1. Islamophobia is a combination of religious, racial, and cultural oppression targeting the presence, dress, behavior, job and educational opportunities, and institutions of anyone perceived to be Muslim, Arab, or generally Middle-Eastern. For more on Islamophobia, read Paul Kivel's Challenging Christian Hegemony.
2. Islamophobia is a contrived fear or prejudice encouraged by the worldwide power structure that places the U.S. and Europe as the center of civilization. Islamophobia is designed to create a sense of fear about Muslim people and Islamic culture as another way to justify and keep in place already existing disparities in economic, political, social and cultural relations. Islamophobia is used to justify the use of violence as a tool to achieve "civilizational rehab" of communities that are presented as posing a threat (Muslim or otherwise). For more, see the University of Berkeley at California's Center for Race and Gender website.
3. Islamophobia is "unfounded hostility towards Muslims, and therefore fear or dislike of all or most Muslims." The term was coined in 1991 about Muslims in the United Kingdom (England) in particular and Europe in general, and was based on the more common "xenophobia" framework (i.e. creating fear of others). For more, see the 1991 Runnymede Trust Report.
Islam is the world's second largest religion. Muslims make up 23% of the world's population. Islam has 1.3 billion followers (compared to Christianity - 2 billion followers and Hinduism - 900 million followers.
The Muslim population in the United States is roughly the same as the Jewish population.
There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world making up 23% of the world’s population. Somewhere close to 1.6 billion of these Muslims have not committed an act of terror nor have they directly facilitated any terrorist act. The most common victim of attacks by Muslim terrorists are other Muslims.
While Islam is often associated with Arabs, Arabs make up only 15% of the world's Muslim population. The country with the largest population of Muslims is Indonesia. Large numbers of Muslims are found in Asia (69% of the population is Muslim), Africa (27% are Muslim), Europe (3% are Muslim) and other parts of the world. Millions of Arabs are Christian.
Muslims do not worship a separate God; ‘Allah’ simply means God and the roots of the Islamic, Jewish and Christian faiths are the same.
Islam has been part of our country's history since the first person was forcibly brought here for enslavement. An estimated 20–30 percent of the enslaved people forcibly taken from Africa arrived in the U.S. as Muslims. From the 1880s to 1914, several thousand Muslims immigrated to the U.S. from the Middle East. The Muslim population of the U.S. did increase dramatically in the 20th century.
Islam does not subjugate women. Most of the oppressive treatment that women receive in the Muslim world is based on local culture and traditions and/or misrepresentation of religious writing, similar to the cause of oppressive treatment of women in Christian and Jewish communities. This oppressive treatment has no basis in the faith of Islam. In fact, practices such as forced marriage, spousal abuse, and restricted movement directly contradict Islamic law governing family behavior and personal freedom and mirror Western practices of domestic violence, sexual assault, and "religiously" based gender conformity and denial of women's rights to control their own bodies. In recent history, women have been heads of state in four Islamic countries, including Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia, Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, Tansu Ciller of Turkey, and Khaleda Zia and Sheik Hasina Wazed of Bangladesh while the U.S. is only now considering a woman for that position.
INTERSECTIONALITY OF OPPRESSION: Anti-sharia/anti-”foreign law” bills are the legislative version of anti-Muslim sentiment; these laws track more closely to Voter ID and Right-to-Work bills than anti-immigration laws. The same legislators who promote these laws are also promoting anti-immigrant law, anti-abortion law, voter ID and voter "fraud protection" law, laws targeting LGBTQ communities, and other laws targeting working and poor people. In other words, the current legislative agenda is about preserving power and advancing a right-wing domestic policy agenda. See Manufacturing Bigotry.
For a list of articles, books, and videos that will help you go deeper, visit the Movement to End Racism and Islamophobia website.
For another resource on Islamophobia, check out Jewish Voice for Peace's Network Against Islamophobia.
12 SUGGESTIONS FOR CONFRONTING ISLAMOPHOBIA - click here.
We are devastated with grief for the lives lost in the shooting at the Pulse Night Club’s Latin Night. In this moment of tremendous pain, we are outraged at the media fanning the flames of Islamophobia, and the whitewashing of the victims.
The same media outlets and talking heads that are pumping out anti-Muslim sentiment were using that same platform mere weeks ago to promote extreme anti-trans ideology and stereotypes of the queer community as "bathroom bills" and hate legislation were passing.
We call on the major news networks to join Showing Up for Racial Justice to act against simplistic attacks on Arabs, Muslims, South Asians and other marginalized groups.
When there is a loss in queer communities, we feel it very deeply. SURJ was founded and is led by queer people, with a deep commitment to queer and trans liberation. LGBTQ lives are precious, and often on the line. Anti queer and trans violence is a frightening reality, and it is most likely to impact queer and trans people of color, including Muslim, Black, immigrant, and Latinx LGBTQ people.
We are heartbroken and grieving, but we will not be misled. Just as we are committed to ending homophobic and transphobic violence against our own communities, we will be working side by side with our Muslim, Arab, Persian, South & East Asian neighbors to end Islamophobia. We will continue to align ourselves with the resilient organizing of immigrant and Latinx communities in the struggle against racism and deportations.
Responses that call for more policing in LGBTQ spaces only aggravate the targeting of the most marginalized among us- specifically Black Trans and Latinx Trans women, queers of color and poor and working class queers by law enforcement, the courts and the prison system.
The pain and heartache we feel in this moment will not drive us apart. Instead, it serves as a reminder as to how important our work for shared liberation from homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, white supremacy, and other forms of oppression.
For more information about Showing Up For Racial Justice, visit the website.