islamophobia and racism in the modern-colonial

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ISSN: 1540-5699. © Copyright by Ahead Publishing House (imprint: Okcir Press). All Rights Reserved.

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ARCHITECTURE

Journal of theSociology of Self-

A Publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics)

Any discussion of Islamophobia todayhas to depart from a discussion about thecartography of power of the “world-sys-tem” for the past 500 years. If we under-

stand the “modern world-system” as a global inter-state system organized solely interms of an international division of labor,Islamophobia would then be an epiphenom-

Ramón Grosfoguel is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and a SeniorResearch Associate of the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris. He has published on the political economy of theworld-system and on Caribbean migrations to Western Europe and the United States. His most recent book is ColonialSubjects: Puerto Ricans in a Global Perspective (University of California Press, 2003). Most recently he was co-editor,

with Eric Mielants, of a special issue of the International Journal of Comparative Sociology (Vol. 47, Aug. 2006) on Minor-ities, Racism and Cultures of Scholarship. Eric Mielants is Assistant Professor in Sociology in the College of Arts andSciences at Fairfield University. He has written articles and essays on racism, social theory and contemporary migra-tion issues. His book, The Origins of Capitalism and the ‘Rise of the West’, is forthcoming from Temple University Press.From the authors: The present volume is the result of an international conference on “The Post-September 11 NewEthnic/Racial Configurations in Europe and the United States: The Case of Islamophobia” that we organized at theMaison des Sciences de l’Homme (MSH) in Paris on June 2-3, 2006. We would like to acknowledge our gratitude tothe past and present Director of the MSH: Prof. Maurice Aymard and Prof. Alain d'Iribarne. Both have been crucial tothe success of the conference. We are grateful for their generous support.

The Long-D urée Ent anglement Betw een

I sl amophobi a and Raci sm i n t he M odern/Coloni al

Capit al i st /Patri archal Worl d-Syst em

An Introduction

Ramón Grosfoguel and Eric Mielants

University of California at Berkeley • Fair field University

Special Issue Guest Co-Editors––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

[email protected] • [email protected]

Abstract: The first part of this essay discusses Islamophobia as a form of racism in a world-his-torical perspective. The second part is a discussion of Islamophobia as a form of cultural racism.The third part is on Islamophobia as Orientalism. The fourth part is Islamophobia as epistemicracism, while the final part is an example of this using the case of European Islamic Philosopherand Theologian, Tariq Ramadan. It is argued that Islamophobia as a form of racism against Mus-lim people is not only manifested in the labor market, education, public sphere, global waragainst terrorism, or the global economy, but also in the epistemological battleground about thedefinition of the priorities in the world today. The essay then briefly introduces the contributionsof each scholar gathered in this issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Sel f-Knowl-

edge (Walter D. Mignolo, Farish A. Noor, Thomas E. Reifer, Abdulkader Tayob, Manuela Boatcã,and Madina Tlostanova) and elaborates on how they have attempted in different ways toaddress some of the issues raised above. The volume, of which this is an introduction, is theresult of an international conference on “The Post-September 11 New Ethnic/Racial Configura-tions in Europe and the United States: The Case of Islamophobia” that was organized by theauthors at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (MSH) in Paris on June 2-3, 2006.



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enon of the political-economy of the world-system and, in particular, of the ceaseless ac-cumulation of capital on a world-scale.However, if we shift the geopolitics and body-politics of knowledge from a Northoriented gaze of the world-system towards aSouth oriented view, we get a different pic-ture of the global cartography of power.From a Southern perspective, the world-sys-tem is organized not only as a global inter-state system centered around an interna-tional division of labor, but includes, not asadditive elements but as constitutive of thecapitalist accumulation on a world-scale, aglobal racial/ethnic hierarchy (Europeans/Euro-Americans vs. non-European peo-

ples), a global patriarchal hierarchy (globalgender system and a global sexual system),a global religious hierarchy, a global linguis-tic hierarchy, a global epistemic hierarchy,etc. (see Grosfoguel 2006). The “package” of entangled power hierarchies of the world-system is broader and more complex thanwhat is frequently theorized in world-sys-tem analysis. For the sake of economizingspace, when we use the term “world-sys-tem” in this essay, we refer to the “modern/colonial European/Euro-American Chris-tian-centric capitalist/patriarchal world-

system.” At the risk of sounding ridiculous,we prefer a long phrase like this to charac-terize the present heterarchical structure(multiple power hierarchies entangled withone another in complex historical ways) of the world-system, than the limited charac-terization of a single hierarchy called “capi-talist world-system” with capital accumula-tion as the single logic of the system (Ibid).The latter can lead to an economic reduc-tionist understanding of the world-system,while the former leads to a more complex,non-reductive structural-historical analysis.

Islamophobia as a form of racism againstMuslim people is not an epiphenomenon, but constitutive of the international divisionof labor.

