The idea is the result of toxic perceptions about Muslims and people of colour. It shows how prejudice creates shameful policy
We are woefully underserved by the current conversation about Islamophobia. In recent weeks, the debate has hinged on whether or not the government’s decision to introduce new national counter-extremism legislation on the basis of the bogus “Trojan horse” letter, which was full of anti-Muslim tropes, was Islamophobic. Research has suggested that middle-class Britons hold more prejudiced views of Islam than any other social group. And a Tory minister recently alleged she was sacked for her “Muslimness”. In all these stories, Islamophobia is approached at worst as a political gaffe, and at best a moral failing, allegation or faux pas.
At the same time, mainstream news outlets have reported that Russia’s war in Ukraine is horrific because it is taking place somewhere that is “not like Iraq or Afghanistan”. Journalists have suggested that Ukrainian refugees deserve to be welcomed because they are “not from Syria”. Such coverage is not only shot through with Islamophobia, but premised upon it. References to Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria evoke wars associated with Muslims that the west justified through its “war on terror”. Unlike “westerners”, a racially and religiously coded marker that one reporter helpfully clarified as meaning Christian and white, the characterisation of Muslims as deserving of, or at least predisposed to, violence means our lives do not carry the same value. We cannot be deemed victims of occupation or war in the same way as Europeans.
Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan is a poet, educator and author of Tangled in Terror: Uprooting Islamophobia
