‘Islamophobia Kills’. But Where Does it Come From?

Abstract

This paper examines the global provenance of Australian Islamophobia in the light of the Christchurch massacre perpetrated by a white-supremacist Australian. Anti-Muslim racism in Australia came with British imperialism in the nineteenth century. Contemporary Islamophobia in Australia operates as part of a successor empire, the United States-led ‘Empire of Capital’. Anti-Muslim stories, rumours, campaigns and prejudices are launched from Australia into global circulation. For example, the spate of group sexual assaults in Sydney over 2000–2001 were internationally reported as ‘ethnic gang rapes’. The handful of Australian recruits to, and supporters of, IS, is recounted in the dominant narrative as part of a story propagated in both the United Kingdom and Australia about Islamist terrorism, along with policy responses ostensibly aimed at countering violent extremism and targeting Muslims for surveillance and intervening to effect approved forms of ‘integration’.

Islamophobia, Antisemitism, Zionism, Settler Colonialism

“…It has become a veritable laboratory of global Islamophobic practices (Islamopohbia is certainly not new in Australia-historical anxieties surrounding the presence of "Afghans" in its center, and the foundational mythology of Anzac and Gallipoli are two constitutive moments in this history). 36 Islamophobia in Australia has been crucial to a comprehensive political realignment since the early 2000s, a key ideological ingredient in the official discontinuation of multiculturalism and the implementation of what Scott Poynting and Victoria Mason have called the "new integrationism." 37 Multiculturalism had replaced the White Australia policy since the 1970s, but Islamophobia is now one of White Australia's new discursive dresses (Sinophobia is another).…”

Muslim Community Organizations’ Perceptions of Islamophobia: Towards an Informed Countering Response

“…One discusses Islamophobia in reference to the national politics of multiculturalism (Briskman 2015;Briskman and Latham 2017;Poynting 2015;Bouma 2011;Hage 2011;Poynting and Mason 2008;Peucker and Akbarzadeh 2012). The other discusses Islamophobia in reference to Australia's history of white European colonialism and its current connections to the US and the UK (Poynting 2019;Abdel-Fattah 2017;Busbridge 2017;Hage 1998;Stratton 2016). The underlying argument of both strands is that Australia's liberal democracy guarded by a policy of multiculturalism cannot abandon its racial hierarchy towards migrants, especially "third world" countries, since it is founded on a white Christian colonial history.…”

“…These processes, from an earlier empire, predate the existence of the Australian nation state". Indeed, Australia's connections to the British empire and similar white settler societies, such as the US and Canada, as well as its colonial history, are influential in forging a unified perception of a "white land" or, in Poynting's (2019) term, "an empire" that is threatened by the existence of "others". In this light, MCOs perceive Islamophobia as racism ingrained within the status quo due to white privilege.…”

“…These efforts attempt to elevate and analyze Muslims' perceptions of Islamophobia to inform future anti-Islamophobia policies and countering strategies. Perhaps it is beneficial to look at examples from the UK and Europe, since Australia's history of white European colonialism and its current connections to the US and the UK informs its public culture and its national forms of Islamophobia (Poynting 2019;Abdel-Fattah 2017;Busbridge 2017;Hage 2011). For example, in an effort to institutionalize a long-relegated phenomenon at the level of the UK government, the All-Parliamentary group on British Muslims (APPG 2018, p. 11) conducted two years of consultations with the UK Muslim community and organizations to propose a definition of Islamophobia: "a type of racism that targets expression of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness".…”

“…On the other hand, the shocking but expected terrorist attack on praying Muslims at Christchurch in 2019, by an extremist far-right, has emphasized the urgency to listen more carefully to Muslims' voices. It is the dismissal of Muslims' voices who have spoken of the danger of mainstreaming and legalizing anti-Muslim racism through politicians' rhetoric and policies that has led to Christchurch massacre (Choudhury 2018;Hage 2019;Herrera and Sabaratnam 2019;Malik 2019;Poynting 2019;Abdel-Fattah 2019).…”