Islamophobia: Incitement to Religious Hatred - Legislating For a New Fear?
Author(s)
Werbner, Pnina
Abstract
Is there any point in regarding Islamophobia as unique and different, a form of differential or cultural racism quite unlike familiar racializations of Blacks, Jews or Asians? To begin to answer this question I want to make two detours and consider, first, the logic of racism, and second, the role of nationalism and the nation-state in generating modern forms of racism. Although racism and xenophobia are not new phenomena – slavery, ethnic cleansing, pogroms, genocides, all preceded the formation of the modern nation-state – it is impossible to understand modern racism (or, indeed, political ethnicity, ethnic economic competition or identity politics) outside the context of the modern nation-state, conceived of as a sovereign, territorially bounded and self-governing social collectivity.
