Looking Within and Without: The Path to Tread by Muslims (original) (raw)
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İlköğretim Online, 2021
This article focuses on the examination of prejudice against Islam and Muslim community immigrants in the Western world. The literature contained explains the anti-Muslim bigotry at the state level by multiple factors. Additionally, this article conducts a historical, descriptive, and critical analysis of Islamophobic origin, frames, enabling factors, dissemination strategies, along with its impact on the Muslim community residing in the western world. Furthermore, reasons behind the Islamophobic culture has also been mentioned and explained. Moreover, this study vastly explains the impact of pandemic-COVID 19 on spreading of Islam and Muslim hatred among the west people. Emphases have also been laid upon the strategies which should be adopted to counter attack the concept of Muslims as "Others" in the western world. The innovative role played by the Muslim leaders and Islamic world is also discussed which can contribute to fight the prejudiced mindset about Islam and its followers. Specifically, findings have suggested that in the perspective of historical importance of Islamophobia, the main cause behind it is that western world is unaware of the basic teachings and purpose of Islam. They have very limited or maybe no knowledge about the Muslims. This factor is contributing majorly in raising the hatred among west and Muslim. Due to this, Muslims are facing disastrous conditions there in the west, regarding their living standards, employment, education, or even their social interactions are highly compromised. Muslims have been labeled there as "Inferior", and "Terrorists" based just upon their physical attire i.e., men with beards and women with hijab. All these biased concepts can be eradicated if the Muslim world unites and take bold steps to spread the real message of Islam as a religion of peace, harmony, justice, and equality. Several platforms can be utilized for this purpose including social media, refining literature and educating people, through speeches at universal platforms as UN assembly.
Western Arabo-Islamophobia: Where and When Will It End?
International Journal of Islamic Thought, 2016
Islam has been under intensive ongoing crusade for centuries. It has been made into what might be called the cause of all the problems and ills that afflict the world. Every Westerner with a political axe to grind is being given centre stage to pontificate on Islam. Western political leaders have also adopted an apocalyptic discourse to ratchet up their rhetoric so as to talk in God's name of the holy struggle against evil: Islam. Attacks have, therefore, been carried out against Arabs and Muslims in the West for the one and only simple fact that they are Arabs and Muslims. Islam, in Western eyes, is thus an invalid religion that must be rooted out from the soul of the world. This paper will be seeking to rebut these allegations and claims, prove that the West's blindness to the truth has led it to perceive Islam as incompatible with the principles, prerequisites, and civil ethics of the Western world, and with the world at large. and provide evidence that it was under the sky of Islam that the human mind had most fully flourished and developed some of its choicest gifts, had most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and had found solutions for some of them which deserved the attention even of those who studied Plato and Kant. Ultimately, it will be illustrating that it is time to come out of the narrow shell of misrepresentation, hostile and oriental stereotype, parochialism and communalism, religious rancour, and politics, and illuminate the track of humanity by holding high the lamp of wisdom, by giving form and shape to the great and noble dreams that were cherished by the immortal prophets and philosophers of the past so that the whole world might declare that the light has come from the East and saved the West from doom and destruction.
Intercultural communication between the West and Islam under the spectre of islamophobia
The article is an attempt to discover the origin and causes of conflicts between Islam and other cultures and civilisations, given the fact that Islam has become the fastest spreading religion in the world 3 . The issue investigated emanates from the widespread and prevailing ideas and opinions promoted by the Western media, especially after September11 th , about Muslims representing a violent and bloody civilisation that cannot engage in intercultural dialogue. The hypothesis exists that a highly tense and unfriendly relationship prevails between the Islamic and the Western world in which Muslims are generally negatively stereotyped as violent terrorists. I considered the most efficient ways to get these two blocks into reconciliatory and friendly terms and clear out the perceptual misrepresentations of Muslims and Islam from the minds of mainstream westerners. Therefore, I questioned the possibility of coexistence of Muslims with other cultures and civilisations. The paper draws its conclusions from a qualitative analysis of various interviews carried out in the public and private sectors. In short, the conflict between Islam and the West unveils a clash of economic and political interests hidden under a clash of civilisations. 5 What do Americans think of Muslims?
• We live in difficult times. For those who care about the Muslim world, Muslim or non-Muslim, the realities that we see are deeply disturbing. No one can deny that the Muslim World is presently mired in a deep crisis. For those Muslims living in western democracies the situation is very much better but nevertheless there is the depressing reality that: o on the one hand, the religion which they love for its values and message of compassion and justice for all has, in recent decades, been hijacked by the violently extremist global movement known as Jihadi Salafism, a pastiche ideology composed of terrorism, nihilism, fundamentalism, conservatism, takfirism and Islamism o and on the other hand, many face discrimination and attacks from the extremist right-wing phobia industry and its supporters (be it phobia against Muslims, Jews, blacks, or the LGTB community) who, in their ignorance, swallow simplistic rhetoric dressed-up as analysis • In either case, be it Jihadi Salafist ideology or extremist right wing Islamophobia, both are predicated on emotional projection and deep rooted and self-referential prejudice, which shuns the complexity of the truth for the simplicity of misrepresentation and conflation. They are in agreement in their hatred for the independent thinking well educated. • Ironically, the Jihadi Salafists and the Islamophobes are in agreement in proclaiming that their narrow, proscriptive, essentialised interpretation of Islam is the only authentic understanding of the richly diverse faith of one quarter of humanity. • For them there is no possibility of congruence between universal humanistic values and Islamic values, no point of meeting between Western civilization and Islamic thought.
