Islamophobia Studies Journal

Volume 4 • Issue 1 • Fall 2017

Produced and distributed by

ISSN: 23258381 (print)EISSN: 2325839X (online)

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About the Cover The cover art work is a piece by Cartoonist Carlos Lattuf, which was commissioned by IRDP to draw attention to Trump’s instituted Muslim Ban. .

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About the ISJ The Islamophobia Studies Journal is a bi-annual publication that focuses on the critical analysis of Islamophobia and its multiple manifesta-tions in our contemporary moment.

ISJ is an interdisciplinary and multi-lingual academic journal that encourages submissions that theorizes the historical, political, eco-nomic, and cultural phenomenon of Islamophobia in relation to the construction, representation, and articulation of “Otherness.” The ISJ is an open scholarly exchange, exploring new approaches, methodolo-gies, and contemporary issues.

The ISJ encourages submissions that closely interrogate the ideo-logical, discursive, and epistemological frameworks employed in processes of “Otherness”—the complex social, political, economic, gender, sexual, and religious forces that are intimately linked in the historical production of the modern world from the dominance of the colonial/imperial north to the post-colonial south. At the heart of ISJ is an intellectual and collaborative project between scholars, researchers, and community agencies to recast the production of knowledge about Islamophobia away from a dehumanizing and sub-ordinating framework to an emancipatory and liberatory one for all peoples in this far-reaching and unfolding domestic and global process.

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Advisory Board Hishaam Aidi Members School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, Global Fellow at the Open

Society Foundation.

Zahra Billoo Executive Director, CAIR San Francisco Bay Area Chapter (CAIR-SFBA).

Sohail Daulatzai Program in African American Studies and Department in Film & Media Studies, University

of California, Irvine.

Nadia Fadil Katholieke Universiteit Leuven-Belgium, Sociology Department, Catholic University of

Leuven.

Sr. Marianne Farina Theology Department, Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology.

Jess Ghannam Psychiatry and Global Health Sciences, School of Medicine, University of California, San

Francisco.

Sandew Hira International Institute of Scientific Studies, Amsterdam, Holland.

Suad Joseph Department of Anthropology and Women and Gender Studies, University of California,

Davis.

Monami Maulik Founder and Executive Director of DRUM (Desis Rising Up & Moving).

Mahan Mirza Zaytuna College, Berkeley, California.

Tariq Ramadan Oxford University and Director of Research Centre of Islamic Legislation and Ethics, Doha,

Qatar.

Junaid Rana Program in Asian American Studies and Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois,

Urbana-Champaign.

S. Sayyid University of Leeds, United Kingdom.

Imam Zaid Shakir Islamic Law and Theology, Zaytuna College.

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Editorial Board Hatem Bazian Members Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project, University of California, Berkeley.

Maxwell Leung Grinnell College and California College of the Arts.

Munir Jiwa Center for Islamic Studies, Graduate Theological Union.

Rabab Abdulhadi Race and Resistance Studies, San Francisco State University.

Ramon Grosfoguel Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

Editorial Staff Paula Thompson Members Copy Editor, University of California, Berkeley.

Susette L. Aguilar Copy Editor, University of California, Berkeley.

Hajira Qazi Document Formatting, Maymoon Design.

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Disclaimer:Statements of fact and opinion in the articles, notes, perspectives, etc. in the Islamophobia Studies Journal are those of the respective authors and contributors. They are not the expression of the editorial or advisory board and staff. No representation, either expressed or implied, is made of the accuracy of the material in this journal and ISJ cannot accept any legal responsibility or lia-bility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The reader must make his or her own evalu-ation of the accuracy and appropriateness of those materials.

