Content area
Full Text
Abstract: Humankind is more interconnected now than ever before. Some celebrate this shared humanity while too many others appear fixated more on their own ethnic group, nationality, or religion. In the personal view of the author, 'islamophobia' is an ungrounded fear of something/someone that does not exist in reality and which involves a psychological projection to create 'the other' as enemy. The focus of this spirited article is on the development of 'islamophobia' out of an earlier 'syndrome' of religio-political antagonism. It is seen by the author as spreading via the mass media 'like a virus'. He argues that this phenomenon is a psychological defence mechanism involving the projection of what he refers to as 'the West's dark side' onto Islam and its followers.1
Human beings are members of a whole,
created of one essence and soul.
If one member is troubled by pain,
others suffer severe strain.
You who have no sympathy for human pain,
deserve not the name human to retain.
Sa?di (d. 1292), Gulistan (Chapter 1, Story 10)
Introduction: A Brief History of Islamophobia
Western animosity toward Islam and Muslims is not just a post 9/11 phenomenon. There are ample historical precedents. In the past, Islam and its followers became a new religio-political enemy for the Christians after most of the Middle East and North Africa, which had been under Christian Byzantine control, had come under Muslim rule in the seventh and eighth centuries. The Battle of Poitiers in 732, where the Franks defeated the invading Arabs, was still considered in the twentieth century to be the most decisive battle in early medieval European history.2 It was after this battle that a certain 'Isidorus Pacensis', an otherwise unattested eighth-century bishop of what is now Beja in Portugal, coined the term Europenses (Europeans) to describe the new identity of Christians who defeated Muslim armies in this battle.3 Islam as the 'religion of the sword' and 'the enemy other' appears to be deeply embedded both in Christendom's and the modern West's collective cultural unconscious.
Between the Battle of Poitiers and the Crusades (1095-1291), initiated by Pope Urban II, Western Europeans had little direct contact with Muslims, aside from the almost constant warfare between them in Spain and the Mediterranean. As a result, Muslims...