The phenomenon of Islamophobia is one of the elements through which the image of Muslims in the Western reality is determined, so it is either a manifestation of acceptance and recognition as a component of the Western social fabric, and considering Islam as one of the cultural expressions that have crystallized in the European and Western context in general during recent decades, or it is an element and a motive for rejection and exclusion, so they are viewed; that is, Muslims, as strangers, embodying the other who is different culturally and culturally, and then the inability to build bridges and integrate according to the traditional term, and recognize philosophical expression.
This prevailing image, which oscillates between recognizing the Islamic component in the Western context or excluding it, reveals the nature of the representations that have been formed around Islam, which were fueled by historical, intellectual, political and social reasons, that is, the phenomenon has roots that feed it in its negative manifestations, and it does not depend on the current factors that weave the relationship of man in Europe and the West in general with Islam and Muslims, in which the media stands as an effective tool in directing awareness, but is determined by the sediments inherent in the folds of history and in the intellectual and political conflict. It is the one that is fertile material for use by the parties that invest in Islamophobia and employ it in the current context to maintain a state of separation with Islam and Muslims, and employ that situation politically as manifested in the previous article, but the phenomenon feeds on more than it is apparent, as the discourse of hostility finds its legitimacy in a process of historical accumulation based on the contrast between the West and the East, wars and conflicts, to the borders of colonialism, and then on the other hand with the intellectual dimension, where the image of Muslims was carried out in two stages, With orientalist studies – mainly French – and the theory of the clash of civilizations.
What are the intellectual and historical foundations that are a source of Islamophobia?
Intellectual and historical sources and determinants of Islamophobia
Islam and the world of the East have historically been different from the relationship between the West and the East, or from the prevailing view of man and Eastern society, and more generally the vision formed about Muslim Islam, for "there is nothing more tainted between relations between peoples than between Europe and the Arab world" over several centuries.
Our relationship with Arabs and Muslims is more complex and deeper hateful, unlike our relationship with other peoples far away and alien to us and of other religions" (Sigrid Honke, God is not what you promote). "Where do the reasons lie and what are the factors that prevent us from understanding their civilization, their culture, their religion, and their history. The distortion of history must have prevented us from overcoming obstacles."
History has carried in its chapters distortions that contributed to the formation of negative prejudices against Islam and Muslims, including the prevailing views that have historical roots that are determined in several determinants that formed - and still are - the document through which a trial goes to say:
The spread of Islam by the sword
Islam according to this perspective spread by the sword, so the verses of jihad are confined and interpreted in a partial way from the context of the semantic meaning of the concept as stated in the Holy Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Prophet and the development of its origins jurists, the partial meaning is lost with it the original and total meaning of the concept, so that it becomes the semantic meaning of the prevailing holy war as understood by Christian theology historically in religious and political conflicts in Europe and the West in general, which furnish part of the Western imagination. However, this negative concept of the concept is fuelled by the prevailing tendencies of violence in the name of religion and the terrorism practiced by transnational militant groups, which contradict the truth of their claims and practice the authentic character of Islam, and move away from the true concept of jihad.
The prophet who loves conquest and women
Regarding the first character inherited from the Middle Ages from the Holy Prophet, Pope Benedict XVI recalled in a famous lecture in Regensburg, Germany, on September 12, 2006, an excerpt from a Byzantine ruler's interview with a Persian intellectual in the context of the debate of faith and reason between the Qur'an and the Old Testament by saying: "Show me what is new that Muhammad has brought, and you will find things that are all evil and inhumane, such as his command to spread religion by the sword" (see text of the Pope's lecture).
This lecture sparked a wide controversy at the time, but it expresses an aspect of the prevailing understanding regarding the personality of the Holy Prophet, which continued to attend in various forms, which shows the lack of true knowledge of the biography of the Prophet in its various aspects, which are explained in the books of merits. This is even more evident in ignorance of the Prophet's relationship with women, or his relationship with women, which cannot be read out of context, but rather a major revolution brought about by the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) in Arab society regarding the concept of marriage, marital relations and the status of women within both the family and society.
All this, whether in the Western context or other contexts, needs new readings, the progress of the Holy Prophet in his unique human character, and this can only be done in fact, except by bypassing the logic of authorship in the Prophet's biography and introducing it, other than the pattern that remained prevalent, a pattern that has been focused in the history of the Prophet's experience on invasions and Saraya, which led to the omission of other inspiring aspects, which formed the base in the life of the Holy Prophet and the expansion of the base of Islamic society, which means the value system that was instilled. Its buildings and meanings in the first generation, it was like a seed that became a lush tree, its branches expanded by Islamic morals and good treatment, and not by the logic of force, but force was a means to protect public order as is the case with all nations that moved to the status of states or empires.
