Project Empire: How Anti-Muslim Sentiment is Used to Justify Imperial Adventures

http://www.alternet.org/world/156159/project_empire%3A_how_anti-muslim_sentiment_is_used_to_justify_imperial_adventures/

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An opponent of the Park 51 Islamic community center at a protest in August 2010.


The term “Islamophobia” became known to Americans after the September 11 attacks. Whether it was efforts on the left to combat anti-Muslim sentiment or efforts on the right to attack Muslim-Americans and deny that there was something called Islamophobia, the term was here to stay.

But if we only look at anti-Muslim sentiment post-9/11, we would miss a lot. In fact, as Deepa Kumar shows in her new book Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, set to be released next month, the production of Islamophobia has a long history. Generating anti-Muslim fervor was central to projects of empire-building in Europe and the United States. “This book is about the image of ‘Islam,’ that mythical creation conjured out of the needs of empire that has led even progressives to claim that Muslims are more violent than any other religious group,” Kumar writes in the introduction.

I caught up with Kumar, an Associate Professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University, over the phone, and we discussed “liberal Islamophobia,” the anti-mosque movement and how the Israeli right’s ascendance changed the framing of the Israel/Palestine conflict.