims live but many institutionalised forms of Islamophobia still exist in them.
Links to ideologies
thumb|The [[2014 anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka followed rallies by Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), a hard-line Buddhist group.]]
thumb|An anti-Islam protest in the United States
Cora Alexa Døving, a senior scientist at the Norwegian Center for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities, argues that there are significant similarities between Islamophobic discourse and European pre-Nazi antisemitism. Døving, on the other hand, maintains that, at least in Norway, the Islamophobic discourse has a clear national element.
The head of the Media Responsibility Institute in Erlangen, Sabine Schiffer, and researcher Constantin Wagner, who also define Islamophobia as anti-Muslim racism, outline additional similarities and differences between Islamophobia and antisemitism. They point out the existence of equivalent notions such as "Judaisation/Islamisation", and metaphors such as "a state within a state" are used in relation to both Jews and Muslims. In addition, both discourses make use of, among other rhetorical instruments, "religious imperatives" supposedly "proven" by religious sources, and conspiracy theories.
The differences between Islamophobia and antisemitism consist of the nature of the perceived threats to the "Christian West". Muslims are perceived as "inferior" and as a visible "external threat", while on the other hand, Jews are perceived as "omnipotent" and as an invisible "internal threat". However, Schiffer and Wagner also note that there is a growing tendency to view Muslims as a privileged group that constitute an "internal threat" and that this convergence between the two discources makes "it more and more necessary to use findings from the study of anti-Semitism to analyse Islamophobia". Schiffer and Wagner conclude,
The publication Social Work and Minorities: European Perspectives describes Islamophobia as the new form of racism in Europe, arguing that "Islamophobia is as much a form of racism as anti-semitism, a term more commonly encountered in Europe as a sibling of racism, xenophobia and intolerance." Edward Said considers Islamophobia as it is evinced in Orientalism to be a trend in a more general antisemitic Western tradition. Others note that there has been a transition from anti-Asian and anti-Arab racism to anti-Muslim racism, while some note a racialisation of religion.
According to a 2012 report by a UK anti-racism group, counter-jihadist outfits in Europe and North America are becoming more cohesive by forging alliances, with 190 groups now identified as promoting an Islamophobic agenda. In Islamophobia and its consequences on young people (p. 6) Ingrid Ramberg writes "Whether it takes the shape of daily forms of racism and discrimination or more violent forms, Islamophobia is a violation of human rights and a threat to social cohesion." Professor John Esposito of Georgetown University calls Islamophobia "the new anti-Semitism".
In their 2018 American Muslim Poll, the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding found that when it came to their Islamophobia index (see Public Opinion), they found that those who scored higher on the index, (i.e. more islamophobic) were, "associated with 1) greater acceptance of targeting civilians, whether it is a military or individual/small group that is doling out the violence, 2) greater acquiescence to limiting both press freedoms and institutional checks following a hypothetical terror attack, and 3) greater support for the so-called "Muslim ban" and the surveillance of American mosques (or their outright building prohibition)."
Mohamed Nimer compares Islamophobia with anti-Americanism. He argues that while both Islam and America can be subject to legitimate criticisms without detesting a people as a whole, bigotry against both are on the rise.
Gideon Rachman wrote in 2019 of a "clash of civilizations" between Muslim and non-Muslim nations, linking anti-Islam radicalisation outside the Muslim world to the rise of intolerant Islamism in some Muslim countries that used to be relatively free from that ideology.
Blasphemy of Islam has been described as Islamophobia, while some countries consider blasphemy legal as freedom of speech.
Opposition to multiculturalism
According to Gabrielle Maranci, the increasing Islamophobia in the West is related to a rising repudiation of multiculturalism. Maranci concludes that "Islamophobia is a 'phobia' of multiculturalism and the transruptive effect that Islam can have in Europe and the West through transcultural processes."
Manifestations
thumb|Flower wall memorial erected after mass-shootings in March 2019 targeting [[Al Noor Mosque, Christchurch|Al-Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch City, New Zealand. The terrorist attack was motivated by far-right extremism and resulted in 51 deaths.]]
