In the contemporary socio-political context of Australia, Islamophobia continues to be haunted by the cycle of moral panics around the Muslim "Other."
The deviant, criminal, hyper-sexualised male Arab/Muslim, the "explicit" and "closet" bin Ladens, the invading hordes of "boat people" as carriers of illiberal practices that threaten the Australian "way of life," the "pack rapists," the misogynists, the queue-jumpers, the unassimilable Muslim - these are all tropes that have arisen over the last two decades and have become firmly entrenched in our national psyche.
So much so that, even now, in 2014, the phantasm of the diabolized Arab and Muslim "Other" can be conjured in a trice, whether in response to the approval of Bendigo's first mosque, or in reaction to selected Woolworths stores displaying "Happy Ramadan" signs.
As part of my ongoing doctoral research into Islamophobia, I have been investigating the subtleties that manifest across the spectrum of the phenomenon, mining deep into the attitudes and perceptions of people who harbor ingrained anti-Muslim sentiments. Time and again, I have found that Islamophobia can be explicit and it can be deeply ambiguous. It can manifest itself in the seemingly benign actions of people who are unaware of the ways in which they fetishize Islam and Muslims, and among those who consider Muslims a clandestine group attempting to subvert the nation from within.
I have interviewed people who equate Islam to Nazism, who call for abortion clinics for Muslim women, who applaud the deaths of asylum seekers and even advocate that Muslim males wear ankle braces to monitor their movements. I will confess, however, that having coffee with somebody who openly expresses that Muslims are "scum of the earth" has been just as unnerving as speaking with somebody who happily expresses the view that they are "not prejudiced, but ..."
While most Australians would balk at the views expressed by fringe anti-Muslim extremist groups, what should cause greater concern is the failure to acknowledge the everyday Islamophobia, the banal prejudice and systemic discrimination that Muslims experience.
At one extreme are the halal-kebabs-equal-conversion individuals. Such people impute sinister motives to everything connected with Muslims - from the "halal" label on a jar of Vegemite signalling an intent to convert Australia by stealth, to pregnant Muslim women being engaged in "womb jihad" by taking over Australia demographically. For such conspicuous Islamophobes, the availability of halal food in supermarkets, Eid festivals in local communities, or "Ramadan Mubarak" signs in selected Woolworths stores represent clear evidence of the "Islamification" of Australia. For them, it is only a matter of time before 2.5% of the population transforms Australia into a Muslim country.
Somewhere in the middle are the "Islam needs a Reformation" individuals. For such people, "Islamism" or "political Islam" evokes the spectre of Europe's history of puritanical Christianity. The ethnocentric assumption is that Christianity's cultural, historical and social experiences are universal, that Islam needs to be reformed and that the Christian formula for "reform" need simply be applied wholesale to Islam.
At the opposite extreme - and by far the most common sort of person I have encountered so far - is the "I'm not racist, but ..." type of Islamophobe. They can also be described as the "I can't be prejudiced because I have a Muslim friend" type. In like manner to the occasional debates we have on racism in this country, in which members of the majority pontificate about whether minorities experience racism, the patronizing language of tolerance and assimilation has punctuated conversations with those who mask their deep unease by citing they have a hijab-wearing friend, or that they enjoy Middle Eastern food, or that they have backpacked through Morocco.
Many of the people I have interviewed did not hesitate to congratulate themselves for having "no problem" with Muslim women who wear hijab, for example. They "tolerated" mosques, "didn't have an issue" with Eid festivals, were "okay with Islamic schools." Inherent in such language is the presumption of the right to tolerate or not tolerate, accept or repudiate, include or exclude. This fits within the greater narrative of the Muslim as managed subject, as guest, as negotiable citizen. And so each pronouncement of tolerance is qualified: "I don't have a problem with the hijab, but I don't approve of the face-veil," or "I don't have an issue with halal food, just as long as they follow our laws," or "Muslims can practice their religion provided they accept Aussie values."
The vast majority of the people I have interviewed consider Islam from a Western position of supposed intellectual superiority, presuming Western epistemology as a universal fact. For such people, Islamic thought and knowledge is allocated a limited space. The "West" is assumed to be the only legitimate tradition of thought capable of producing knowledge, "rationality" and "truth." Such a view precludes Muslims from meaningfully contributing to debates about human rights, democracy, citizenship, free speech and so on, unless they are subjects of the debate itself.
