Islamophobia: 5 facts about the word and the harm

The term came into wide English use with a 1997 report by the Runnymede Trust in Britain, titled Islamophobia: a challenge for us all. It described unfounded hostility towards Islam and the fear and dislike of Muslims that follows.^[1] Hostility to Muslims, in Europe and elsewhere, is much older than the word.

French colonial writers were already using islamophobie in the early 20th century. The attitude it names has a longer history still: medieval Latin polemics that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, as a fraud, the wars of the Crusades, and the expulsion of the Moriscos, the Spanish Muslims who had been forced to convert, between 1609 and 1614.

A new word for an old attitude makes it easy to think the attitude is new. The fact that the word is recent says only that people lacked a short name for the thing until the late 20th century, when large Muslim communities had settled in European and American cities and the question of how to treat them became a public matter.

Muslims have argued with Christians, Jews and one another for fourteen centuries, and they welcome an honest argument about their religion. The line the term draws is between a view and a person. Criticising a belief is part of a free discussion. Treating every Muslim as a threat, or denying their rights because of their faith, is another thing.

The Quran itself sets the standard for arguing. It tells believers to argue with the People of the Book only in the best manner (29:46). It also forbids letting hatred of a people lead to injustice toward them: “be just; that is nearer to piety” (5:8).^[2] And it says God does not forbid kindness and justice toward those who have not fought Muslims over religion or driven them from their homes (60:8).^[3]

These verses give a Muslim reason to defend the right of critics to argue, and the same verses give grounds for asking critics to separate the doctrine from the neighbour who holds it. A claim that a doctrine is mistaken can be tested. A claim that a million people living in one country are all dangerous cannot be tested, and that is the difference the word is meant to mark.

On 15 March 2019 a gunman killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Mosques, schools and individuals have been attacked in many countries, and Muslim women who dress visibly have been targets of abuse. In 2022 the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 15 March the International Day to Combat Islamophobia.

New Zealand’s Royal Commission of Inquiry examined the Christchurch attack and published its report in 2020, setting out the attacker’s path and the failings in the agencies that might have noticed him.^[4] The General Assembly resolution that created the day was adopted in March 2022.^[5]

The harm also appears in routine records. In England and Wales, police figures for religious hate crime have in recent years shown Muslims as the most frequent victims in raw numbers.^[6] Not every incident reaches a police report, and recording practices differ from country to country, so the counts are a floor, and a careful reader should treat them as an indicator of scale and not as a precise measure.

The Global Terrorism Index has found that most deaths from terrorism in recent decades have occurred in Muslim-majority countries, among them Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan.^[7] Muslim scholars have condemned the attacks, among them the 2004 Amman Message and an open letter in 2014 from 126 scholars to the leader of ISIS.^[8] The picture of Muslims as the perpetrators leaves out who the victims are.

None of this denies that some attacks in Europe and North America have been carried out by people who claimed to act for Islam. That fact is real, and so is the grief of the families. The point concerns proportion and responsibility: the groups behind the largest numbers of deaths killed far more Muslims than anyone else, and the great majority of Muslims in the West have no connection with them.

The sources the scholars cite are clear. The Quran says that whoever kills a soul unjustly is as though he had killed all of humanity (5:32). The Prophet is reported to have said that a Muslim is one from whose tongue and hand other Muslims are safe.^[9] The open letter to ISIS turned those texts against the group that claimed to uphold them.

Some writers say that the term is used to shield ideas from criticism, and that it should be reserved for hatred of persons. Others say that dropping the word would hide a real and growing harm. Both positions can be held by people who agree that anti-Muslim violence is wrong.

The disagreement has been public. In 2018 a group of British parliamentarians proposed defining Islamophobia as a form of racism aimed at expressions of Muslimness, and the government declined to adopt that wording in 2019, with civil liberties campaigners and some Muslim commentators among those who objected.^[10] The main objection was that Islam is a set of beliefs, which a free society may examine, and that Muslims are not a race.

The reply from supporters is that bigotry against Muslims often attaches to names, dress or appearance, so that it is directed at people whatever they believe, and that “anti-Muslim hatred” is a plainer phrase for the same thing. Many who use that phrase and many who use the older word want the same outcome, which is protection for people and open argument about ideas.