Power was not the essence of the prophetic message, but mercy with the absolute human being, whatever his origin and belief, explicitly the Qur'anic verse "And we sent you only as a mercy to the worlds", and that the differentiation between creation is not as it was prevailing and still is, but a differentiation of values "If I honor you with God, I fear you", it was not the specific color, sex or belief, but the spirit of values that formed the features of the Islamic message in existence with the rest of creation, and that in fact was a liberation of man from the structures of domination and oppression The enslavement that has been practiced against man and continues to hold promises to infuse meaning into contemporary life and to save man and the universe from the tendency of ruin.
Enslaved woman in violation of rights
This issue is one of the main issues on which there is a sharp dispute and forms the Western imagination regarding the position towards Islam and Muslims, especially since the current prevailing model is based on the human rights system and the discourse of equality it wears, through which Islamic legislation is criticized on the subject, or the status of women in the Islamic reality, and this itself, as we mentioned earlier, constitutes an omission of the nature of the transformation that Islam has brought about in women's issues. Compared to the development of legislative systems, part of the current discourse on women is new to these societies, but it is rooted in the Islamic epistemological vision. Rather, the imbalance occurred in the cultural structures, where religiosity is clothed in the garb of culture and social and tribal returns that have harmed the position of women, and contemporary Islamic thought has worked in many of its jurisprudence to overcome this problem (see, for example: the liberation of women in the era of the message, Abdel Halim Abu Shaqqa), and even the issue of women has become a subject of violation, along with the whole human being, by moving with the consumption system from the concept of equality to settlement (El-Messiri Abdel Wahab, Women between Liberation and Female-Centeredness) , where gender differences are eliminated, and this is a real danger faced in the radical transformations of the concept of identity at the level of the individual.
These elements find their echo in the historically formed image of Islam and Muslims, the images of the "Mohammedans" in literature and history books, and finally some orientalist studies, anthropology and anthropology of what was in the context of formation, which extended colonialism in a negative way about man, Arab and Islamic societies and their cultural symbols. While the traditional view of friction with the world of the East - Islam, Muslims and Arabs - is linked to the tendency of distortion and aggression, or the stolen will, which reflects a distorted and unreal image of the nature of Islam and Islamic civilization, and this is a distortion of the reality of history and the nature of peace and Islamic civilization, modern times are witness to the presentation of a negative image of Arabs, Muslims and Eastern society in general, in ethnological studies, where Arab societies have been labeled backwardness that derives its roots from prevailing beliefs and culture, and that this backwardness is not incidental in the context of civilizational decline, but rather It is an authentic nature that has genetic roots fueled by Islamic culture and religious belief, scientific progress is a natural secretion according to the French orientalist Ernest Renan of the Christian spirit reconciled with science, unlike Islam, which is hostile to science and the scientific spirit, but according to his opinion it is hostile to philosophical thinking, as it tended to accuse Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali of dealing the final blow to philosophy in the context of Islamic civilization, an ideological saying that still prevails to the present time among a wide range of Arab thinkers and others in their study of the history of Philosophy and rational thinking in the context of Islamic civilization, although it was known at the time by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, in addition to the current criticism of a number of researchers in the field of Islamic philosophy.
The clash of civilizations and stoking the feeling of fear of Islam
These statements, which have to do with the tendency of violence and aggression, or the personality of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, or the relationship with science, knowledge and rational thinking, are still essential material for networks that feed Islamophobia and for biased media in directing awareness about Islam and Muslims, and therefore the interpretation of violence in the name of religion has its roots in cultural approaches, which place sharp differences between the West and the East, and work to interpret and return all manifestations of extremism and extremism to Islam and Islamic religious thinking, and this brings us back to the theory of the clash of civilizations, That is, to the neoconservative perspective, starting with Huntington, where the world was drawn in the form of cultural and religious maps after the end of the conflict of the two main poles, which lasted for nearly half a century, so that the future danger at the time was specific in Islam, given the incompatibility of the Islamic religious and cultural system in the crucible of modernity.
The thesis of the clash of civilizations caused a wide stir in a global context that was in dire need to work by bridging the gap between cultures and not researching the differences and stoking the fire of conflict through those differences and differences, and the importance of the thesis of the clash lies in terms of its author, who is close to decision-making in the US White House at the time, and then from the division of the world on the foundations and templates and intimidation of a supposed future enemy, which formed the essence of George W. Bush's speech at a later stage. He remained in control of the formulation of international relations, which was religious and cultural policy in essence under the so-called war on terrorism, and in the atmosphere of conflict and tension, fear of Islam and Islamic religious symbols became the most prominent expression, and extremist entities contributed to spreading that negative image, so the voice of dialogue and bridging the relationship between cultures was dimmed, to attend closed identity approaches, which was reflected in the interpretation of the religious phenomenon in a negative way, which was reflected in the position of a broad group in the European and Western context on Islam and the Islamic component, especially A number of countries have been exposed to terrorist incidents that have called for several approaches to understand the causes and causes of violence.