Islamophobia and the Question of Muslim Identity: The Politics of Difference and Solidarity
2010
He received his PhD from the University of Warwick where he studied ethnic relations and political philosophy under Professor Muhammad Anwar OBE, one of Europe's most prolific academics in this area of specialization. Dr Hellyer writes on minority-majority relations (including those in Europe, North America, Southeast Asia, and Africa), political philosophy and the interplay between religion and modernity. Presently he is completing work on his next book entitled Muslims on the Margins: Muslim Minorities in Southeast Asia, Africa and the West. The interchange between Muslims and Europe has a long and complicated history, dating back to before the idea of "Europe" itself was born, and the earliest years of Islam. There has been a Muslim presence on the European continent before, but never has it been so significant, particularly in Western Europe. With more Muslims in Europe than in many countries of the Muslim world, they have found themselves in the position of challenging what it means to be a European in a secular society of the twenty-first century. At the same time, the European context has caused many Muslims to rethink what is essential to them in religious terms in their new reality. European societies and Muslim communities, finding themselves in fascinating states of affairs, are trying to understand one another in terms of their own defining features, in the hope of finding a future of mutual benefit. These questions and issues are discussed in this work by way of progressing from one set of debates to another, as they relate to Europe, Islam, and pluralism. Each of the three parts of this work keeps in focus the dual concerns: European Muslims and Muslim intellectual perspectives; going from the general to the specific. In this direction, H.A. Hellyer analyzes the prospects for a European future where pluralism is accepted within unified societies, and the presence of a Muslim community that is of Europe, not simply in it. Hellyer argues that Europe must come to terms with all of her history, past and present and those Muslim communities should work to be integral to Europe. Divided into three parts, the book consists of seven chapters, preceded by Acknowledgements (pp. vii-ix) and followed by Notes (pp. 195-214); Bibliography (pp. 215-234); Glossary (pp. 235-237); and Index (pp. 239-246).
Full Report - The West and the Muslim World: A Conflict in Search of a Peace Process
Those involved in the Northern Ireland peace process have often looked on with a sense of déjà vu, disbelief or perhaps, sometimes, even horror at many of the errors made by Government in the management of Muslim affairs in the UK and conflicts with Muslim states around the world. Internment and forces of liberation soon becoming forces of occupation come to mind. Critically a failure to identify and deal with the problems at the heart of such conflicts can lead to increased violence rather than a successful peace process. In this context the public opinion research commissioned by governments in the UK and elsewhere have not been used as an effective tool of conflict analysis and public diplomacy. Employing methods developed in Northern Ireland this 'peace poll' identifies both problems and solutions central to relations between the West and the Muslim World. Topics covered include: Islamophobia and the 'Clash of Civilizations'; discrimination and integration; the Muslim community; relations between the West and Muslim states; extremism and the 'War on Terror'; and Muslim alienation. The international complexity of this conflict makes it very difficult to solve. Fortunately this clear and obvious point of difficulty is compensated for by the fact that there is a great deal of consensus about the solutions to this problem, at least in the UK. Hopefully that consensus will be found to extend to other states so that an international consensus can be built around the essential elements of what must necessarily become a peace process.
The Rise of Islamophobia and Religious Intolerance: A Menace to Pluralism and Global Peace
The rise of Islamophobia, religious intolerance, and racism has been a major threat to global peace and plurality. The study aims to analyse the Islamophobia literature that misinterprets religious teachings and fuels hatred and violence towards Muslim communities around the world. This is an alarming trend that must be addressed to build a more peaceful and tolerant society as the consequences of Islamophobia are damaging to global peace. Islamophobia indicates that religious intolerance is increasingly accompanied by hatred, fear, and antagonism around the globe. This article examines the trends, underlying reasons for, and consequences of religious intolerance and Islamophobia on global harmony and peaceful coexistence. Religious intolerance permeates physical and verbal assaults forging discrimination and marginalization of Muslim communities and leading to the erosion of civil liberties as well as the rise of xenophobia and social disintegration. It fuels prejudice, animosity and terrorism against Muslims, and fosters an upsurge in human rights violations, civil liberties, political turmoil and global unrest. The study presents workable measures to slow the spread of religious intolerance and Islamophobia.