Thefirst part of this essay discusses Isla-mophobia as a form of racism in a world-historical perspective. The second part is a

discussion of Islamophobia as a form of cul-tural racism. The third part is on Islamopho- bia as Orientalism. The fourth part is Isla-mophobia as epistemic racism, while the fi-nal part is an example of this using the caseof European Islamic Philosopher and Theo-logian, Tariq Ramadan.

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The challenge for our topic is to answerhow it was possible that a religious differ-ence in the pre-modern/colonial worldturned into a racial/ethnic difference in themodern/colonial world. In the heterarchicalconceptualization of the world-system usedhere, Islamophobia would be the subal-ternization and inferiorization of Islam pro-duced by the Christian-centric religious hi-erarchy of the world-system since the end of the 15th century. The year 1492 is a crucialfoundational year for the understanding of the present system. In this year, the Chris-tian Spanish monarchy re-conquered Islam-ic Spain expelling Jews and Arabs from theSpanish peninsula while simultaneously“discovering” the Americas and colonizingindigenous peoples. These “internal” and“external” conquests of territories and peo-ple not only created an international divi-sion of labor of core and periphery, but alsoconstituted the internal and external imag-ined boundaries of Europe related to theglobal racial/ethnic hierarchy of the world-system, privileging populations of Europe-an origin over the rest. Jews and Arabs be-came the subaltern internal “Others” withinEurope, while indigenous people becamethe external “Others” of Europe (Mignolo

2000).The first marker of “otherness” in the“European/Euro-American Christian-Cen-tric Capitalist/Patriarchal World-System”was around religious identity. Jews and Ar-abs were characterized as “people with thewrong religion” while indigenous people



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were constructed as “people without reli-gion” (Maldonado-Torres 2006). In the global racial/ethnic hierarchy produced by thetwo major events of 1492, the “people with-out religion,” that is “people without God,”were at the bottom of the hierarchy, while“people with the wrong religion,” that is,“people with the wrong God,” occupied adifferent position in this hierarchy. How did“people with the wrong religion” turn into“people below the human,” that is, raciallyinferior people?

The struggle of Christian Spain againstIslam formed part of a long imperial strug-gle in the Mediterranean Sea that goes backto the crusades. The Christian vs. Islam

struggle articulated what Walter Mignolo(2000) characterizes as the “imperial differ-ence,” while the post-1492 Spanish vs. In-digenous struggle in the Americas articulat-ed the “colonial difference.” The “imperialdifference” after 1492 is the result of imperi-al relations between European empires ver-sus Non-European Empires and we willcharacterize it here as the result of the “im-perial relation.” The “colonial difference” isthe result of colonial relations between Eu-ropean and non-European peoples and wewill characterize it here as a result of the “co-

lonial relation.” Historically, the expulsionof Arabs and Jews from Christian Spain inthe name of “purity of blood” was a proto-racist process (not yet fully racist, althoughthe consequences were not that different).“Purity of blood” was not used as a racialterm but as a technology of power to tracethe religious ancestry of the population.However, “purity of blood” did not becomea fully racist perspective until much laterand only after the application of the notionof the “purity of blood” to indigenous peo-ples in the Americas.

Indigenous peoples characterized in thelate 15

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century as “peoplewithout God” in the Christian Spanishimaginary became inferior sub-human ornon-human beings. It is this inferiorization below the “human,” to the level of animals,which turned indigenous peoples in the

Americas into the first racialized subject of the modern/colonial world inaugurated in1492 (Dussel 1994). This racist imaginarywas extended to new “people without God”such as sub-Saharan Africans transferredmassively to the Americas as part of the Eu-ropean slave trade after the infamous debate between Sepulveda and Las Casas in theSchool of Salamanca in the 1550s. Sepulvedaargued that indigenous people had no souland therefore were not humans and could be enslaved without representing a sin inthe eyes of God (Wallerstein 2006). WhileLas Casas argued that they were savageswith a soul, that is culturally inferior, child-like but ultimately humans to be Christian-

ized rather than enslaved. Both representthe initial formal articulation of the twoforms of racism that continued for the nextfive centuries. Sepulveda represented a bio-logical racist discourse while Las Casas acultural racist discourse.