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Table of Contents Editorial Statement: Trump and the Collapse of Neoliberal Economic Order! Hatem Bazian and Maxwell Leung 9-12

An Editorial Note to Readers 13-16

Understanding Islamophobia in Asia: The Cases of Myanmar and MalaysiaMohamed Nawab Bin Mohamed Osman 17-36

Surveillance, Islamophobia, and Sikh Bodies in the War on TerrorKaty P. Sian 37-52

Institutionalising Islamophobia in Switzerland: The Burqa and Minaret BansVista Eskandari and Elisa Banfi 53-71

Can Muslims Fly? The No Fly List as a Tool of the “War on Terror”Uzma Jamil 72-86

Racializing “Oriental” Manliness: From Colonial Contexts to CologneZuher Jazmati and Nina Studer 87-100

From Orientalist Sexual Object to Burkini Terrorist Threat: Muslim Women through Evolving LensSana Tayyen 101-114

Reading History into Law: Who Is Worthy of Reparations? Observations on Spain and Portugal’s Return Laws and the Implications for ReparationsJinan Bastaki 115-128

Islamophobia as a Deterrent to Halal Global TradeBarbara Ruiz-Bejarano 129-146

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Editorial Statement Trump and the Collapse of Neoliberal Economic Order!

The string of right-wing political parties gaining the upper hand in elections across Europe and now joined by Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. election points to a much bigger phenomenon: the collapse of the neoliberal economic and political order. Consequently, focus-ing on each election outcome across Europe and the U.S. misses the overall global picture and the economic, political and social trends that are at work, which are transforming the world as we know it. Debating the massive influx of immigrants from the global south and from war-torn countries, loss of jobs and decline in income levels in the global north and the rapid demographic shifts caused by them masks the real causes behind them.

The economic and political instability across the global south was brought about by policies that have been put in place over a long period of time. These policies were supported by liberal and con-servative parties alike in the U.S. and Europe with devastating impacts across the globe. Political elites across the globe bought into a neoliberal economic model that called for privatization, leveraged financing, expanded public debt, de-regulation, free movement of capital and a manufacturing shift to countries that provided the cheapest labor cost and fewest environmental protection guidelines. Overseeing this neoliberal order was the World Bank and the IMF, the structural bouncers for the global financial system.

In a short period of time, the neoliberal economic and political mod-els became the effective blueprint for every country seeking to enter into the global market. Entry into the global market meant disrup-tions to the local industry and economy, as well as increased depend-ence on multi-national corporations for downstream assembly jobs and opportunities. More than anything else, the global market was driven by trickle-up economics to the Northern Hemisphere, and a financial pipeline was set up that sucked every possible penny from the Southern Hemisphere. Neoliberal economic and political order translated into massive uprooting of work force which was coupled with the intrusive long arm of Northern Hemisphere agribusiness that laid claim to vast arable lands and the displacement of farmers from ancestral lands.

By disrupting industry and agriculture in the Southern Hemisphere, the multi-national corporations from the global north—which were supported by political elites in the North and corrupt elites in the South—created the conditions that resulted in civil and regional wars. Even when we think of the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, the real stimulus for conflicts in the region centers on oil and natural gas first and foremost, which gets masked by a fictitious and fomented religious tension. Furthermore, the U.S. intervention in

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Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are intertwined with oil interest and the desire to limit China’s access to this most valuable and strategic resource.

The economic destruction in the global south translated into an immigration wave to the North. In addition, the neoliberal eco-nomic project led to an intensification of political instability that fed existing cleavages in the global south and caused an eruption of civil and regional wars centered on existing natural resources. Neoliberal globalization translated into a globalized trail of conse-quences, including black market arms trade, violence and the emer-gence of both state-sponsored and independently commissioned terrorism. The competition among the major players in the neolib-eral economic order gave birth to the chaos and instability on the periphery with each state attempting to situate itself in a survival of the fittest type of discourse in a highly distorted market.