Media
According to Elizabeth Poole in the Encyclopedia of Race and Ethnic Studies, the media have been criticised for perpetrating Islamophobia. She cites a case study examining a sample of articles in the British press from between 1994 and 2004, which concluded that Muslim viewpoints were underrepresented and that issues involving Muslims usually depicted them in a negative light. Such portrayals, according to Poole, include the depiction of Islam and Muslims as a threat to Western security and values. Benn and Jawad write that hostility towards Islam and Muslims are "closely linked to media portrayals of Islam as barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist." Egorova and Tudor cite European researchers in suggesting that expressions used in the media such as "Islamic terrorism", "Islamic bombs" and "violent Islam" have resulted in a negative perception of Islam. John E. Richardson's 2004 book (Mis)representing Islam: the racism and rhetoric of British broadsheet newspapers, criticised the British media for propagating negative stereotypes of Muslims and fueling anti-Muslim prejudice. In another study conducted by John E. Richardson, he found that 85% of mainstream newspaper articles treated Muslims as a homogeneous mass and portrayed them as a threat to British society.
The Universities of Georgia and Alabama in the United States conducted a study comparing media coverage of "terrorist attacks" committed by Islamist militants with those of non-Muslims in the United States. Researchers found that "terrorist attacks" by Islamist militants receive 357% more media attention than attacks committed by non-Muslims or whites. Terrorist attacks committed by non-Muslims (or where the religion was unknown) received an average of 15 headlines, while those committed by Muslim extremists received 105 headlines. The study was based on an analysis of news reports covering terrorist attacks in the United States between 2005 and 2015. This was despite the fact that far-right extremists were responsible for almost double the number of terrorist acts in US attributed to Muslim individuals between 2008 and 2016. In spite of this disparity, US and UK governments have been negligent in confronting far-right terrorists, instead focusing almost all their counter-terrorism resources on imposing surveillance measures on Muslim population and censoring Muslim activists. Many right-wing politicians have also engaged in anti-Muslim rhetoric, indirectly motivating far-right groups to intensify violent hate crimes against Muslims.
In 2009, Mehdi Hasan in the New Statesman criticised Western media for over-reporting a few Islamist terrorist incidents but under-reporting the much larger number of planned non-Islamist terrorist attacks carried out by "non-Irish white folks". A 2012 study indicates that Muslims across different European countries, such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom, experience the highest degree of Islamophobia in the media. The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding published a report in 2018 where they stated, "In terms of print media coverage, Muslim-perceived perpetrators received twice the absolute quantity of media coverage as their non-Muslim counterparts in the cases of violent completed acts. For "foiled" plots, they received seven and half times the media coverage as their counterparts."
Nathan Lean used the term "Islamophobia industry" in the 2012 book The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims to describe how certain ideologies and political proclivities have converged to advance the same agenda. The "Islamophobia industry" has since been discussed by other scholars including Joseph Kaminski, Hatem Bazian, Arlene Stein, Zakia Salime, Reza Aslan, Erdoan A. Shipoli, and Deepa Kumar, the latter drawing a comparison between the "Islamophobia industry" and Cold War era McCarthyism.
Some media outlets are working explicitly against Islamophobia. In 2008 Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting ("FAIR") published a study "Smearcasting, How Islamophobes Spread Bigotry, Fear and Misinformation". The report cites several instances where mainstream or close to mainstream journalists, authors and academics have made analyses that essentialise negative traits as an inherent part of Muslims' moral makeup. FAIR also established the "Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism", designed to monitor coverage in the media and establish dialogue with media organisations. Following the attacks of 11 September 2001, the Islamic Society of Britain's "Islam Awareness Week" and the "Best of British Islam Festival" were introduced to improve community relations and raise awareness about Islam.
Silva and Meaux et al theorised that one of the main causes of negative interactions, stigma, and marginalisation toward the Arabic community is due to the fact that many media framing from news outlets tend to associate Arab-Muslims with terrorism and jihadist-inspired motivations when it came to mass violence incidents. Silva compared his results to find out that Arabic perpetrators were significantly more like to be framed as terrorists than their White counterparts. Meaux et al note back to research conducted by Park et al that indicated that the most salient association that Americans held on to was Arab-Muslims to terrorism with the notion that people that believed in this association the strongest were more likely to hold implicit bias.
