Islamophobia: The personal IS the political
Hey all. So today’s post is about Islamophobia - the fear or hatred of Islam/Muslims. Over the past few decades, there has been a growth in Islamophobia in the West, particularly since the '09/11' attacks on the World Trade Centre on the 11th September 2001. As unfortunate and heartbreaking as terrorist attacks like '09/11' and '07/07' are, they are, however, capitalised on by the government and the media to generate an irrational fear of Muslims. I call this fear ‘irrational’ because there are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world; Muslims constitute a quarter of the global population. Consequently, if even 1 out of 5 Muslims were jihadi sympathisers (as Western governments would like us to believe) surely we would all have been dead by now... therefore, the stereotype of Muslims being terrorists is pretty irrational, no?
So, as you all know (at least, I hope so. If you don’t are you even British looool?) Boris Johnson was recently elected leader of the Conservative Party, therefore making him our new Prime Minister. Ha. May I point out that this is the very same politician that referred to Muslim women who wear burqas as “letter boxes” and “bank robbers”? Letter boxes...and bank robbers... Lol, you know when you’re in such disbelief at someone’s ignorance that there is nothing else to do but laugh at it... and laugh at the fact that this very same man is now our Prime Minister.
To be honest though, I’m not here to criticise Boris for all the Islamophobic comments that he has ever made. I’m here to enlighten you to the reality of the situation...which is that Boris, is actually just the tip of the iceberg. If our very own prime minister is making such comments then how can we expect better from fellow citizens? It’s like the Trump election all over again...if the majority of voters are electing an openly racist, xenophobic, sexist man to be the leader of the most powerful nation in the world then what does that say about that population? Likewise, we can ask ourselves the same question about the British population, now that Boris is prime minister. Of course, Boris wasn't directly elected by the British population. Members of the Conservative party elected him. However, if they hold the most power and still chose someone who clearly gives racists the courage and audacity to become vocal about these views, it still makes a statement about the prejudices the British population have, surely?
As I've said, Islamophobia is so much bigger than politicians making racist slurs. It has become a great cause of concern in the Western world, and has led to the deaths of many Muslims. For example, in February 2015, 3 college students were shot dead by their neighbour in their own home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. 2 of them were a married couple, Deah Barakat, 23, and Yusor Barakat, 21, whilst the third was Yusor's 19 year old sister, Razan. Likewise, in August 2016, an imam and his assistant were shot and killed execution-style on a sidewalk in Queens, New York. In March 2017 in Marseilles, France, Zak Ostmane, an openly gay 35-year-old Algerian LGBT rights activist, was kidnapped and raped by two men for "hating Trump" and "listening to black and Arabic music". Not to mention, the attack that shocked the world on 15th March 2019: the Christchurch Mosque shootings in New Zealand, in which 51 Muslims were brutally slaughtered by a self-proclaimed "racist" and "Kebab removalist". All of these tragedies are just a small fraction of the number of Islamophobic attacks that have occurred in the Western world in the last 5 years alone. If we are looking exclusively at the UK, Islamic monitor group 'Tell Mama' reported 1,201 islamophobic attacks in 2017, a 26% increase from the previous year. This was most likely a result of the growth of the far-right movement, as well as the terrorist attacks in Manchester, Westminster, London Bridge and Finsbury Park. On a more personal level, a Muslim friend of mine recounted a story of her friend who, at the age of 13, was punched on her way home from school, whilst wearing a hijab. Evidently, all of these attacks were committed out of a hatred for Muslims. NOT because all Muslims are evil jihadists, but simply because these perpetrators, who feared what they didn't understand, were unable to confront their irrational fears of Muslims in a rational manner. On top of all of this, far-right politicians seem to justify and rationalise these irrational fears by introducing anti-Muslim policies (e.g. the niqab ban in France), keeping islamaphobes stuck in their state of irrational ignorance.
As we can see, Islamophobia, just like racism and xenophobia, is driven by politics. And we need to begin to recognise it as such. According to Brian Levin, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University: "the frequency of anti-Muslim violence appeared to have increased immediately after some of Mr. Trump’s most incendiary comments become part of the political discourse". For instance, NBC News reports that after Trump launched his 'Muslim travel ban' in 2016, Muslim children became victim to racist taunts from classmates, Muslim business owners began to face savage public harassment and mosques were vandalised. Additionally, 6 days after Trump's inauguration in January 2017, a man kicked a Muslim airline worker, stating to her, “Trump is here now” and “he will get rid of all of you.” If these trends don't reveal the power that political discourse has, I don't know what will. Below is just one of many pictures of a Trump supporter sharing an Islamophobic generalisation.
The only way we can cancel out the effects of Islamophobic political discourse is by confronting our own personal prejudices. If you have an unconscious bias - towards Muslims or any demographic of people for that matter - make yourself conscious of it; question and 'deconstruct' it - a word I mentioned in the previous post. Ask yourself why you believed this stereotype to be true, then when you get to the bottom of why you think this way, re-write your way of thinking. Start to think for yourself instead of digesting what the wider system wants you to think. This is the only way to eradicate Islamophobia, and all forms of widespread prejudice.
The funny thing is, I know some of you are probably reading this thinking “Yeah, this is interesting and all... but I’m not Muslim. This doesn’t affect me, so why should I care?” My response to that kind of attitude is: As human beings, we have a duty to speak out against all social injustices, ESPECIALLY those which do not directly oppress us. As renowned physicist Albert Einstein famously said:“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” Let me put it like this if every moral individual defended those in society that are oppressed, no matter how different they are from us, we would be live in a much more fair and egalitarian world. So, the question is: are YOU going to be change that you want to see in the world?
In saying that, I'll leave you to reflect on the famous words of anti-Nazi theologian and pastor, Martin Niemöller:
RECOMMENDED READING/VIDEOS:
TedTalk about how Islamophobia has had a personal effect on the life of Suzanne Barakat and her family:
Article which discusses the link between Trump's presidential election and the rise in islamophobic attacks:
Examples/statistics of islamaphobic hate crimes: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/us/politics/hate-crimes-american-muslims-rise.amp.html
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