This thesis investigates the continued hostilities and increasing backlash against the American Muslim community in the United States from a critical perspective that centralizes the racialization of Muslims and Muslim looking-people. The increasing anti-Muslim backlash against American Muslims warrants the need for a critical examination and analysis of the roots of this backlash and why, almost 11 years after September 11th, 2001, conditions for Muslims and Muslim looking-people are worsening. The term Islamophobia has been conceptualized and defined differently by various scholars, contributing to an analytical dilemma of how Muslims rationalize and resist anti-Muslim backlash. Therefore, the concept of racialization provides a fuller perspective and understanding as to why Muslim and non-Muslim Arabs, South Asians, and African Americans have been subjected to rising suspicion, surveillance, imprisonment, and violence in a post 9/11/2001 era. This thesis posits the notion of the white Christian Normative, an inherent Christian bias embedded deep within the racialized social system of the United States. This Christian Normative has its roots in the colonial confrontation between European colonizers and Indigenous populations in what is now considered the United States and has maintained its significance in impacting the life chances of non-white non-Christian minorities ever since. This thesis argues that it is the Christian normative that drives and sustains the anti-Muslim backlash in the United States. The anti-Muslim backlash that is growing stronger in the United States is also theoretically conceptualized within this thesis. This thesis utilizes qualitative data collected from 23 in-depth interviews with Arab and South Asian American Muslim college students between the ages of 18 to 35 years from the Midwest as its empirical basis.

Thesis (M.A.)--Humboldt State University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 108-113). Also available via Humboldt Digital Scholar.

The aim of this study is to examine if the Muslim diversity is present and what type of views (open and closed) there are in three textbooks in religion for grades 4 - 6. This type of study is important because other studies show that there has been a negative picture of Islam in textbooks (Härenstam 1993; Otterbeck 2006). One of the problems that they found in their studies was that Islam and Muslims where portrayed as a homegeneous group. In order for me to come to a conclusion about this matter I had two questions: How is Islam portrayed in three textbooks in religion for grades 4 -6 with diversity as a focus? What type of views about Islam can you find in three textbooks in religion for grades 4 - 6? (open and closed views of islam). To answer these questions I used two methods, one method is inspired by Otterbeck (2006) and the other one is inspired by Runnymedes Trust (Larsson 2006, s14). The qualitive content analysis showed that the Muslim diversity was present in the textbooks. Some more than others. But all three textbooks showed that there are different types of Muslims. When it comes to the close and open views of Islam, the textbooks contained of both. When compared to previous studies the result showed that the close view of Islam has improved but it still occurs.

This thesis uses critical discursive psychology to analyse anti-Semitic and Islamophobic discourse on the Facebook pages of two far-right organisations: Britain First and the English Defence League. Using the Charlie Hebdo attack as a time frame, I examine how the far-right manage their identity and maintain rationality online, as well as how users on Facebook respond to the far-right. This thesis demonstrates how Britain First and the English Defence League present themselves as reasonable in their anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic stance following the Charlie Hebdo shooting. Ultimately, I bring together the study of fascist discourse and political discourse on social media using critical discursive psychology, in a novel synthesis. The Charlie Hebdo shooting and the shooting at the kosher supermarket in Paris in January 2015 (as well as other attacks by members of the Islamic State) have led to Muslims being seen as a threat to Britain, and thus Muslims have been exposed to Islamophobic attacks and racial abuse. The current climate is a challenging situation for the far-right, as they are presented with the dilemma of appearing as rational and even mainstream, whilst nevertheless adopting an anti-Islamic stance. The analysis focuses on how Britain First and the English Defence League used the shooting at the Kosher supermarket to align with Jews in order to construct them as under threat from Islam, and promote its anti-Islamic stance. I also analyse visual communication used by Britain First to provide evidence that Britain First supported Jewish communities. Discourse from Facebook users transitioned from supportive towards Jews, to questioning the benefits that Jews brought to Britain, and expressing Holocaust denial. Furthermore, I discuss how other far-right politicians in Europe such as Geert Wilders from the Dutch Party for Freedom, portrayed himself as a reasonable politician in the anti-Islamic stance he has taken in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack. Findings are discussed in light of how the far-right communicate about the Charlie Hebdo shooting whilst maintaining a reasonable stance when projecting anti-Semitic and Islamophobic ideology, and how such discourse can encompass hate speech. I demonstrate how critical discursive psychology can be used to show how various conflicting social identities are constructed and interact with each other online. This thesis shows how the far-right use aligning with Jews as means to present Muslims as problematic, and how such alignment has resulted in the marginalisation of both Jews and Muslims.