Movies
thumb|Pro-Palestinian protest in Los Angeles against the [[Gaza war|war in Gaza and Hollywood's role in dehumanising Muslims, November 2023]]
Throughout the twentieth century, Muslim characters were portrayed in Hollywood often negatively and with Orientalist stereotypes visualising them as being "uncivilised". Since the Post-9/11 era, in addition to these tropes, a securitisation of Muslims; portraying them as a threat to the Western world, have drastically increased in movie depictions.
There are growing instances of Islamophobia in Hindi cinema, or Bollywood, in films such as Aamir (2008), New York (2009) and My Name is Khan (2010), which corresponds to a growing anti-minorities sentiment that followed the resurgence of the Hindu right.
Organisations
thumb|left|An English Defence League demonstration. The placard reads Shut down the mosque command and control centre.
A report from the University of California Berkeley and the Council on American–Islamic Relations estimated that was funded to 33 groups whose primary purpose was "to promote prejudice against, or hatred of, Islam and Muslims" in the United States between 2008 and 2013, with a total of 74 groups contributing to Islamophobia in the United States during that period.
Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and the Freedom Defense Initiative are designated as hate groups by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. In August 2012 SIOA generated media publicity by sponsoring billboards in New York City Subway stations claiming there had been 19,250 terrorist attacks by Muslims since 9/11 and stating "it's not Islamophobia, it's Islamorealism." It later ran advertisements reading "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad." Several groups condemned the advertisements as "hate speech" about all Muslims. In early January 2013 the Freedom Defense Initiative put up advertisements next to 228 clocks in 39 New York subway stations showing the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center with a quote attributed to the 151st verse of chapter 3 of the Quran: "Soon shall we cast terror into the hearts of the unbelievers." The New York City Transit Authority, which said it would have to carry the advertisements on First Amendment grounds, insisted that 25% of the ad contain a Transit Authority disclaimer. These advertisements also were criticised.
The English Defence League (EDL) was a far-right, Islamophobic organisation active in England until the mid-late 2010s. It was formed in 2009 to oppose, what it claimed was, the spread of Islamism, Sharia law and Islamic extremism in the UK. The EDL's former leader, Tommy Robinson, left the group in 2013 saying it had become too extreme and that street protests were ineffective.
Furthermore, the 7 July 2005 London bombings and the resulting efforts of the British civil and law enforcement authorities to help seek British Muslims' help in identifying potential threats to create prevention is observed by Michael Lavalette as institutionalised Islamophobia. Lavalette alleges that there is a continuity between the former two British governments over prevention that aims to stop young Muslim people from being misled, misdirected and recruited by extremists who exploit grievances for their own "jihadist" endeavours. Asking and concentrating on Muslim communities and young Muslims to prevent future instances, by the authorities, is in itself Islamophobia as such since involvement of Muslim communities will highlight and endorse their compassion for Britain and negate the perceived threats from within their communities.
Public opinion
thumb|Anti-Islam rally in [[Poland in 2015]]
The extent of negative attitudes towards Muslims varies across different parts of Europe. Polls in Germany and the Czech Republic (as well as South Korea) have suggested that most respondents do not welcome Muslim refugees in those countries.
A 2017 Chatham House poll of more than 10,000 people in 10 European countries had on average 55% agreeing that all further migration from Muslim-majority countries should be stopped, with 20% disagreeing and 25% offered no opinion. By country, majority opposition was found in Poland (71%), Austria (65%), Belgium (64%), Hungary (64%), France (61%), Greece (58%), Germany (53%), and Italy (51%).
In Canada, surveys have suggested that 55% of respondents think the problem of Islamophobia is "overblown" by politicians and media, 42% think discrimination against Muslims is 'mainly their fault', and 47% support banning headscarves in public.