People I have interviewed are adamant that their criticisms of Islam and Muslims are not "Islamophobic" because, as they argue, it forms part of a robust theological debate. Indeed, Salman Rushdie, among others, has criticized the term "Islamophobia" as a "wretched concept" on the grounds that it "confuses criticism of Islam as a religion and stigmatisation of those who believe in it." This is why some people can make the incongruous claim that they "hate Islam, but love Muslims."
Contrary to popular belief, and against the claims of countless columnists and shock jocks, most Muslims are perfectly capable of engaging in serious theological debate. I've attended my fair share of interfaith events where speakers freely and robustly criticise and seek to delegitimize Islamic beliefs, but do so in a spirit of respect - respect for the incontrovertible fact that more than 1.3 billion people follow the Islamic creed, and pursue a life of peace, charity and spirituality from its teachings.
Some may argue that they do not owe followers of any religion respect when it comes to the way they critique that religion. This is an argument worth unpacking. Does lack of respect equate to Islamophobia? In my view, not necessarily. What then is the difference between respectful critique and disrespectful critique? Does it matter? For some people - shock jocks, "social commentators," academics, the billion dollar Islamophobia industry in the United States and Europe - it certainly does, as the latter approach can be financially lucrative. Disrespect is their modus operandi, their stock-in-trade. Such people do not seek a debate. They are indifferent to meaningful dialogue or the genuine exchange of ideas. They are unapologetically uninterested in seriously engaging in a sophisticated, nuanced discussion about Islam and Muslims in the West.
The difference between people who engage in respectful theological debate and those who merely hurl invective is that the former approach debate with a degree of reflexivity. They reflect on their own assumptions and preconceptions; they understand that contemporary criticisms of Islam are contingent on the historical; and they do not ignore the centuries of rivalry between Christendom and Islam which invariably informs such debates. This does not mean that they defer to the Muslim perspective. It does mean, however, that the parties are able to engage in a more constructive, reciprocal conversation. And it does mean - especially in the Australian context - there is a recognition of the role of dominant group privilege in the way conversations about Muslims as a minority are framed.
The recent insults of Prophet Mohamed by shock jock Michael Smith, for example, cannot be considered in a vacuum. Likewise, the frenzied attacks and rhetoric hurled against Uthman Badar for his cancelled talk - no matter how abhorrent the title or subject matter - at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas cannot be understood as an isolated story. These attacks belong on a continuum that stretches from before the Crusades, to post-Reformation Europe, to the emergence of Orientalist discourses in the 1700s, to European colonialism, to the present-day.
Australia, as a Western nation, cannot escape its colonial legacy, its establishment as a colonial outpost of the British Empire and its inheritance of an age-old antipathy to Islam within Christendom. It cannot escape the power dynamics between the Anglo majority and the minority community - in this case, Muslims - produced by this history. The language of a "clash of civilisations" evoked from time to time is based on this historic script.
The wilful disregard displayed by commentators to this socio-political and historical context is one of the reasons why the conversations we have about Muslims and Islam in this country are so primitive and ugly.
It is for this reason that I chose as the focus of my research to speak to people who profess to having a problem with Islam. In doing so, I followed the research of Sabine Schiffer and Constantin Wagner, who insist that the study of anti-Semitism - which similarly distinguishes between Jewry and anti-Semitism - should inform the study of Islamophobia. They argue that:
"We do not need more information about Islam, but more information about the making of racist stereotypes in general. In order to do this, it is necessary to understand that the ideas and images of a 'foreign group' say more about the group that produces them than about the group marked as the 'out group'."
What is desperately needed here in Australia is a complete transformation of the way we address Islamophobia, starting not from its victims but from those who perpetrate it. It is time to stop interrogating Muslims and start interrogating their attackers. Only then can we begin a serious conversation with those who want genuine dialogue and offer constructive critiques, having exposed the peddlers of smut and bigotry for what they always were.
Randa Abdel-Fattah is an award-winning author of eight novels. She practiced as a lawyer for ten years, and is now completing a PhD in the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University.
