Islamophobia in America: The Anatomy of Intolerance.

• Author: Artan-Bayhan, Selen
• Position: Book review

Islamophobia in America: The Anatomy of Intolerance

Edited by Carl W. Ernst

New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 205 pages, ISBN 9781137321886.

THIS EDITED VOLUME is a collection of essays dealing with the issue of Islamophobia in the United States from various perspectives, such as race relations, gender, state, and history. There are five chapters preceded by an introduction by Ernst, welcoming the reader and briefly mentioning each chapter's lined up.

In Chapter 1, Gottschalk and Greenberg follow traces of Anglo-American Islamophobia by exploring the literature that was produced in both geographies between the late 17th and mid-20th centuries. The authors underline the role of imperial Britain spreading the seeds of Islamophobia to the United States and examine both the similarities and differences between these two versions. Drawing on works by Prideaux, Voltaire, and Locke, they indicate that representations of Islam as violent and fraud was actually used by social commentators to criticize and warn about internal issues unrelated to Islam. Feelings of fear and threat from Islam, as a competitor to Christianity, also contributed to Anglo-American Islamophobia.

Chapter 2, written by Ghanea Bassiri, explores the reasons why the attacks of 9/11 were framed as religious violence by the U.S. media, many political elites, and the American public. He argues that while the media tends to simplify issues when explaining them, the state gains from this association by expanding its authority over U.S. citizens. The author indicates that the historical role of religion in the construction of American national identity explicates why Americans resort to religious differences in times of political crisis. Acknowledging religion's strong influence on assimilation that has worked for Jews and Catholics in the past, GhaneaBassiri is skeptical when it comes to Muslims, as their integration is complicated by their ethnic and racial characteristics. He also criticizes the narrow definition of Islamophobia as fear of Islam, which he asserts does not capture the racial and political processes on which it is based.

In Chapter 3, Curtis provides a racial and historical perspective on the rise of Islamophobia in the United States within the context of the emergence of the Nation of Islam (NOI) and the pan-African political movement in the 1930s. The adoption of Islam by many African Americans, as part of their struggle against white supremacy, renders state...