The past three decades have seen increasing interest in the integration of Muslims as the most visible ethno-religious minority group in Britain. Previous research reported that Muslims in northern parts of England, for instance, had developed separate rather than integrated lives (Cantle 2001: 9). Though more recent surveys have reported an emerging change in such trends (Simpson 2012), Muslims in the Scottish context established a more mixed and integrated way of living with the majority from the outset, (Hussain and Miller 2006: 19) which was associated partly with the smaller population of Muslims in Scotland (Penrose and Howard 2008: 95). This qualitative research looks at the different identity negotiation and integration strategies of Muslims, and introduces the idea of ‘Halal integration’ which entails fitting into society while maintaining religious identity. This refers to the life of many Scottish Muslims, Halal Scots, who integrated into many aspects of Scottish society whilst maintaining their religious identity and practices. One example of such integration was the construction of hybrid or multiple social identities that constitute both Scottish and Muslim identity (Saeed et. al. 1999: 836; Hussain and Miller 2006: 150; Hopkins 2008: 121). Other examples were adopting alternative ways of socialising such as meeting at cafés, running family and social events in non-alcoholic environments, and taking part in voluntary and charitable work. This study, thus, explains important barriers and pathways to Muslims’ integration in Scotland. The research involved 43 semi-structured interviews with Muslims who were differentiated by generation and gender. Most existing studies of Muslims in Scotland have focused on major urban areas such as Edinburgh and Glasgow (Hopkins 2004; Hussain and Miller 2006; Virdee et. al. 2006; Kyriakides et. al. 2009). My study will therefore extend such research by comparing the experiences of Muslims across Scottish major cities and small towns. It will thus deepen our understanding of Muslims in Scotland. This thesis suggests that even though religion played an important role in their integration and identity negotiation, other factors such as nationality, ethnicity, racism and Islamophobia also played a significant part. It also suggests an emerging shift in the second generation Muslims’ economic, educational and social integration into Scottish society.

This thesis examines how Muslims in Canada negotiate perceptions in their interactions with non-Muslims and other Muslims. What strategies do Muslims in Canada use to combat these perceptions? How do perceptions of Islam and Muslims impact Muslims’ constructions of identities? In order to answer these questions a case study was conducted in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Interviews with Muslims living in St. John’s explored how they respond to perceptions of Islam and how they negotiate their identities in everyday life. This study found that perceptions of Islam and Muslims played an important role in the construction of Muslims’ identities despite the low incidence of Islamophobia. Perceptions of Islam and Muslims often led to an increase in knowledge of Islam, an increase in affiliation with their Muslim identities and increase in religiosity. However, an alternative impact was a distancing from Islam. Participants used numerous strategies to combat negative perceptions of Islam and Muslims including taking up an educator role and becoming representative. Further, many participants separated culture and religion, creating a ‘true’ Islam and contributing to islamophilia. However, other participants challenged philic and phobic accounts of Islam by voicing their lived practices and presenting multiple and dynamic Islams.

In political and popular discourse about immigration and integration, Europe is referred to as both fundamentally secular and fundamentally Christian depending on the context. Even if only a minority of the population in many Western European countries actually practise their religion, many continue to identify with Christianity as cultural tradition, without the beliefs and practice one would normally associate with a religious identity. Few empirical studies have analysed the relationship between religious and national identities in modern Europe. Using a combination of qualitative interviews and quantitative survey research with data from the International Social Survey Programme 2008 in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland, this thesis explores how religious affiliation, belief and practice are associated with anti-immigration attitudes and regarding Christianity as important for nationality. Factor analysis is used to explore different dimensions of national identity and how they relate to religious conceptions of the nation, and multivariate regression models address how experiencing immigration as a threat to national identity is associated with Christian affiliation and practice. The main finding is that Christian identification is positively associated with seeing immigration as a threat to national identity, whereas churchgoing is negatively associated with anti-immigration attitudes. There are two identifiable mechanisms that explain this finding. Firstly, 'Christian' can signify national cultural heritage or white ethnicity rather than faith. Hence those who identify as Christian, however loosely, are on average more likely to be nationalist or xenophobic. Secondly, since churchgoers will be more sympathetic to religion in general they also tend to be less negative towards Muslims and other religious minorities. The findings are contextualised through the use of qualitative interviews and comparative analysis of countries, addressing both the external influences and internal experiences that contribute to specific associations.