In similar ways but outwardly different, the neoliberal economic and political order had devastated working-class communities and blue-collar jobs across the global north. As jobs were shifted offshore, the pressure on domestic workforce was to give in to corporate demands for reduced wages, longer work schedules and scales of efficiency that translated into higher profit margins for corporations. Yes, technological innovations did play a role in some parts of the econ-omy, but the shifting of the jobs was a feature that impacted all types of jobs, including those that are in the technology sector itself since manufacturing pursued cheap labor overseas.

Closing factories, reducing jobs and reducing real income in Europe and the U.S. had its mirror image in uprooting people from vast farm lands, destroying incipient industry, consolidating domination over natural resources and cementing oppressive political order in the global south. Facilitating ease in capital investments from the U.S. and Europe into Southern Hemisphere economies meant mas-sive human dislocation and a pipeline of immigrants and refugees heading up to the North. Investments that were intended to increase the profit margins of multi-national corporations and capitalize cen-tral bank balance sheets in the U.S. and Europe is the primary driv-ing engine behind the chaos underway across the globe, including the global north.

The collapse of the neoliberal economic and political order is visible across the global south, and the outcome has ushered in civil wars, military coups, ethnic and religious strife with hundreds of thou-sands, if not already millions, dead. Europe and the U.S. witnessed the loss of jobs, cyclical recessions, almost a depression level of loss in manufacturing and massive influx of immigrants and war refu-gees. The economic hardship meeting an influx of immigrants and

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refugees produced the needed subjectivity to marshal the xenopho-bic forces to the ballot box. Adding to the above, Europe’s and the U.S.’s resort to military intervention so as to cement hegemonic con-trol of oil, natural gas and market shares in the Middle East and Africa added to the call to vote.

The election results in the U.S. and Europe over the past few years should be seen as a distorted response to the global crisis. Attempts to solve the problem by building walls, increased deportation and making immigration or human movement more difficult addressed the symptoms and not the real causes behind the crisis. Also, prom-ising to bring back manufacturing jobs and massive infrastructure spending will create the illusion of problem solving since the under-pinnings of the real crisis will not be touched. Furthermore, President Trump has already ushered to the financial sector his readiness to remove whatever weak regulations that were put in place after the 2008 financial sector collapse.

Trump’s economic proposals, if adopted, and I have the feeling that they will rapidly be pushed through Congress and the Senate, will produce a much more accelerated level of wealth concentration. The infrastructure spending will be carried out on the basis of debt financing that will be a boon to the banking industry, which is ready once again to leverage the economy for the benefit of the few. Furthermore, cutting corporate taxes and reducing the rates paid by the rich will re-introduce the discredited theory of trickle-down eco-nomics, which will end up costing jobs in the long run and creating another major financial crisis in few years from today.

The neoliberal economic order was cooked up in the global north, wedded into corrupt and militarized elites in the global south and produced the unfolding chaos across the world. Trump and extreme right-wing political parties across Europe are promising to bring about economic change to the middle and working class and the poor, but don’t hold your breath on such promises since this train has come around before and it left devastation and broken lives across the globe.

What is certain is that the rich will get even more obscenely rich, and the poor and the working class will be sold downstream again as a commodified product to be auctioned during election time. The whole edifice being constructed by right-wing parties and politi-cians is centered on monetizing working class pain and suffering into votes and seats of power, and then coming back and robbing the same people again. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. The neoliberal economic order is the problem, and shifting the blame or racializing the causes by targeting immigrants

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and Muslims is a right-wing game intended to prevent a real change from taking shape.