Las Casas argued that “Indians” should be incorporated in the encomienda (a formof semi-feudal coerced labor) and called forAfricans to replace them as slaves in theplantations. After all, Africans were charac-terized by Las Casas not only as “peoplewithout religion” but also as “people with-

out soul.” The argument here is that the rac-ist imaginary that was built against the in-digenous people of the new world was thengradually extended to all non-Europeanpeoples starting with the African slave tradein the mid-16

th

century.The important issue for our topic is how

this racist imaginary was extended even topeople that were characterized as “peoplewith the wrong God” in the late 15 century.As the European Empires’ relations with theIslamic Empires turned from an “imperialrelation” into a “colonial relation” (the

Dutch colonization of Indonesia in the 17

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century, the British colonization of India inthe 18

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century, the British colonization of the Middle East in the 19

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century, and thedemise and subsequent division of the Otto-man Empire among several European em-pires at the end of the First World War), the



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notion of “people with the wrong God” inthe Theological Christian imaginary of the16

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centuries was secularized intoa “scientific evolutionary hierarchical civili-zation” imaginary that turned the late 15

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century “people with the wrong religion”(imperial difference) into the inferior “sav-ages and primitives” of “people without civ-ilization” (colonial difference) in the 19

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century. The latter represented a crucial transformation from the inferiorization of non-Chris-tian religions (such as Islam, Judaism, etc.) to theinferiorization of the human beings practicingthose religions (such as Muslims and Jews). Thisdiscursive mutation was central to the entangle-ment between the inferiorization of religion andthe racism against non-European human beings practicing those religions. The Christian-centric global religious hierarchy and the Eurocentric global racial/ethnic hierarchy were increasinglyentangled and the distinction between practicinga non-Christian religion and being racialized asan inferior human became increasingly erased.

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In the last 60 years there has been a his-torical transformation in racist discourses.While biological racist discourses declined,cultural racism became the hegemonic formof racism in the late world-system (Gros-foguel 2003). The defeat of Nazi Germany,the anti-colonial struggles and the civilrights movements of colonial minorities in-side the Western empires created the histor-ical and political conditions for the transi-tion from biological racism to cultural rac-ism. The white elites of the world-systemdid not give up on their racism. They simplyshifted the meanings and discourses of “race” in response to the challenges from thestruggles of colonized people.

Cultural racism is a form of racism thatdoes not even mention the word “race.” It isfocused on the cultural inferiority of a groupof people. Usually it is framed in terms of the inferior habits, beliefs, behaviors, or val-

ues of a group of people. It is close to biolog-ical racism in the sense that cultural racismnaturalizes/essentializes the culture of theracialized/inferiorized people. The latterare often represented as fixed in a timelessspace.

In the new cultural racist discourses, re-ligion has a dominant role. The contempo-rary tropes about “uncivilized,” “barbari-an,” “savage,” “primitive,” “underdevel-oped,” “authoritarian,” and “terrorist”inferior people are today concentrated in the“other’s” religious practices and beliefs. Byfocusing on the “other’s” religion, the Euro-peans, Euro-Americans and Euro-Israelismanage to escape being accused of racism.

However, when we carefully examine thehegemonic rhetoric in place, the tropes are arepetition of old biological racist discoursesand the people who are the target of Islamo-phobic discourses are the traditional colo-nial subjects of the Western Empires, that is,the “usual suspects.”

Only within the outlined long durée of historical continuities together with the re-cent hegemony of cultural racism can weunderstand the relationship between Isla-mophobia and racism today. It is absolutelyimpossible to de-link the hate or fear against

Muslims from racism against non-Europeanpeople. Islamophobia and cultural racismare entangled and overlapping discourses.The association of Muslims with the colonialsubjects of Western empires in the minds of white populations is simply a given in thecore of the “modern/colonial capitalist/pa-triarchal world-system.” This links Islamo-phobia to an old colonial racism that is stillalive in the world today, especially in themetropolitan centers.

In Great Britain, Muslims are associatedwith Egyptians, Pakistanis and Bang-

ladeshis (subjects from old British colonies);thus Islamophobia in Britain is associatedwith anti-Black, anti-Arab and anti-SouthAsian racism. In France, Muslims are mostlyNorth Africans (from old colonies such asAlgeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, etc.). InThe Netherlands, Muslims are mostly ‘guest



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workers’ and colonial migrants comingfrom Turkey, Morocco, Indonesia and Suri-name so Islamophobia in The Netherlands isassociated with racism against guest workermigrants and old colonial subjects. In Bel-gium, 90% of the Belgian population usesthe term ‘vreemdelingen’ or ‘étrangers’(‘foreigners’) to refer specifically to Moroc-can, Turkish or Arab immigrants, i.e., cultur-al others that can be defined as Muslims(Billiet & Carton & Huys 1990:432). In Ger-many, Islamophobia is associated with anti-Turk racism, and in Spain with anti-Moorracism. Thus Islamophobia as a fear or ha-tred of Muslims is associated with anti-Ar-ab, anti-Asian, and anti-Black racism.

Similarly, in the United States, Islam isassociated with African-Americans—mostnotably the Nation of Islam—and Arabs of all ethnicities. Puerto Ricans as colonial subjects of the U.S. empire are suspicious subjects in the Islamophobic hysteria

1

and thefact that Latinos are one of the largest grow-ing populations of converts to Islam in theU.S. is also an issue. After 9/11, many con-servative politicians and American mediaoutlets, such as commentator Lou Dobbs onCNN, associated illegal immigrants withterrorism and national security problems,

encouraging, if not leading to, the increasedmilitarization of the U.S.-Mexico border.The latter will likely only lead to more eco-nomic refugees dying in the desert.

