A blog posting from Shaheen Kattiparambil in criticalmuslimstudies.co.uk
“Year after year, campaigns emerge urging Muslims to fight Islamophobia through better stories, counternarratives, respectability, dialogue and individual interaction. These efforts are well-meaning, but are often premised on understanding Islamophobia as arising out of misconceptions or ignorance. In reality, Islamophobia functions as a structural, institutionalised form of racism deeply woven into state practices, laws and public discourse. Misdiagnosing the cause leads us to fight the wrong battles and lose before we even begin. This is not to dismiss the value of embodying Islamic ethics, the significance of Muslim contributions to community life or the fact that individuals can sometimes unlearn prejudice. Rather, it is to insist that the real task lies in grasping the structural logics through which Islamophobia operates, and in prioritising political assertion and mobilisation, collective struggle and movement-building as the heart of any serious challenge to it.[. . .]
Far-right groups deploy anti-Muslim rhetoric not out of misunderstanding but to mobilise supporters, grow political capital and consolidate exclusionary national identities. Debating them lends their views legitimacy, re-centring racists as the audience who must be persuaded. Reasoning with racists also rests on a deeper liberal assumption that Islamophobia is primarily pathological, something that exists in people’s heads as bias or prejudice. This reduces Islamophobia to a matter of ignorance, to be corrected through education and dialogue. Here, ignorance should be understood as more than merely the absence of knowledge. Charles W. Mills talks about ignorance as being structural, and specifically ‘white ignorance’ as systemic and not random misconceptions of a few individuals. It’s about how entire systems of thought, culture and society keep certain truths hidden and sustain false beliefs. For Mills, this form of ignorance is a way of misperceiving the world that protects privilege and power. In this sense, racism is not cured by information because its ignorance is structured and wilful [. . .]
we are placed in a double blind. We not only have to struggle against racial domination, but are also compelled to explain, justify and correct the oppressor’s misconceptions. Muslims are forced into the exhausting position of both resisting oppression and educating the oppressor. This is why reasoning with racists in the hope of solving Islamophobia is not only futile but dangerous. It distracts from the fact that Islamophobia is embedded in political institutions, not just extremist subcultures. Muslims do not need to win arguments with racists; they need structural justice that secures dignity beyond the shifting terms of public debate. Islamophobia is not simply a misunderstanding to be corrected; rather, it is a power arrangement to be dismantled [. . .]
Fighting Islamophobia means moving beyond respectability and representation politics to systemic critique, which includes naming it as racism and treating Prevent, terror laws, immigration regimes and media narratives as racialised governance.”
Extracts from https://criticalmuslimstudies.co.uk/project/how-not-to-fight-Islamophobia/