Democracy posits that broadly based participation in deliberative processes will lead to laws and policies that are more inclusive and more just than the measures enacted by monarchs or powerful elites (Hauser 1999:5). Jurgen Habermas (1964) propounded the theoretical concept of the public sphere as a “domain of social life where public opinion is expressed by means of rational public discourse and debate” (Papacharissi, 2013:113). It is on such a platform that democracy is seen in action. Changes in socio-economic structures of states and advancements in communication technologies that have occurred in the last decades have facilitated a transformation in the character of the public spheres. The explosion of new media technologies has made it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways, thus fostering a participatory culture (Jenkins et al :2004). This research analyses the extent to which six videos categorized under the banner, “Hug a Muslim” campaign utilize YouTube as a platform for opinion sharing and for promoting public awareness of negative, stereotypical representations of Muslims. Such representations promote mistrust, suspicion, fear and other prejudices that associate Islam and Muslims with discourses of terrorism. Through critical discourse analysis, this research discusses power dynamics and discursive elements underlying the videos in the sample. Applying Gerard Hauser (1998) ´s rhetorical model of the public sphere, this research explores the extent to which online viewer comments accompanying the videos on YouTube adhere to the five rhetorical norms that determine their effectiveness as public sphere discourse, thus helping in establishing whether or not YouTube functions as an effective rhetorical public sphere in the context of the “Hug a Muslim” campaign. This study revealed that 58% of the analysed YouTube viewer comments on the campaign were compatible with the five rhetorical norms and thus reflecting YouTube´s function as a rhetorical public sphere in the context of the “Hug a Muslim” campaign. In an effort to further understand the motivations as well as underlying processes surrounding the creation and sharing of the videos, online questionnaires have been administered to the content producers of the videos under analysis in this research.

Historically, various minority groups have faced multiple forms of prejudice and discrimination. The sources of such attitudes are mainly ignorance about these groups. One such group is Muslims living in western countries. The fear and dread of Muslims and Islam has deep historical roots; however, these attitudes escalated after the September 11 tragedy. After September 11, Muslims became the headlines of news and Americans were exposed to distorted images of Muslims in the media. This misrepresentation of Muslims in the media led to yet another form of xenophobia, which resulted in ‘othering’ Muslims. In schools and universities, the story was not different. In the following study, I discuss the ‘othering’ of 6 international hijabi Muslim women studying at a Midwestern University in light of the Islamophobic tendencies developed after September 11. I create narratives of these experiences to understand how hijabi Muslim women make sense of their experiences in relation to the larger sociopolitical discourse. These narratives contribute to the larger effort of creating an equitable educational experience for students from all backgrounds.

This dissertation explores the potential of the queer Muslim asylum seeker to confront the Dutch national imaginary. An archetype of homonationalism, the Netherlands faces rising tides of Islamophobia, waters which queer Muslims must learn to navigate. An asylum seeker’s success in the system depends on their “credibility”, hinging on the consistency of their self-representation which is constantly being reconstructed. These constant reconstructions, what Ewing (1990) refers to as “shifting selves”, are not conscious or noticed by the individual; yet, in the context of asylum claim-making, reconstitutions of the self may rise to the surface, asylum seekers then engaging in conscious strategizing. I analyze these contexts ethnographically through informal interviews and participant observation, at the height of the so-called “Refugee Crisis” of the mid-2010s in Europe. I find that as the figure of the queer Muslim asylum seeker confronts the Dutch national imaginary, it both confirms it—representing national commitments to human rights, to tolerance, and to protection of sexual minorities—and challenges it—embodying impossible identities, and evincing a failure of the nation to live up to its ideals: What is “tolerance” when it is weaponized against minority groups? What kind of queerness is being protected if deviation from a cultural norm is disqualifying? Whose human rights are being protected by a system that demands the subject of those rights conform to formulations inconsistent with lived experience?