In the United States, a 2011 YouGov poll found that 50% of respondents expressed an unfavourable view of Islam, compared to 23% expressing a favourable view. Another YouGov poll done in 2015 had 55% of respondents expressing an unfavourable view. However, according to a 2018 Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, 86% of American respondents said they wanted to "live in a country where no one is targeted for their religious identity", 83% told ISPU they supported "protecting the civil rights of American Muslims", 66% believed negative political rhetoric toward Muslims was harmful to U.S., and 65% agreed that Islamophobia produced discriminatory consequences for Muslims in America. He suggests a circular model, where increased hostility towards Islam and Muslims results in governmental countermeasures such as institutional guidelines and changes to legislation, which itself may fuel further Islamophobia due to increased accommodation for Muslims in public life. Vertovec concludes: "As the public sphere shifts to provide a more prominent place for Muslims, Islamophobic tendencies may amplify." However, Vertovec states that some have observed that Islamophobia has not necessarily escalated in the past decades, but that there has been increased public scrutiny of it.
In 2005 Ziauddin Sardar, an Islamic scholar, wrote in the New Statesman that Islamophobia is a widespread European phenomenon. He noted that each country has anti-Muslim political figures, citing Jean-Marie Le Pen in France; Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands; and Philippe van der Sande of Vlaams Blok, a Flemish nationalist party in Belgium. Sardar argued that Europe is "post-colonial, but ambivalent". Minorities are regarded as acceptable as an underclass of menial workers, but if they want to be upwardly mobile anti-Muslim prejudice rises to the surface. Wolfram Richter, professor of economics at Technical University of Dortmund, told Sardar: "I am afraid we have not learned from our history. My main fear is that what we did to Jews we may now do to Muslims. The next holocaust would be against Muslims." Malik, a senior visiting fellow in the Department of Political, International and Policy Studies at the University of Surrey, has described these claims of a brewing holocaust as "hysterical to the point of delusion"; whereas Jews in Hitler's Germany were given the official designation of Untermenschen, and were subject to escalating legislation which diminished and ultimately removed their rights as citizens, Malik noted that in cases where "Muslims are singled out in Britain, it is often for privileged treatment" such as the 2005 legislation banning "incitement to religious hatred", the special funding Muslim organisations and bodies receive from local and national government, the special provisions made by workplaces, school and leisure centres for Muslims, and even suggestions by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, that sharia law should be introduced into Britain. The fact is, wrote Malik, that such well-respected public figures as Akhtar, Shadjareh and Yaqoob need "a history lesson about the real Holocaust reveals how warped the Muslim grievance culture has become."
thumb|A protester opposing the [[Park51 project carries an anti-sharia sign.]]
thumb|[[Hindutva|Hindu nationalist politician Arun Pathak organised a celebration in Varanasi to commemorate the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque.]]
In 2006 ABC News reported that "public views of Islam are one casualty of the post-September 11, 2001 conflict: Nearly six in 10 Americans think the religion is prone to violent extremism, nearly half regard it unfavourably, and a remarkable one in four admits to prejudicial feelings against Muslims and Arabs alike." They also report that 27 percent of Americans admit feelings of prejudice against Muslims. Gallup polls in 2006 found that 40 percent of Americans admit to prejudice against Muslims, and 39 percent believe Muslims should carry special identification. These trends have only worsened with the use of Islamophobia as a campaign tactic during the 2008 American presidential election (with several Republican politicians and pundits, including Donald Trump, asserting that Democratic candidate Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim), during the 2010 mid-term elections (during which a proposed Islamic community center was dubbed the "Ground Zero Mosque"), and the 2016 presidential election, during which Republican nominee Donald Trump proposed banning the entrance into the country of all Muslims. Associate Professor Deepa Kumar writes that "Islamophobia is about politics rather than religion per se" and that modern-day demonisation of Arabs and Muslims by US politicians and others is racist and Islamophobic, and employed in support of what she describes as an unjust war. About the public impact of this rhetoric, she says that "One of the consequences of the relentless attacks on Islam and Muslims by politicians and the media is that Islamophobic sentiment is on the rise." She also chides some "people on the left" for using the same "Islamophobic logic as the Bush regime". In this regard, Kumar confirms the assertions of Stephen Sheehi, who "conceptualises Islamophobia as an ideological formation within the context of the American empire. Doing so "allows us to remove it from the hands of 'culture' or from the myth of a single creator or progenitor, whether it be a person, organisation or community." An ideological formation, in this telling, is a constellation of networks that produce, proliferate, benefit from, and traffic in Islamophobic discourses."