It does not matter if the Western domes-tic political system is the British multicultur-al model or the French Republican model—neither is working. Unable to overcome the

problem of racial discrimination, racism be-comes a corrosive process that ends up de-stroying the abstract ideals of each model. Inthe case of the Anglo-American world, mul-ticulturalism and diversity operate to con-ceal white supremacy. The racial minoritiesare allowed to celebrate their history, tradi-tions and identity as long as they leave in-tact the white supremacy’s racial/ethnic hi-erarchy of the status quo. The dominant sys-tem in the United Kingdom, Canada and theUnited States is an institutionalized andconcealed “white af firmative action” that benefits whites on a daily basis and at alllevels of social existence. It is so powerfulthat it has become normalized to the point of

not being stated as such.In the French Republican model, the for-mal system of equality operates with an in-stitutionalized and normalized “communa-utarisme masculin blanc.” If racial/gender/sexual minorities protest discrimination,they are accused by the “communautaristesmasculin blanc” in power to be acting as“communautaristes” as if the elites in powerwere racial and gender blind/neutral, be-having towards everybody with a “univer-sal principle of equality.” White supremacyin France operates within the myth of a “ra-

cially blind society.” “Racially-blind racism”is institutionalized and normalized inFrance to the point that makes discriminato-ry “communautarisme masculin blanc” in-visible.

Islamophobia is a case in point. The so-called neutrality of the West is contradictedwhen Muslims af firm their practices andidentities in the public sphere and whenthey make claims of discrimination in edu-cation or the labor market as citizens withequal rights within Western states. The veillaw in France against Muslim women’s use

of the veil in public institutions or the incar-ceration without due procedure and tortureof thousands of Muslims in the UnitedStates are just recent instances in a long listof grievances.

At a world level, Islamophobia has beenthe dominant discourse used in the post-civ-

1 See the case of Jose Padilla, a Puerto Ricanfrom Chicago, who has spent more than threeyears in an isolated military prison without anycharges. Even though Puerto Ricans are U.S. cit-izens, the neo-fascist law of the U.S. Patriot Act

allows the unlimited incarceration of U.S. citi-zens without legal charges and procedures in acivil court. The initial public accusation againstPadilla made by U.S. authorities at the time of his arrest was that he supposedly had a docu-ment to build a domestic atomic bomb in hisapartment in Chicago. The accusation is so ridic-ulous that they kept him incarcerated without adue procedure in the courts for several years.



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il rights and post-independence era of dom-inant cultural racist discourses against Ar-abs. The events of 9/11 escalated anti-Arabracism through an Islamophobic hysteria allover the world, specifically among the dom-inant elites of the United States and Israel.The latter is not surprising given U.S. and Is-raeli representation of Palestinians, Arabsand Islamic people in general as terroristsdecades before 9/11 (Said 1979, 1981). Theresponsibility of U.S. foreign policy is neverlinked to the tragic events of 9/11. The U.S.Cold War against the “Evil Empire” in Af-ghanistan during the 1980s financed, sup-ported and created a global network of Is-lamic fundamentalist terrorist groups, then

known as “Freedom Fighters,” that came back to haunt them on 9/11 (Johnson 2006).The U.S. was complicit in Osama Bin-Lad-en’s and Al Qaeda’s operations as part of theCIA’s global/imperial designs and opera-tions against the Soviet Union back in the1980s. However, it is easier to blame Arabpeople and use racist Islamophobic argu-ments rather than to critically examine U.S.foreign policy over the past 50 years. Thesame applies to Saddam Hussein, who wasa loyal U.S. ally and fought dirty wars, sup-ported by the CIA, against Iran following

U.S. imperial/global designs during the1980s. Yet he was later declared a U.S. ene-my and falsely accused by the U.S. elites tohave links to Al Qaeda in order to justify along-planned war against Iraq (Risen 2006).

It is symptomatic that in most Westerncountries, Arabs are still perceived as if theywere “the majority of Muslims in the world”even though they are only 1/5 of the world’stotal Muslim population. This is related toWestern global/imperial designs for domi-nation and exploitation of oil in the MiddleEast and Arabs’ resistance against it (Harvey

2003). The long term exaggerated image of Arabs as terrorists and violent in Westernmedia (newspapers, movies, radio, televi-sion, etc.) has been fundamental to the newwave of anti-Arab racism linked to an Isla-mophobic discourse through cultural rac-ism before and after 9/11 (Said 1981). It is

not accidental that Anti-Arab racism ac-counts for most Islamophobia in the West.Even Muslims from South Asia and Africanorigin living in the West get part of the heatof the anti-Arab racism, especially in theUnited States (Salaita 2006).