The interpretations that tended to link religion and violence, and the incompatibility between Islam and modernity, are an extension of that perception that has been formed throughout history about Islam and Muslims to the limits of Maxime Rodinson and Huntington, dividing the world into ready-made closed templates, internalizing this perspective in which cultural and religious conflicts are active, a perspective that ignores other aspects of the cultural and civilizational intersections that formed the essence of human society and the motive for borrowing between cultures and civilizations. The current one, with populism and the right, is characterized by a lot of superficiality and generalization, hence the inability to understand and explain phenomena. Huntington's example is that his approach has been subject to criticism from conservative intellectuals themselves, as Francis Fukuyama rejects the mechanical link between religion and violence, based on Olivier Roy's approach to what he called "Islam taken from localism" (Fukuyama, America at the crossroads, post-neoconservative), a purely Western problem, where no work has been done to ectome Islam and Islamic culture, or to recognize the Islamic component within the Western cultural fabric, and allow it to crystallize in a climate of Acceptance and freedom, which created a number of tensions, one of which is the drift of a number of Muslim youth in Western countries with terrorist entities, and this in fact shows that the feeling of fear and rejection produces negative reactions, which needs assimilation and containment by bypassing the traditional position of Islamic religious symbols, through their localization, identification and recognition, as for ostracism, as is the case with the French model with the so-called "Islamic isolationism", it carries problems for the future, and deepens the cultural division while the need for dialogue is dire. Extremism and rejection at the level of the situation, or the manufacture of hostility and fear of Islam, may naturally produce rejection and extremism in the other direction, a rejection and militancy that does not reflect the authentic character of Islam.
The character of Islam and the tolerance of Muslims
Islamophobia, as a phenomenon that incites hostility and hatred against Muslims and Islamic cultural symbols, feeds on the ambiguous history between East and West, a history of events and facts that preserves many aspects of conflict between two civilized entities, in which belief on both sides was a major determinant in the mutual positions and the image formed in the imagination of each component and party against the other, despite the clear difference between them in the management of difference, diversity and pluralism, in which history and the fabric of Arab-Islamic society maintain a wide range of tolerance. In relation to the rest of the religious components under the banner of freedom at the level of belief, as is the case with most of the boredom and bees that continued to exist in our current context in the East, or the dye that characterized the Islamic presence in Andalusia and societies, and Islam is the religion of the majority of its people.
The presence of Muslims in Andalusia for centuries, their presence, which carried the will of reconstruction, was manifested in the features of civilizational and cultural creativity, and an understanding of pluralism and difference, as is the case with all societies to which Islam has infiltrated and became the religion of the majority of its people due to the treatment and moral values that Muslims carried with them in trade and travels, and this in fact reflects an authentic cognitive and moral dimension in Islam that was a realistic manifestation in Muslim civilization, which prompted one of the writers to consider the Christian component in the East as one of the builders of The Eastern civilizational entity, in its phrase they are "Christians, culture, Muslims, civilization" (Muhammad Abed Al-Jabri, Dialogue of the East and the Maghreb).
The subject of ethics and values regulating relations with self and the other (and the universe-environment) constitutes the essence of the message carried by Islam, whether it is in peace or war, with or dissent, in relation to individual or collective rights, as this is a system of values and principles that triumph for the absolute human being and preserve his dignity, and it is no wonder that the orientalist Sigrid Hunke - and many other writers and historians - recorded with great admiration some of these landmarks in the treatment of Muslims to other invaders who were pushed by the army of Pope Orbán The second year 1095 under the pretext of liberating Jerusalem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Christian brothers from the Muslim "infidels", which resulted in massacres that one is sad to mention because of the extent of their brutality and bloodiness against Muslims and Arabs at the time in Jerusalem and other Bekaa, and the orientalist conveys to us that message through a German knight named "Oliverus" about the morals expressed by Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi:
Throughout ancient times, we have not heard to this day about the dignity of creation towards enemy captives when God placed us at your mercy and subjected us to your siege, we did not recognize you as a ruler and oppressor, but as a caring father and savior from adversity. Who does not believe and doubt that this creation and this mercy came from God. The men whose fathers, brothers, brothers and sisters we killed with brutality and torment shared their bread and food with us and treated us the best even though we were at their disposal. (Sigrid Honke, God is not as you promote)
In conclusion: In this sense, fear of Islam is not what the Islamic perspective possesses and calls for fear, but rather fear and phobia are formed in the absence of awareness of the truth and authenticity of Islam, or in the source of fanaticism and closure, or due to the intervention of other political and social elements that stimulate a sense of fear, to emerge to exist in the behavior of rejection and hostility, employing in that historical and intellectual narratives that divide human society into islands, in order to eliminate the possibilities of encounter or understanding and understanding away from the falsification practiced by the media against the image of Muslims and Islam. These images are usually intended for employment and use to keep the state of tension permanent and continuous, which requires awareness on the other hand to formulate a discourse and initiatives that triumph for diversity, pluralism and difference, and establish a common human future.