Digital Islamophobia

The rise of far-right communities on digital platforms is a global crisis. Digital Islamophobia tracks far-right groups where they are a virtual and vicious threat, exploring how these networks grow, develop, and circulate Islamophobic hate-speech on Twitter. Reconstructing this media ecosystem, Digital Islamophobia traces the reactionary political ideologies animating these groups through feminist data analytic techniques in a transnational study of German and American far-right, digitally networked users. This work illustrates far-right communities using data visualization techniques, identifies a taxonomy of user-types, analyzes themes and stories that motivate far-right users, and tracks the spread of linked forms of anti-Muslim sentiment, reactionary ideologies, and (mis)information. In doing so, Digital Islamophobia details how far-right discourse is not merely national, or even transatlantic, but increasingly transnationalized among American, German, as well as Indian and Nigerian digital networks. By tracking and tracing the contours of these far-right digital communities on Twitter and analyzing the content of their conversations, Digital Islamophobia provides policy-makers, researchers, and scholars with a potential road-map to stop them.

The early twenty-first century has experienced an unrivaled dissemination of information and misinformation about Islam, its prophet Muhammad, and its followers, largely facilitated by the fact that the tragedy of 9/11 roughly coincided with the advent of the digital age. In the first collection of its kind, Ruqayya Khan has compiled essays that treat Muhammad and the core elements of Islam as focal points in an exploration of how the digital era—including social media and other expressions—have both had an effect on and been affected by Islam. Scholars from a variety of fields deal with topics such as the 2005 cartoon controversy in Denmark and the infamous 2012 movie trailer “Innocence of Muslims” that some believe sparked the attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi, as well as how the digitization of ancient texts have allowed the origins of Islam to be studied in new ways. Other essays examine how Muhammad’s wives have been represented in various online sources, including a web comic; the contrasting depictions of Muhammad as both a warrior and peacemaker; and how the widespread distribution of “the look” of Islamic terrorists has led to attacks on Sikhs, whose only point of resemblance to them may be a full beard. These findings illuminate the role of the Internet in forms of representation, advocacy, and engagement concerning Islam and Muslims in our world today.

Muslims living in Western nations are increasingly facing overt hostility and even hate crimes, both in everyday life and in online interactions. This book examines the experience and effects of those hate crimes on the victims, their families, and their communities. Built on the first national study in the United Kingdom to examine the nature, extent, and determinants of hate crime against Muslims in the physical and virtual worlds, it highlights the relationship between online and offline attacks, especially in the globalized world. It prominently features the voices of victims themselves, which lend nuance to the accounts and make the reality of these attacks and their consequences palpable.

While Islamophobia was present in our society before 9/11, it has become more pervasive in recent years. This is evidenced by the current social and political climate, hate speech and hate crimes directed at Muslims, and the Supreme Court’s upholding of Presidential Proclamation 645 that effectively bans Muslim immigration from coming to the U.S. What does this mean for Muslim students in college, and indeed for institutions of higher education as they navigate law and policy on the one hand and adhere to their mission of achieving inclusive and equitable educational environments on the other? Two thirds of Muslims in the U.S. are vexed with current policy, and there has been an alarming increase in reports of bigotry and discrimination against them since the 2016 presidential elections. The fear of Islam, in general, and Muslims, specifically, not only compels non-Muslims to differentially treat Muslims, but also trade some of their own civil rights and civil liberties under the guise of national security. To address these issues, institutions require a nuanced understanding of laws and policies that institutionalize Islamophobia, and a greater understanding of the diverse college students that identify as Muslim. This book fills what has been a dearth of research that explores the experiences and navigation of Muslim students in colleges and universities, and addresses the even less studied domain of the experiences of Muslim students who hold multiple marginalized identities -- such as race, ethnicity, and LGBTQ status – as well as the intersection of those identities that may create multiple burdens of oppression and discrimination. This book begins by critically engaging with how current laws and policies institutionalize Islamophobia and affect the intersectionality and diversity within the Muslim community. It includes multidisciplinary voices, such as an international human rights attorney, a civil rights attorney, a criminal law attorney, student affairs practitioners, and research faculty whose work on this marginalized student population is traditionally not recognized within academic settings; and brings the voices of female Muslim scholars to the fore. Each chapter includes a critical analysis of the literature, a legal analysis when appropriate, a set of recommendations for policy and practice, and discussion questions.

This collected volume is the first to study the interface between contemporary social movements, cultural memory and digital media. Establishing the digital memory work practices of social movements as an important area of research, it reveals how activists use digital media to lay claim to, circulate and curate cultural memories. Interdisciplinary in scope, its contributors address mobilizations of mediated remembrance in the USA, Germany, Sweden, Italy, India, Argentina, the UK and Russia.

Islamophobia as a Form of Radicalisation discusses the scope and fragmented boundaries of Islamophobia as a concept and a sociopolitical reality. The fifteen chapters of this collection cover and connect interdisciplinary research, media content analysis, media discourse analysis, ethnographic research, intersectoral advocacy work, and action research conducted in Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Poland, Portugal, and Spain. Confronted with an Islamophobia that is growing as a symptom of broader societal malaise in the West, a resistance against it is also arising. It is now a question of better understanding the foundations and mechanisms of this metasolidarity and resistance. Islamophobia as a Form of Radicalisation offers recommendations for urgent consideration by Muslim citizens of Canada and Europe, media professionals, civil society and academic stakeholders, policymakers at the municipal, provincial and federal levels.

The Report is an annual report, which is presented for the first time this year. It currently comprises 25 national reports regarding each state and the tendencies of Islamophobia in each respective country.