ISLAMOPHOBIA AS ORIENTALISM

One of the cultural racist argumentsused against Islamic people today is their“patriarchal and sexist abuses of women.”As part of the construction of Islamic peopleas inferior in relation to the West, an impor-tant argument to sustain their “uncivilized”and “violent” values/behavior is the op-

pression of women at the hands of men.It is ironic to hear Western patriarchal

and Christian conservative fundamentalistfigures talk as if they were the defenders of feminism when they talk about Islam.George W. Bush’s main argument to invadeAfghanistan was the need to liberate brownwomen from the atrocities of brown men.The hypocrisy of the argument is clear whenthe Bush Administration has been activelydefending Christian patriarchal fundamen-talism, opposing abortion and women’s civ-il/social rights during the past years in the

United States, while using a women’s rightsargument against the Taliban’s to invade Af-ghanistan.

The rhetoric of “white men as saviors of women of color from colored men’s patriar-chal abuses” actually goes back to colonialtimes. It has historically served to concealthe real reasons behind the colonization of the non-West. We now know that one of thereal reasons behind the Bush Administra-tion’s invasion of Afghanistan was its geo-political strategic location and importancein terms of proximity to oil and gas in South

Asia and not the desire to liberate the wom-en of the region from the barbaric practicesof the Taliban. Otherwise, why didn’t theU.S. do anything earlier? Immediately afterthe invasion, occupied Afghanistan provid-ed legal permission to gas and oil transna-



THE LONG-DURÉE ENTANGLEMENT BETWEEN ISLAMOPHOBIA AND RACISM 7


tional companies to built pipelines over itsterritory (Rashid 2001). In addition, the sym- bolic value of a speedy military victory ac-complished by superior Western firepoweragainst Muslim fundamentalists in Afghan-istan (2001), right on the Iranian border,should also not be underestimated. In theWestern media, Islamophobic representa-tions of Muslim people as savages in need of Western civilizing missions is the main nar-rative used to cover-up or ignore global/im-perial military and economic designs.

The impact of patriarchy on a funda-mentalist interpretation of religious texts isnot unique to Islam. We can see similarabuses against women held among funda-

mentalist Christian (Catholic and Protes-tants) or Jewish men. You can find as manypatriarchal and sexist arguments in the Bibleas in the Koran. However, the sexist and pa-triarchal characterization of Islam is what isrepresented in the press while there is prac-tically silence about the patriarchal oppres-sion of women sustained and practiced by Judaism and Christianity in the West. It isimportant to note that Islam was the first re-ligion in the world to grant women the rightto divorce more than one thousand yearsago. The Christian world only granted

women the right to divorce in the late 20

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century and the Catholic Church and somecountries still do not recognize it. This is notto justify patriarchal abuses of some Muslimmen over women, but to question the stereo-typical racial representation that only repre-sents Muslim men as those who abuse wom-en around the world.2 This Islamophobic ar-

gument is incoherent, inconsistent and false.It only serves Western global/imperial de-signs.

Thus, what we have in the world todayis not a clash of civilizations but a clash of fundamentalisms (Ali 2002) and a clash of patriarchies. The Bush administration hasdefended Christian fundamentalist argu-ments to characterize the “Islamic enemy”as a part of the old crusade wars, while Is-lamic fundamentalists use a similar lan-guage (Ibid). The former, in the name of civ-ilization and progress, defends a Westernform of patriarchy with the monogamistfamily at its center, while the latter defendsa non-Western form of patriarchy with po-

lygamy authorized as central to the familystructure. However, as Islamic feminist havesustained, patriarchal versions of Islam arenot inherently Islamic but represent the col-onization of Islam by patriarchy (Mernisi1987). The interpretation of the original sa-cred scriptures where hijacked by menthroughout the history of Islam.

The same thing could be said of the Jew-ish and Christian sacred texts. Interpreta-tions were controlled by patriarchal inter-pretations of the scriptures as the dominantperspective in these world religions. There-

fore, there is no “patriarchy” as a single sys-tem in the world-system today, but “patriar-chies” in the sense of several systems of gen-der domination of men over women. Thepatriarchal system that was globalized inthe present world-system is to a certain de-gree the Western Christian form of patriar-chy. Non-Western forms of patriarchy haveco-existed with the West in the peripheralregions of the world-system and in manyepochs of colonial history the West wascomplicit with them in their colonial/impe-rial projects. To talk as if patriarchy, as a sys-

tem of gender domination, is external to theWest and located in Islam is a historical Ori-entalist distortion that goes back to Westernrepresentations of Islam in the 18th century.European colonial expansion has exportednot only capital and militarism but also pa-triarchy around the world, and often used as

2 Given the fact that most poverty world-wide is female poverty, and that most diseasessuch as HIV/AIDS are carried by women in theperiphery, one can raise questions of the degree

to which current economic policies and structur-al adjustment programs designed by Westernmales in Western institutions such as the WorldBank, IMF, etc., cause more actual suffering forwomen than local patriarchies do. It is not ourattempt to quantify this, but merely to point outthat the latter is currently on display by theWestern media while the former is not, which isanything but a coincidence.