Hatem Bazian University of California, Berkeley Co-Founder, Zaytuna College

Maxwell Leung California College of the Arts

An Editorial Note to Readers

Understanding Islamophobia in Asia: The Cases of Myanmar and Malaysia

Mohamed Nawab Bin Mohamed OsmanNanyang Technological University, Singapore

Abstract: In June 2013, Alvin Tan, a prominent Malaysian blogger, posted on Facebook a picture of his girlfriend and himself eating bak kut teh (pork) with the caption “Selamat Berbuka Puasa” (Happy Breaking Fast). The duo had described the dish as “wangi, enak, menyelerakan” (fragrant, delicious, appetizing) and also included a “Halal” logo. During the same month, Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar faced one of the community’s worst persecution acts, with several hundred people murdered by Buddhist religious zealots inspired by extremist Buddhist monks. These are but some examples of Islamophobia in Asia. Buddhist nationalist groups such as the Bodu Bala Sena in Sri Lanka and the 969 Movement in Myanmar have encouraged the anti-Muslim violence. In India, the rise of the Hindu nationalist movement has seen the forced conversion of Muslims and increased incidences of violence against Muslims. Despite this endemic rise of Islamophobia, there has been little academic research conducted on Islamophobia in Asian countries. This is contrasted by the trends of Islamophobia as a phenomenon being well-documented in the West. The rise in terror attacks within Europe, the refugee crisis on the same continent, and the strengthening of the right-wing nationalist parties has resulted in the rise of Islamophobia in Europe and North America. This article seeks to better understand Islamophobia in the Asian context through the case studies of Myanmar and Malaysia. It argues that Islamophobia in these countries is largely the result of domestic socio-economic and political issues, rather than the international narrative against Islam and Muslims. There are three parts to this article: first, the discourse against Islam in both countries will be examined. Second, the factors that caused the rise of Islamophobia in both Myanmar and Malaysia will be looked at. Historical ethnic tensions, economic gaps between different communities, state-initiated religious persecution and the rise of right-wing religious organizations will be discussed in this regard. This section will postulate the view that Islamophobia can occur within countries such as Malaysia, especially when the minority groups are dominant in the economic sphere. The article will conclude by analyzing whether the manifestation and raison d’être of Islamophobia in Asia is different from the West. The outcome of the inquiry will provide useful analytical tools in studying Islamophobia within the Asian context.

Keywords: Malaysia, Islamization, Buddhist extremism, 969 Movement

Surveillance, Islamophobia, and Sikh Bodies in the War on Terror

Katy P. SianUniversity of York, Heslington

Abstract: In the aftermath of 9/11, there has been a wave of intensified surveillance throughout Western democracies in the moral panic surrounding national security. This article will explore the way in which Sikh bodies have become problematized against the backdrop of harsher profiling and

policing measures directed at racialized populations. Based upon empirical data, including a series of semi-structured interviews with Sikh respondents carried out in Canada and the US, the article will examine the experiences of Sikhs post-9/11 through critical race and postcolonial conceptual frameworks, as a way to understand the processes by which they have been governed and regulated in the landscape of an obsessive monitoring of ‘suspicious’ brown bodies.

Keywords: Sikhs, 9/11, surveillance, Islamophobia, racialization, orientalism

Institutionalising Islamophobia in Switzerland: The Burqa and Minaret Bans

Vista EskandariUniversité de Genève, Switzerland

Elisa BanfiUniversité de Genève, Switzerland

Abstract: This article aims to analyse the legislative processes leading to forbidding the wearing of burqas and the building of minarets in Switzerland by a postcolonial approach. In 2009, a federal popular initiative amended the Swiss constitution by forbidding the construction of minarets across the Helvetic territory. At the same time, several right-wing parties have attempted to pass a general prohibition of the burqa in public spaces since 2006. As a consequence, in 2013, the canton of Tessin has adopted an article prohibiting the face covering in public spaces and, in 2016, a popular initiative for the ban of the burqa in the whole country was launched. Starting from the content analysis of parliamentary debates and legislative documents concerning these bans, hegemonic and Eurocentric narratives excluding Muslims from the national community will be examined. The article also aims at casting a new light on the interlinkages between Swiss direct democracy, populism and Islamophobia. Furthermore, the exploitation of gender aimed at reinforcing Islamophobic narratives will be analysed. In both the minarets and the burqa ban cases, the image of women has played a crucial role in justifying the right-wing discourse on Muslims and Islam in Switzerland. On the one hand, the minarets ban has occupied the Swiss public space by a propaganda poster showing a woman wearing a burqa in front of minarets erected like missiles on top of a Swiss flag. On the other hand, the burqa ban articulated its campaign around the defence of freedom and women’s right as Swiss traditional values. By deconstructing political and legislative arguments against burqa and minarets, the article shows how they have encouraged the legitimacy of public Islamophobic discourses and fostered a crystallised and undifferentiated representation of the Muslims’ presence in Switzerland.

