Berkley Center

Is Islamophobia a form of racism? If so, how does it relate to the broader history of racisms? In this lunchtime briefing, author and scholar Arun Kundnani analyzed Islamophobia as a lay ideology that offers an everyday “common sense” explanatory framework for making sense of mediated crisis events (such as terrorist attacks) in ways that disavow those events’ political meanings (rooted in empire, racism, and resistance) and instead explain them as products of a reified “Muslimness.” The discussion considered how Islamophobia involves an ideological displacement of political antagonisms onto the plane of culture, where they can be explained in terms of the fixed nature of the “other.”

This event was co-sponsored by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU), and ACMCU's Bridge Initiative.