8 RAMÓN GROSFOGUEL AND ERIC MIELANTS


well as reinforced local patriarchies in theperiphery in the service of its imperial strat-egy.

It is important to keep in mind that Ori-entalist views are characterized by racist, ex-otic and inferior essentialist representationsof Islam as frozen in time (Said 1979). TheseOrientalist representations of Islam after the18th century were preceded by three hun-dred years of Occidentalism (the belief in su-periority of the West over the rest) from thelate 15th century until the emergence of Ori-entalism in the 18th century (Mignolo 2000).The historical and political conditions forthe emergence of Orientalism are locatedwithin Occidentalism.

ISLAMOPHOBIA AS EPISTEMIC RACISM

Occidentalism created the epistemicprivilege and hegemonic identity politics of the West from which to judge and produceknowledge about the “Others.” The ego-politics of knowledge of Rene Descartes inthe 17th century where Western men replaceGod as the foundation of knowledge is thefoundational basis of modern Western phi-losophy. However as Enrique Dussel (1994),Latin American philosopher of liberation,reminds us, Descartes’ ego-cogito (“I think,therefore I am”) was preceded by 150 yearsof the ego-conquirus (“I conquer, therefore Iam”). The God-eye view defended by Des-cartes transferred the attributes of the Chris-tian God to Western men (the gender here isnot accidental). But this was only possiblefrom an Imperial Being, that is, from thepanoptic gaze of someone who is at the cen-ter of the world because he has conquered it.

The myth about Western males’ capaci-ty to produce a knowledge that is universal beyond time and space was fundamental toimperial/global designs. The Cartesian ego-politics of knowledge inaugurated what Co-lombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Go-mez called the “point zero” perspective. The“point zero” perspective is the Western

myth of a point of view that assumes itself to be beyond a point of view. This myth al-lowed Western men to claim their knowl-edge to be universal, neutral, value-free andobjective. Contemporary authors like Sam-uel Huntington (1996) reproduce a combina-tion of old Occidentalism with Orientalism.The superiority of the West is taken forgranted and the epistemic privilege of West-ern identity politics from which to produce judgments of the “Other” and global/impe-rial designs around the world is an unques-tioned presupposition. Moreover, in a maledominated academic culture such as Har-vard, a scholar and national defense apolo-gist such as Huntington (2004) specifically

links geopolitical concerns and securitythreats to ‘internal’ American identity is-sues, most notably coming from those im-poverished immigrants who may have theaudacity to challenge Western male privi-lege, socioeconomically, politically and ulti-mately epistemologically (Etzioni 2005).

What is the relevance of this epistemicdiscussion to Islamophobia? It is from West-ern hegemonic identity politics andepistemic privilege that the ‘rest’ of the epis-temologies and cosmologies in the world aresubalternized as myth, religion and folklore,

and that the downgrading of any form of non-Western knowledge occurs. The formerleads to epistemic racism, that is, the inferi-orization and subalternization of non-West-ern knowledge, while the latter leads to Ori-entalism. It is also from this hegemonicepistemic location that Western thinkersproduce Orientalism about Islam. The sub-alternization and inferiorization of Islamwere not merely a downgrading of Islam asspirituality, but also as an epistemology.

Islamic critical thinkers are consideredinferior to the Western/Christian thinkers.

The superiority of Western epistemology al-lows the West to construct with authoritythe Islamic “Other” as an inferior people orculture frozen in time, and leads Westernscholars to write entire books about whatwent wrong with Islam (e.g. Lewis 2002), asif problems in the Middle East or poverty in





regions inhabited by Muslims can somehow be understood by exclusively scrutinizingtheir religion or their region, effectivelyturning the ‘Islamic World’ into its own unitof analysis.3 Epistemic racism leads to theOrientalization of Islam. This is crucial be-cause Islamophobia as a form of racism isnot exclusively a social phenomenon butalso an epistemic question. Epistemic racismallows the West to not have to listen to thecritical thinking produced by Islamic think-ers on Western global/imperial designs. Thethinking coming from non-Western loca-tions is not considered worthy of attentionexcept to represent it as “uncivilized,”“primitive,” “barbarian,” and “backward.”

Epistemic racism allows the West to unilat-erally decide what is best for Muslim peopletoday and obstruct any possibility for a seri-ous inter-cultural dialogue. Islamophobia asa form of racism against Muslim people isnot only manifested in the labor market, ed-ucation, public sphere, global war againstterrorism, or the global economy, but also inthe epistemological battleground about thedefinition of the priorities of the world to-day.