Keywords: Islam, Islamophobia, burqa, minaret, Switzerland

Can Muslims Fly? The No Fly List as a Tool of the “War on Terror”

Uzma JamilDawson College, Canada

Abstract: The securitization phenomenon is based on a racialized logic that predates 9/11 and has roots in the discourse of Orientalism, the practices of European colonialism and, in the more recent times of the 20th century, the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II. This article analyzes the “no fly list” as a counter-terrorism tool used by the Canadian government in the “war on terror.” It situates the analysis in the political context of the securitization of Muslims, the social and political processes that construct them as threats to the nation. It examines the evolution of the “no fly list” since 2001 and analyzes its impact on Muslims in Canada, drawing on well-publicized cases. It critiques the list’s effectiveness based on the distinction between information and knowledge as tools to fight the “war on terror.” The “no fly list” contributes to Islamophobia through disproportionately profiling racialized Muslim and Muslim-looking passengers as members of a suspect community.

Keywords: Muslims, war on terror, securitization, racial profiling, Islamophobia

Racializing “Oriental” Manliness: From Colonial Contexts to Cologne

Zuher JazmatiUniversity of Marburg, Germany

Nina StuderUniversity of Zurich, Geneva

Abstract: We propose a co-authored, interdisciplinary paper examining the durability of Islamophobic stereotypes connected to men from the MENA region and their specific forms of “manliness”. We argue that European notions of “Oriental” manliness – covering all ethnic and religious groups from this region – were strangely homogenized and static: the colonized “Oriental” manliness was constructed as the “primitive” counterpart to an idealized form of European masculinity. The significant markers of “Oriental” manliness, as defined in the 19th century, were still essentially the same in the 1960s, when Frantz Fanon wrote that his contemporaries had solidified (but not founded) the idea of North African men as “born slackers, born liars, born thieves, born criminals”.1 The events in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015 went viral worldwide. Right-wing groups felt vindicated when the public discourse seemed to confirm their narrative of North African, sexually uncontrolled men. A lot of the media coverage following the events in Cologne overlapped with right-wing (and colonial) notions of wild North African men, who are in Europe in order to sexually threaten the white female body. Following the assaults in Cologne, this anxiety was not just limited to women in Germany, but extended across much of Europe. To analyze this alleged durability, we propose to divide our paper into a historical part, which will give a short overview over the formulaic metaphors, images and knowledge production of colonized “Oriental” manliness. In our contemporary analyses, we will trace the harmful longevity of these colonial stereotypes, from the Victorian epoch to the sensationalist reports following the recent incidents in Cologne. We will use pictures from German (and other European) public media depicting the incidents in Cologne and analyze how they reproduced the longstanding anti-Muslim-racist stereotypical image of and knowledge on the North African masculine subject.

Keywords: colonialism, media studies, gender, violence, critical masculinity

From Orientalist Sexual Object to Burkini Terrorist Threat: Muslim Women through Evolving Lens

