Islamophobia: What’s in a Name?
Analysing the Discourses of Stopp Islamiseringen av Norge (Stop The Islamisation of Norway, sian)
In: Journal of Muslims in EuropeSearch for other papers by Sindre Bangstad in
Current site
Google Scholar
The term Islamophobia is not of recent vintage. However, while its origins date back to the 1910s, its current usage is relatively new, and dates back to the 1990s. It is also a heavily contested term, not only in far-right circles in the West, but also among liberal elites, and even within academia itself. In its current usage, it has a genealogy dating to the emergence of scholarly literature on ‘cultural’ and/or ‘neo-racism’ in the 1980s and 1990s. In the legal arena in Norway, the term itself consequently carries no weight whatsoever, and the very meanings of the term ‘racism’ have, until recently, been limited to classical ‘biological racism’ in a strict and narrow sense. In a landmark case before the Kristiansand Magistrate’s Court in March 2015, the court acquitted a local imam of charges of alleged ‘defamation’ of the erstwhile leader of the far-right and Islamophobic organisation Stopp Islamiseringen av Norge (Stop The Islamisation of Norway, sian), Arne Tumyr. The accused had alleged in a media interview that Tumyr and his organisation “based their activities on racism.” Thus, a Norwegian lower court had for the first accepted arguments based on ‘cultural’ or ‘new racism.’ The author of this article was an expert witness in this civil lawsuit, and this essay analyses the rhetorical representation of Islam and Muslims in the far-right and Islamophobic discourse of sian.
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1
Klug, Brian, “Islamophobia—a concept comes of age”, Ethnicities 12 (5) 2012: pp. 665-681.
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3
López, Fernando Bravo, “Towards a Definition of Islamophobia: Approximations of the Early Twentieth Century”, Ethnic and Racial Studies 34 (4) 2011: pp. 556-573.
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5
Said, Edward W., Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
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7
See Allen, Chris, Islamophobia (London: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 51-80.
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8
Allen, Islamophobia, p. 190. Allen’s definition of the term in this book is in fact substantially longer and more elaborate, but I have chosen to shorten it, since the complete definition he offers suffers from the fact that it is much too detailed and cumbersome to be practical.
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9
Bleich, Erik, “What Is Islamophobia, And How Much Is There? Theorizing And Measuring An Emerging Comparative Concept”, American Behavioral Scientist, pp. 1593, 1585.
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11
Gardell, Mattias, Islamofobi (Oslo: Spartacus, 2011), p. 17. My translation into English.
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12
Larsson and Sander, “An Urgent Need To Consider How To Define Islamophobia”, p. 15.
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13
Larsson and Sander, “An Urgent Need To Consider How To Define Islamophobia”, p. 15.
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15
See Bangstad, Sindre, Anders Breivik And The Rise of Islamophobia (London and New York: Zed Books, 2014), pp. 71-106.
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18
Sayyid, Salman, “Out of The Devil’s Dictionary”, in Thinking Through Islamophobia: Global Perspectives, p. 6.
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23
Scott, Joan W., The Politics of the Veil (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 9.
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24
Ahmad, Irfan, “In Defense of Ho(s)tells: Islamophobia, Domiphilia, Liberalism”, Politics, Religion & Ideology 14 (2) 2013, p. 238.
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25
Gullestad, Marianne, Plausible prejudice: Everyday experiences and social images of nation, culture and race (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2006).
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30
See Bjørnaas, Therese I., “Saving Muslim Women: A Feminist-Postcolonial Critique of Veiling Legislation in Norway”, Islamophobia Studies Journal 3 (1) 2015: pp. 78-89 and Døving, Cora A., “The Way They Treat Their Daughters and Wives: Racialisation of Muslims in Norway”, Islamophobia Studies Journal 3 (1) 2015: pp. 62-77.
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32
See Bangstad, Sindre, “The Weight of Words: the Freedom of Expression Debate in Norway”, Race & Class 55 (4) 2014: pp. 8-29.
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38
Wodak, The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean, p. 3.
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39
Goldberg, David T., “Racial Europeanization”, Ethnic and Racial Studies 29 (2) 2006: pp. 331-364.
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41
Sunstein, Cass, Conspiracy Theories And Other Dangerous Ideas (New York and London: Simon & Schuster, 2014); Carr, Matt, “You Are Now Entering ‘Eurabia’”, Race & Class 48 (1) 2006: pp. 1-22; Bangstad, Sindre, “Eurabia Comes To Norway”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 24 (3) 2013: pp. 369-391.
