Search Results (4)

The Introduction to this Special Issue on ‘“Love Jihad”: Sexuality, Reproduction and the Construction of the Predatory Muslim Male’ provides a theoretical overview and suggests an analytical lens for how to understand “Love Jihad” and related notions of Islamization through marriage, sexuality, and reproduction. We define “Love Jihad” as the notion that Muslim men intentionally and strategically allure and entrap non-Muslim women with the intent to marry and convert them to Islam as part of an Islamization project. We suggest a two-fold understanding of the concept of “Love Jihad”. First, the concept needs to be understood as a globalizing trope, originating from India and spreading to a wide range of cultural and national contexts across the world. Second, we propose to understand the specific term “love jihad” beyond its referential specificity, and thereby broadening it into an analytical concept for exploring related concepts (such as “sexual jihad” and “demographic jihad”), as well as related notions of Muslim men as sexual predators (in certain geographical settings known as “rapefugees”). We therefore include in our analysis related notions such as Islamic womb fare, “grooming”, “The Great Replacement”, and “unethical conversion” in marriage where they relate to flows of gendered nationalist imaginaries of the Muslim “Other”. The aim of this Introduction—as well as the Special Issue—is to contribute to the study of Islamophobia as a global phenomenon and to deepen our understanding of the gendered imaginaries of anti-Muslim nationalist formations across the world. Full article

In the last 10 years, we have seen an increased frequency of fear and criticism of Islam and Muslims in the Czech media scene. Even though the percentage of Muslims in the Czech Republic is tiny (approx. estimate is 0.2%), there are active groups and movements in the country that seek to stop the spread of Islam in the Czech Republic, and the discussion of threats from Muslims routinely permeates political statements. A very common argumentation of Czech anti-Islamic claims uses the presentation of jihad as evidence of the danger that threatens the Western world from Muslims. The most widespread understanding of this phenomenon still presents jihad as armed violence against non-Muslims, which is supposed to be clear evidence of the warlike and violent nature of Islam. However, in the Czech-language milieu in recent years, there have also been descriptions of other forms of so-called “creeping” or “stealth” jihad. The article focused on the analysis of the concepts of “population jihad” or “demographic jihad”, violent “sexual jihad”, “womb jihad” or “wombfare”, and the so-called “great replacement” as presented on websites, radio, and social networks by the authors of the Czech-language anti-Islamic milieu. The present text thus illustrated the use of interpretations of sexual and demographic jihad to rationalize the fear and hatred of Muslims and Islam in the Czech Republic. Full article

This article traces the transnational flows of constructions of the hypersexualized Muslim male through a comparative analysis of love jihad in India and the specter of grooming gangs in the UK. While the former is conceived as an act of seduction and conversion, and the latter through violent rape imaginaries, foregrounding both of these narratives are sexual, gender, and family dynamics that are integral to the fear of demographic change. Building upon these narratives, this study analyzes how influential women in Hindu nationalist and European/North American far-right milieus circulate images, videos, and discourses on social media that depict Muslim men as predatory and violent, targeting Hindu and white girls, respectively. By positioning themselves as the daughters, wives, and mothers of the nation, these far-right female influencers invoke a sense of reproductive urgency, as well as advance claims of the perceived threat of, and safety from, hypersexualized Muslim men. This article illustrates how local ideological narratives of Muslim sexuality are embedded into global Islamophobic tropes of gendered nationalist imaginaries. Full article

Since 2013, India has seen a remarkable growth of a conspiracy theory known as “love jihad”, which holds that Muslim men conspire to lure Hindu women for marriage to alter India’s religious demography as part of a political takeover strategy. While earlier scholarship on “love jihad” emphasizes the Hindu nationalist propagation of this conspiracy theory, this article pays equal attention to its appeal among conservative Hindus. Making its point of departure in the generative effects of speech, it argues that the “love jihad” neologism performs two logical operations simultaneously. Firstly, it fuses the long-standing Hindu anxiety about daughters marrying against their parents’ will, with the equally long-standing anxiety about unfavorable religious demographic trends. Secondly, it attributes a sinister political takeover intent to every Muslim man who casts his eyes on a young Hindu woman. To bring out these points, this article pays equal empirical attention to marriage and kinship practices as to the genealogy of, and forerunners to, the “love jihad” neologism, and develops the concept of “sound biting” to bring out its meaning-making effect. Full article