Recent events such as the September 11attacks on American soil, the riots in Pari-

sian “banlieues,” anti-immigrant xenopho- bia, the demonstrations against Danish car-toons of the Prophet, the bombing of Lon-don metro stations, the triumph of Hamas inthe Palestinian elections, the resistance of Hezbollah to the Israeli invasion of Leba-non, the bombing of Spanish suburbantrains (3/11), and the nuclear energy conflictwith Iran, have been all encoded in Islamo-phobic language in the Western publicsphere. Western politicians (with some ex-ceptions such as Rodriguez Zapatero inSpain) and the mainstream media have been

complicit if not active participants of Isla-mophobic reactions to the outlined events.

Epistemic racism as the most invisible formof racism, contributes to legitimate an artil-lery of experts, advisers, specialists, of ficials,academics and theologians that keep talkingwith authority about Islam and Muslim peo-ple despite their absolute ignorance of thetopic and their Islamophobic prejudices.This artillery of intellectuals producing Ori-entalist knowledge about the inferiority of Islam and its people has been going on sincethe 18th century (Said 1979) and they con-tribute to the Western arrogant dismissal of Islamic thinkers.

THE CASE OF TARIQ RAMADAN

It is interesting to analyze the Westernreaction to a critical European Islamic think-er such as Tariq Ramadan. Ramadan, whoidentifies himself as a European Muslim,has been the victim of a Western campaignto distort his image and thought in the eyesof Western audiences. In France, he is not al-lowed to talk in the universities and in theUnited States he has been prevented fromentering the country. The Western mediacampaign against his thought characterizeshim as some kind of Islamic fundamentalistextremist despite the fact that he is a moder-

ate Islamic reformer. Even Western universi-ties such as Notre Dame University (wherehe was to become the Henry R. Luce Profes-sor of Religion, Conflict and Peace Building before being denied entry to the country)and Oxford University in England (wherehe is a visiting scholar today) acknowledgethe contributions of Ramadan to a moderateIslamic reform. The question is why a mod-erate reformist European Islamic thinker(critical of Islamic fundamentalism, suicide bombers, lapidation against women, terror-ism, etc.) is attacked and misrepresented as

some kind of Islamic extremist. Hani Ra-madan, the brother of Tariq, is a declared Is-lamic fundamentalist and despite his many books and influence, has never been the tar-get of a huge Western negative campaignsuch as Tariq.

3 Lewis basically ignores European coloni-zation of the Middle East and dismisses its im-pact by stating it was “comparatively brief andended half a century ago” (2002:153).





In our view, it is more dif ficult for theWest to swallow a moderate Islamic thinkercritical of both Eurocentric fundamentalismand Islamic fundamentalism than a de-clared Islamic fundamentalist thinker. Thelatter confirms all of the Orientalist Islamo-phobic prejudices that the West constructsagainst Islam, while the former challengesthose representations. This is why both theNew York Times and Le Monde have dedi-cated front pages of their daily newspaper tothe “Tariq Ramadan affair.”4

All over Western Europe, Tariq Ra-madan is very popular among Muslim Eu-ropean youngsters. His message to Muslimyouth is that you can be European and Mus-

lim at the same time. This challenges one of the most sacred myths of European identitypolitics, which is that in order to be Europe-an you have to be Christian or secular (iden-tified with Western thought and Christiancosmology/values even if you are not a be-liever). Moreover, he calls Muslim youth toexercise their citizenship rights as MuslimEuropeans and intervene in the publicsphere making claims for equality and con-tributions to the society. This has been toosubversive both for Islamic fundamentalistsand for mainstream Eurocentric Europeans

to accept (e.g. Fourest 2004; cf. Bruckner

2007), hence the Islamophobic campaignagainst his thinking.

Ever since he was banned from Francein the mid-1990s, the French newspaper LeMonde has been actively attacking Ra-madan as an Islamic fundamentalist thatuses a “double discourse.” Later, when the ban was lifted, Le Monde’s campaignagainst Ramadan’s “double language” nev-ertheless continued. What is interesting isthe double standard and epistemic racism behind this accusation. Those who promoteit apply different rules of judgment whendealing with a European intellectual think-ing from Western tradition, than a Europeanintellectual thinking from the Islamic tradi-

tion. An intellectual that is attacked as a pro-moter of a “double discourse,” that is, ac-cused that “what he/she says and writes isnot really what he/she believes,” has noway to defend himself/herself.