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43
Blommaert, Jan and Chris Bulcaen, “Critical Discourse Analysis”, Annual Review of Anthropology 29, p. 447.
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45
Blommaert and Bulcaen, “Critical Discourse Analysis”, p. 450.
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46
Fairclough, Norman, Discourse and Social Change (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), p. 93.
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47
See Varisco, Daniel M., Reading Orientalism: Said And The Unsaid (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007), pp. 261 and 411, footnote 126.
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49
Foucault, Michel, The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972).
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50
Wodak, The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean, p. 52.
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51
Laclau, Ernesto and Mouffe, Chantal, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London and New York: Verso, 1985).
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52
Morey, Peter and Yaqin, Amina, Framing Muslims: Stereotyping And Representation After 9/11 (Cambridge, Mass and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 3-4.
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53
Cited from Gardell, Islamofobi, p. 92. My translation from Swedish to English.
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56
Heggheim, Sander and Anne T. Nilsen, “Glad han er kalt inn som vitne”, Nrk. no. 10 April 2012.
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58
Wodak, The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean, p. 65.
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59
Christophersen, Rune, “Islam og politikerne har ansvaret for 22. juli”, Aftenposten.no, 5 June 2012.
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64
Mulhall, Joe, and Nick Lowles, The Counter-Jihad Movement: Anti-Muslim Hatred From The Margins To The Mainstream (London: Hope Not Hate, 2015), pp. 38-39.
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69
Rambøl, “Et politisk korrekt dogme”: Islamkritikeres sosiale forestilling om islamisering og en politisk korrekt offentlig sfære, p. 31.
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70
For this, see Zia-Ebrahimi, Reza, “Arab invasion” and decline, or the import of European racial thought by Iranian nationalists”, Ethnic and Racial Studies 37 (6) 2014, pp. 1043-1061 and Zia-Ebrahimi, Reza, “Self-Orientalization and Dislocation: The Uses and Abuses of the “Aryan” Discourse in Iran”, Iranian Studies 44 (4) (2011), pp. 445-472.
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73
Bjørgo, Tore, “ ‘The Invaders’, ‘the Traitors’ and ‘the Resistance Movement’: The Extreme Right’s Conceptualisation of Opponents and Self in Scandinavia”, p. 59.
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95
See Ottosen, Peder, “-Du er I godt selskap, Tumyr”, Dagbladet.no 5 July 2012.
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96
See Waagbø, Arild J., “Demoniserer muslimene”, Nettavisen.no 26 February 2009.
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102
See for example Hallaq, Wael B., Shari’a: Theory, Practice, Transformations (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 313-14 and 329.
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Islamophobia: What’s in a Name?
Analysing the Discourses of Stopp Islamiseringen av Norge (Stop The Islamisation of Norway, sian)
In: Journal of Muslims in EuropeSearch for other papers by Sindre Bangstad in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
The term Islamophobia is not of recent vintage. However, while its origins date back to the 1910s, its current usage is relatively new, and dates back to the 1990s. It is also a heavily contested term, not only in far-right circles in the West, but also among liberal elites, and even within academia itself. In its current usage, it has a genealogy dating to the emergence of scholarly literature on ‘cultural’ and/or ‘neo-racism’ in the 1980s and 1990s. In the legal arena in Norway, the term itself consequently carries no weight whatsoever, and the very meanings of the term ‘racism’ have, until recently, been limited to classical ‘biological racism’ in a strict and narrow sense. In a landmark case before the Kristiansand Magistrate’s Court in March 2015, the court acquitted a local imam of charges of alleged ‘defamation’ of the erstwhile leader of the far-right and Islamophobic organisation Stopp Islamiseringen av Norge (Stop The Islamisation of Norway, sian), Arne Tumyr. The accused had alleged in a media interview that Tumyr and his organisation “based their activities on racism.” Thus, a Norwegian lower court had for the first accepted arguments based on ‘cultural’ or ‘new racism.’ The author of this article was an expert witness in this civil lawsuit, and this essay analyses the rhetorical representation of Islam and Muslims in the far-right and Islamophobic discourse of sian.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 2939 | 334 | 12 |
| Full Text Views | 442 | 15 | 8 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 414 | 25 | 7 |