The writer and scholar on religion Reza Aslan has said that "Islamophobia has become so mainstream in this country that Americans have been trained to expect violence against Muslims – not excuse it, but expect it".
A January 2010 British Social Attitudes Survey found that the British public "is far more likely to hold negative views of Muslims than of any other religious group," with "just one in four" feeling "positively about Islam", and a "majority of the country would be concerned if a mosque was built in their area, while only 15 per cent expressed similar qualms about the opening of a church."
A 2016 report by CAIR and University of California, Berkeley's Center for Race and Gender said that groups promoting islamophobia in the US had access to US$206 million between 2008 and 2013. The author of the report said that "The hate that these groups are funding and inciting is having real consequences like attacks on mosques all over the country and new laws discriminating against Muslims in America."
In the United States, religious discrimination against Muslims has become a significant issue of concern. In 2018, The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding found that out of the groups studied, Muslims are the most likely faith community to experience religious discrimination, the data having been that way since 2015. Despite 61% of Muslims reporting experiencing religious discrimination at some level and 62% reporting that most Americans held negative stereotypes about their community, 23% reported that their faith made them feel "out of place in the world".
Anti-Islamic hate crimes data in the United States
thumb|A mannequin symbolising a Muslim in a [[keffiyeh, strapped to a "Made in the USA" bomb display at a protest of Park51 in New York City]]
thumb|A protest in Cincinnati, Ohio
thumb|[[Protests against Executive Order 13769 in Tehran, Iran, 10 February 2017]]
Data on types of hate crimes have been collected by the U.S. FBI since 1992, to carry out the dictates of the 1990 Hate Crime Statistics Act. Hate crime offences include crimes against persons (such as assaults) and against property (such as arson), and are classified by various race-based, religion-based, and other motivations.
The data show that recorded anti-Islamic hate crimes in the United States jumped dramatically in 2001. Anti-Islamic hate crimes then subsided, but continued at a significantly higher pace than in pre-2001 years. The step up is in contrast to decreases in total hate crimes and to the decline in overall crime in the U.S. since the 1990s.
Specifically, the FBI's annual hate crimes statistics reports from 1996 to 2013 document average numbers of anti-Islamic offenses at 31 per year before 2001, then a leap to 546 in 2001 (the year of 9-11 attacks), and averaging 159 per since. Among those offenses are anti-Islamic arson incidents which have a similar pattern: arson incidents averaged 0.4 per year pre-2001, jumped to 18 in 2001, and averaged 1.5 annually since.
Year-by-year anti-Islamic hate crimes, all hate crimes, and arson subtotals are as follows:
{|
|- style="text-align:center; background:#f0f0f0;"
| style="text-align:center; background:#f0f0f0;"|
| colspan="2"|Anti-Islamic hate crimes
| colspan="2"|All hate crimes
|- style="background:#f0f0f0;"
| Year||Arson offenses||Total offenses||Arson offenses||Total offenses
|-
| 1996||0||33||75||10,706
|-
| 1997||1||31||60||9,861
|-
| 1998||0||22||50||9,235
|-
| 1999||1||34||48||9,301
|-
| 2000||0||33||52||9,430
|- style="background:Gainsboro;"
| 2001||18||546||90||11,451
|-
| 2002||0||170||38||8,832
|-
| 2003||2||155||34||8,715
|-
| 2004||2||193||44||9,035
|-
| 2005||0||146||39||8,380
|-
| 2006||0||191||41||9,080
|-
| 2007||0||133||40||9,006
|-
| 2008||5||123||53||9,168
|-
| 2009||1||128||41||7,789
|-
| 2010||1||186||42||7,699
|-
| 2011||2||175||42||7,254
|-
| 2012||4||149||38||6,718
|-
| 2013||1||165||36||6,933
|-
| ||||||||
|- style="background:#f0f0f0;"
| Total||38||2,613||863||158,593
|- style="background:Gainsboro;"
| Average||2.1||145.2||47.9||8810.7
|- style="background:#f0f0f0;"
| ||||||||
|- style="background:#f0f0f0;"
| 1996–2000 avg||.40||30.6||57.0||9,707
|- style="background:#f0f0f0;"
| 2001||18||546||90||11,451
|- style="background:#f0f0f0;"
| 2002–2013 avg||1.50||159.5||40.7||8,217
|}
In contrast, the overall numbers of arson and total offenses declined from pre-2001 to post-2001.
