Bakali, N. and Hafez, F. The Rise of Global Islamophobia in the War on Terror: Coloniality, Race and Islam
Year: 2023
Type: book-review
Abstract: Over twenty years since the events of 9/11, we have witnessed a steady increase in states adopting policies that directly impact the lives of Muslims living within them.This can be reflected by individual accounts of prejudice at the hands of state actors such as the police, border controls and public services such as education and healthcare.In other cases, it is represented by state "re-education", internment, and ethnic cleansing.Bakali and Hafez's volume opens with their respective experiences of Islamophobia: Hafez at the hands of the Austrian state and Bakali witnessing the actions of the state against the Rohingya.Both instances help lay the foundations for a book which explores how, despite the stark differences between examples, the War on Terror has "ushered in a new era of anti-Muslim bias and racism globally" (Bakali and Hafez 2022: 3).The edited collection comprises twelve nations in the Global North and South which fit into Sayyid's theatres of Islamophobia (Sayyid 2010: 3).These examples are organised according into four parts: settler societies "founded through European colonialism", "former imperial states" with "colonial histories ruling over the Muslim 'Other'", "formerly colonised states from the Global South", and lastly "global sites that have had severe manifestations of Islamophobia" (Bakali and Hafez 2022: 12-13).This emphasises that despite differing geopolitical, economic, and historical contexts, there are distinct family resemblances between the ways Islamophobia is enacted around the world in the post-9/11 reality, whether through private actors or the state.Each part of the book demonstrates the impact of the global War on Terror and the "symbiosis between institutional and interpersonal Islamophobia" (Bakali and Hafez 2022: 10).It also highlights the links between historic colonial racial logics and white supremacist ideologies to the current status quo in a range of examples.Part 1 examines Islamophobia in settler states that were founded through European colonialism, namely Canada, Australia, and the United States.These chapters allow us to observe the ways in which the colonial foundations for racialisation were laid when these states were first "settled".They also make clear how policy and the media can influence individual acts of Islamophobia by infusing it into the
Source: ReOrient
Author: Claudia Radiven
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4386490329