Western perceptions of Islam and Islamophobia

Overview

Recall questions on Said's Orientalism, common misrepresentations, British media patterns, hate crime evidence, the response of Muslim organisations, why the term is contested, and the Welsh context.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is meant by Islamophobia?

   Model answer

   Islamophobia is hostility, prejudice or discrimination directed at Muslims or at what is taken to be Muslim, and an influential British definition describes it as a form of racism targeting expressions of Muslimness.

2. 2

   What did Edward Said argue in Orientalism?

   Model answer

   He argued that Western scholarship, art and politics constructed an image of the East as exotic, irrational, despotic and unchanging, and that this image served to define the West as its rational opposite and to justify domination.

3. 3

   Give four common misrepresentations of Islam in Western discussion.

   Model answer

   That Islam is inherently violent, that jihad simply means holy war, that Muslim women are uniformly oppressed by their religion, and that Muslims form a single bloc with one set of opinions.

4. 4

   Why is treating Muslims as one bloc inaccurate?

   Model answer

   Some two billion Muslims are divided between Sunni and Shi'a, four Sunni law schools, Sufi orders and reform movements, and are spread across cultures from Indonesia to Senegal, with the largest Muslim populations outside the Arab world altogether.

5. 5

   What patterns have been found in British media coverage of Muslims?

   Model answer

   Monitoring by the Centre for Media Monitoring has reported that a majority of articles referring to Muslims associate them with negative behaviour or contexts, and researchers have long found that coverage clusters around terrorism, extremism and cultural conflict rather than ordinary life.

6. 6

   How can political discourse contribute to hostility towards Muslims?

   Model answer

   Language linking Muslims to security threats, disputes over the veil, allegations of extremism in particular schools, and immigration rhetoric all shift the terms of public debate, and complaints of Islamophobia have been made against major British parties as well as against politicians abroad.

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