Anti-Islamic hate crimes in Europe
There have also been reports of hate crimes targeting Muslims across Europe. These incidents have increased after terrorist attacks by extremist groups such as ISIL. Far-right and right-wing populist political parties and organisations have also been accused of fuelling fear and hatred towards Muslims. Hate crimes such as arson and physical violence have been attempted or have occurred in Norway, Poland, Sweden, France, Spain, Denmark, Germany and Great Britain. Politicians have also made anti-Muslim comments when discussing the European migrant crisis.
According to Yvonne Haddad: The Islamophobia Industry in America is "driven by neocon stars: Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, David Yerushalmi, Glenn Beck, Pamela Gellner, Paul Wolfowitz, David Horowitz, and Frank Gaffney as well as native informers Walid Shoebat, Walid Phares, Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Brigitte Gabriel, Tawfik Hamid, and Zuhdi Jasser. They have been prolific, producing and re-circulating false or exaggerated information about Islam and Muslims in order to gain lucrative speaking engagements and increase their influence among neocons in government."
Research on Islamophobia and its correlates
thumb|upright=1.5|According to data by the [[Pew Research Center elaborated by VoxEurop, in European Union countries the negative attitude towards Muslims is inversely proportional to actual presence.]]
Various studies have been conducted to investigate Islamophobia and its correlates among majority populations and among Muslim minorities themselves. To start with, an experimental study showed that anti-Muslim attitudes may be stronger than more general xenophobic attitudes. Moreover, studies indicate that anti-Muslim prejudice among majority populations is primarily explained by the perception of Muslims as a cultural threat, rather than as a threat towards the respective nation's economy.
Studies focusing on the experience of Islamophobia among Muslims have shown that the experience of religious discrimination is associated with lower national identification and higher religious identification. In other words, religious discrimination seems to lead Muslims to increase their identification with their religion and to decrease their identification with their nation of residence. Some studies further indicate that societal Islamophobia negatively influences Muslim minorities' health. One of the studies showed that the perception of an Islamophobic society is associated with more psychological problems, such as depression and nervousness, regardless whether the respective individual had personally experienced religious discrimination. The European Islamophobie Report aims to enable policymakers as well as the public to discuss the issue of Islamophobia with the help of qualitative data. It is the first report to cover a wide range of Eastern European countries like Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, and Latvia. Farid Hafez is also editor of the German-English Islamophobia Studies Yearbook.
Regional trends
Anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe
Muslim immigration into Europe has led some critics to label Islam incompatible with secular Western society. This criticism has been partly influenced by a stance against multiculturalism advocated by recent philosophers, closely linked to the heritage of New Philosophers, including the likes of Pascal Bruckner. Jocelyne Cesari, in her study of discrimination against Muslims in Europe, finds that anti-Islamic sentiment may be difficult to separate from other drivers of discrimination. Because Muslims are mainly from immigrant backgrounds and the largest group of immigrants in many Western European countries, xenophobia overlaps with Islamophobia, and a person may have one, the other, or both. So, for example, some people who have a negative perception of and attitude toward Muslims may also show this toward non-Muslim immigrants, either as a whole or certain group (such as, for example, Eastern Europeans, sub-Saharan Africans, or Roma), whereas others would not.