The rule of judgment about the work of any intellectual is based on what he/shesays and writes. But if the accusation is thatwhat she/he says and writes are false be-cause he/she has a “double discourse,” thenthere is no self-defense against this accusa-tion. Whatever the accused intellectual ar-gues, it becomes tautological. No matter

how many times Tariq Ramadan has public-ly denounced the oppression of women, ter-rorism and Islamic fundamentalism, his brother’s fundamentalist views on Islam,Saudi Arabia and Taliban fundamentalistviews on Islam, suicide bombers and so on,Le Monde keeps attacking Tariq as a believ-er in these things without any evidence norserious reading of his work and publicspeeches because the claim is that he has a“double discourse.” These standards of judgment are never applied to Western in-tellectuals. The rare occasions that Muslims

(and by extension Muslim intellectuals) arenot presented in extremely ambiguousterms, is when they happen to be ‘natives’converted to Islam such as Ayyub Axel Koe-hler, president of the Central Committee of Muslims in Germany, or Muslims such asAyaan Hirsi Ali (2007) who have abandoned

4 Among the many articles published by LeMonde on Tariq Ramadan, see the front page ar-ticle “Tariq Ramadan, sa famille, ses réseaux,son idéologie” (23 Décembre 2003) and the re-cent article “Tariq Ramadan consultant de TonyBlair” (25 Février 2006). When a newspaper ded-icates the main title of the front page of one of itsissues to investigate Tariq Ramadan’s suspi-cious “double discourse,” you know there issomething out of proportion and exaggeratedgoing on. The New York Times has a less activepropaganda (maybe because Ramadan is lessknown and influential among the USA’s Muslim

youth) and more balanced accounts comparedto Le Monde, but still with lots of insinuationsand suspicious comments. Among many articlesfrom the New York Times see the front page ar-ticle “Mystery of the Islamic Scholar Who WasBarred by the U.S.” (October 6, 2004) and“World Briefing: Europe: Switzerland: Barred Is-lamic Scholar Gives Up U.S. Teaching Post” (De-cember 15, 2004).





or who consistently criticize Islam. The double standard shows that Islamophobiaforms part of Western epistemic racism.

In sum, Islamophobia as a form of rac-ism against Muslim people is not only man-ifested in the labor market, education, pub-lic sphere, global war against terrorism orthe global economy, but also in the episte-mological battleground about the definitionof the priorities in the world today.

In the following contributions, eachscholar has attempted in different ways toaddress some of the issues raised above.

Walter Mignolo, in his essay ‘Islamo-phobia/ Hispanophobia’ links the two intel-

lectual currents and draws our attention toremarkable similarities between the two. Healso challenges mainstream Eurocentrism.Fittingly, whereas a scholar such as BernardLewis (2002) time and again creates an arti-ficial dichotomy between curious Europe-ans who wanted to accumulate more knowl-edge about Arabic, Islam, and the Orient incontrast to self-complacent Muslims whodid not bother to interest themselves in thenon-Muslim world, Mignolo forces thereader to take into account Western intoler-ance and colonialism towards ‘infidels’ as

well as ‘Muslim Others’, an intellectual pro-cess intrinsically intertwined with a politicalprocess, the latter being the expansion of thecapitalist world-system ever since the si-multaneous destruction of Granada and the‘discovery’ of the ‘New World’ in 1492.

In “How Washington’s ‘War on Terror’Became Everyone’s Islamophobia,” FarishNoor claims that Washington’s unilateraldeclaration of the global ‘War on Terror’ hadimmediate and serious repercussions on do-mestic political developments in variousparts of the world. In Southeast Asia in par-

ticular, he argues the ‘war on terror’ has hada number of negative consequences, such asallowing the region’s governments to justifythe use of arms, detention without trial, andthe suspension of many civil liberties in thename of anti-terrorism. His central thesis isthat America’s obsession with anti-terror-

ism has become a further extension of American political, military, and ideologicalhegemony in the world.

Thomas Ehrlich Reifer, in his “Militari-zation, Globalization and Islamist SocialMovements” looks at the increase of con-temporary Muslim fundamentalisms as amultitude of reactions against specific West-ern (Israeli and American) foreign policies.He also addresses the need to understandthese social movements in the context of re-cent geopolitical developments within thecapitalist modern world system itself.

Abdulkader Tayob’s contribution pro-vides us with a case-study of one Westerncountry and how the Western majority at-

tempts to ‘deal with’ the presence of Mus-lims on its soil. In his essay, Tayob scrutiniz-es the debate he saw unfolding, while livingin the Netherlands, over the value andmeaning of Islam for Dutch society and pol-itics in the aftermath of 9/11, and most notably how a global event such as 9/11 acceler-ated the call for ‘integration’ of Muslims.

In ‘No Race to the Swift’, ManuelaBoatcã presents us with an analysis of how19th century Orientalist discourse shapedthe content of present conceptualizations of Western and Eastern Europe in terms of Ori-

entalism’s effects on national self-defi

ni-tions. In addition, she scrutinizes discourseson Europeanization in the context of the on-going expansion of the European Union, es-pecially in relation to southeastern Europe,with its large Muslim populations, and theTurkish candidacy.

Finally, in ‘Life in Samarkand’ MadinaTlostanova provides us with insight into apotential way out of present dilemmas. Herstudy of cultural and ethnic hybrids in bothCentral Asia and the Caucasus, and the con-current significance of Sufism in the region,

in opposition to the binary logics imposed by both the Russian/Soviet Empire on theone hand and the capitalist world-system onthe other hand, could very well be an alter-native epistemology ignored for too long.





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