Bridge Initiative
The Bridge Initiative is a multi-year research project on Islamophobia housed in Georgetown University
Bridge Initiative
The Bridge Initiative is a multi-year research project on Islamophobia housed in Georgetown University
Within the field of Islamophobia, dominant scholarship identifies the issue as a form of racism, where race and religion have become conflated in social structures. Secularism, Race, and the Politics of Islamophobia makes a new contribution to the “Islamophobia is racism” thesis by analyzing how secularism organizes and constructs the racialization of Muslims and perpetuates anti-Muslim racism. It argues that the “Islamophobia is racism” argument is restrictive as it fails to analyze the concept of religion. Often the conversations around Islamophobia are focused on the Muslim individual, but it is limiting as it doesn’t capture/address how religion, in particular, Islam is targeted and demonized. To address this, the authors of the book underscore how secularism plays a foundational role in how we understand race and religion today. The contributors call attention to the ways secularism is embedded in and drives the disciplinary institutions of the State (i.e. law, political groups, government entities, bureaucracies) to authorize racism and the racialization of Muslims and Islam.
This panel includes three of the book’s contributors, Dr. Jinan Bastaki, Dr. Roshan Arah Jahangeer, and Dr. Fatimah Jackson-Best, along with the editor, Dr. Sharmin Sadequee. Their chapters address a range of topics, including how neoliberalism and capital allow for the accommodation of some Muslims, how secularism and claims of “separatism” in France seek to make Islam invisible, and the compounding effects of anti-Black and gendered Islamophobia on Black Muslim women in Canada.
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