Sana TayyenUniversity of Southern California, USA

Abstract: Muslim women in Western societies have found themselves caught in a discourse that politicizes them or depicts them through twisted narratives. Crafters of these narratives utilize media, literature, political rhetoric and government policies, to portray Muslim women through lenses that aim to define who they are, not by their own definitions as Muslim women but by the definitions of those who intend to shape society for political or social gains. These lenses have evolved through time, particularly since in the context of historical events and societal realities such lenses cannot seemingly be true for all Muslim women, at all times. Hence, with new images and information that shape our realities, the lenses by which Muslim women have been defined have also shifted and evolved with the changing of historical events. In this article, I outline four historical lenses: (1) lens of sexual objectivity; (2) lens of backwardness and ignorance; (3) lens of domination and subjugation; and the most current lens which we can analyze today in the here and now, (4) the lens of fear and threat. This final lens entails unwarranted associations made between the evil of ISIS terrorism and the innocent play of Muslim women on French beaches. This lens feeds into the greater attitude of Islamophobia. The fear which is broadcast through the media is a fear against a Muslim encroachment that subverts Western values and ways of living. Muslim women voices are silent in these perceptions. Hence, the dominating voice comes from those who hold power through media, government, or education. They are the ones choosing and crafting the narratives and perspectives, defining Muslim women, and Muslims in general, as a threat to Western Democracy and Liberalism.

Keywords: Muslim women, colonial feminism, Western representations, Islamic veil, empowerment

Reading History into Law: Who Is Worthy of Reparations? Observations on Spain and Portugal’s Return Laws and the Implications for Reparations

Jinan BastakiSchool of Oriental and African Studies, UK

Abstract: In 2015, both Portugal and Spain passed similar laws offering Sephardic Jews their respective citizenships to redress the historic wrong of their persecution and expulsion under the Inquisition. Portugal and Spain are now the only other countries in the world to have a return law for the Jewish people, in addition to Israel—albeit limited to Sephardic Jews. Given the underlying reasons for the passing of this law, it is notable that Iberian Muslims, who were also expelled, have no recourse for redress—not even symbolically. While remedies can be limited under international law, this article explores the relationship between the historical narrative of the Arab/Muslim occupiers, the current popular portrayal of Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula, and the relationship between the absence of reparations and current discrimination against groups.

Keywords: reparations, historic injustice, Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism, Moors, inquisition

Islamophobia as a Deterrent to Halal Global Trade

Barbara Ruiz-BejaranoUNESCO-UA Chair “Islam, Culture and Society”

University of Alicante, Spain

Abstract: Islamophobia continues to be on the rise in Europe and other regions, such as Australia, Canada and the United States. It is now a global phenomenon which has multiple manifestations and is generated at different layers of society, and does not only affect citizens1 in non-Islamic countries, but has recently shown a new expression: the target has shifted towards Islamic economies, and more specifically towards the halal trade. Emerging economies in the region of Asia-Pacific and the Gulf are net importers of halal products (particularly foodstuff), which, paradoxically, are produced in non-Islamic economies. A report commissioned by the Dubai government, and researched and written by Thompson Reuters and Dinar Standard,2 valued the halal food and beverage (F&B) market at US$ 1.37 trillion in 2014. That represented 18.2% of the total global F&B market. In addition, the youthful population of the Muslim world – with 60% under the age of 30 – indicates that demand for halal products and services is likely to continue its upward growth curve and become an increasingly influential market over the next decade. This tremendously attractive market niche, combined with the slow growth of the economies of Europe, Canada, Australia and the United States, has prompted many industries to seek halal certification and to adapt their products and services to the requirements of Muslim consumers worldwide, including the significant minorities already living outside Islamic economies.3 However, some newcomers to the halal global market have found that there is another obstacle to overcome, apart from those already present in global trade: Islamophobia. In this article, I will explore the many expressions of Islamophobia aimed at stopping the growth of the halal market, and the different policies and attitudes of governments and institutions when confronted with the need to balance economic growth with cultural misunderstandings and hatred. I found systematic attempts to undermine the halal food industry made by some European Members of Parliament, claims of animal cruelty sparked by animal rights groups, bans on halal sacrifice in the meat industry, the “boycott-halal” on-line campaign, alleged funding of terrorism, threats and other expressions of hatred that have managed to prevent many businesses from accessing the emerging halal market.

Keywords: Islamophobia, trade, halal, boycott