Critical Perspectives on Islamophobia: From Local to Global, From Individual to Institutional

Dear Colleagues,

Coined by the term ‘Islamophobia’ a little more than two decades ago, physical and violent manifestations of anti-Muslim hatred have been recurrent over that same period of time as discursive and rhetorical expressions of the same phenomenon have become increasingly normalized.

This is evident in a number of different ways. At the localized level, Islamophobia manifests as a form of hate crime targeting individuals and communities: taking in verbal abuse and threats through intimidation and violence. So too have murders and acts of terrorism been motivated by Islamophobia as indeed have attacks on mosques, Islamic schools, Muslim-run businesses, and Muslim family homes.

At the national and international levels, discursive Islamophobia is evident in the speeches of politicians and presidents: routinely homogenizing all Muslims without differentiation to vilify them as terroristic, cultural, and religious ‘threats’ to ‘us’ and ‘our’ way of life. In the context of COVID-19, so too has that threat been biological, especially among an increasingly dynamic and diversified far right that has deployed Islamophobia in recent years for both ideological and political gain.

Maybe most concerning is the proliferation of policies seemingly premised on Islamophobic thinking and understandings or which seemingly reinforce and subsequently justify much the same. From travel bans from certain Muslim-majority countries through the banning of certain forms of religious attire and places of worship to counter-terrorism and counter-extremism approaches that are seen to unduly target Muslims and their communities.

This Special Issue critically investigates Islamophobia and the complexity of its myriad manifestations and expressions: from the local to the global, from the individual to the institutional. While noting the recent turn in the scholarly study of Islamophobia, this Special Issue recognizes the need to establish a ‘critical Islamophobia studies’ canon. Accordingly, this Special Issue affords a timely opportunity to engage critically with the phenomenon of Islamophobia from different disciplinary perspectives, in different geographical locations, in different social, political, and cultural contexts, and from the perspective of the individual, familial, communal, societal, institutional, or structural. So too is the intersection and overlap of these of equal import.

We therefore invite submissions from established and early career scholars and practitioners that have the potential to contribute new critical perspectives to this salient discussion. While maintaining a necessarily broad remit, some indicative topics for investigation might include: the experience of male victims of street-level Islamophobia; discourse analyses of mainstream political rhetoric; the investigation of ‘institutional Islamophobia(s)’; Islamophobia in the context of the Global South; children’s encounters with Islamophobia; Islamophobia in the era of COVID-19; and inter-community Islamophobia, e.g., Islamophobia emanating from within Sikh and Hindu communities. Far from exhaustive, submissions may engage with any aspect of the theme of the Special Issue, whether empirically, theoretically, and/or conceptually, and be from any discipline and geographical location.

Dr. Chris Allen
Ms. Christina Verousi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Islamophobia
• hate crime
• discrimination
• political discourse
• anti-Muslim hate
• counter-terrorism
• religion
• Islam
• Muslims