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Racism is a political tool, utilized in the post modern world by nationalist regimes, and even some of the revered Western liberal 'democracies,' for the purpose of constructing a particular social order. This social order most often is built upon a common heritage, a history of a common peoples, who share a common language and religion, and also a common economic plan; and thus excludes from it all that is foreign and alien to the root culture. Nazism, for example, strove to purify its German 'volk' through the purging of all imperfection and deficiency. This 'cancer' which was damaging the German body (Volksgemeinschaft) was attributed to the Jew. And so the Jew became an increasingly objectified "threat" to the harmony of this imagined social order. The 'Jew' was molded into an alien 'race' which was inherently destructive and could never assimilate into the general population. This is why the 'Jewish Question' in twentieth century Europe was concluded with Hitler's 'final solution.'
We can witness some eerie parallels in the process of racialization of the 'Jew' to the more current shift in racializing the 'Muslim.' Although not to the extreme of the 'Jewish Question', the 'Muslim Question' is formulated in the same racist fashion. The reasons which lead to the racialization of the 'Jew' are being re-applied to the racialization process of the 'Muslim'. 'Judeophobia' is now turning into 'Islamophobia.' However, heterophobia - the fear of the other - is not the sole factor at play in this very complex issue. Some of those contributing factors include social-engineering designs and ambitions of the modern state - that is a multi-facet design which incorporates politics, economics, science and culture.
All that I have mentioned thus far provides the framework into which 'islamophobia' is being propagated. First of all, the 'Muslim' is given an alien attribute. Islam as a unique way of life makes it impossible for the 'Muslim' to ameliorate into the Western social order, which is generally labeled as 'secular' though it is also undeniably Christian and foremost Capitalist. Like the 'Jew' the 'Muslim' is seen through an Orientalist binocular. The myth of the 'Muslim' as a 'nomad, desert dwelling Arab' has been in a way romanticized through out the western world ever since their first encounters in the medieval times. But what made the 'Jewish Question' different and what makes the emergence of what I have called the 'Muslim Question' different from the general 'heterophobia' or xenophobia, are the specific developments in modernity.
Generally, there has been a shift in the way we define 'development', which contributes significantly to the increasing fear and paranoia which the western world had been experiencing, especially the United States. The West generally has one perception of development - that is high GDP - which means one needs a sound capitalist economy in order to build and expand this perfect social order driven by the modernization of ones nation and people. Once people reject this vision of a perfect world order - like many 'Islamic' countries have, it complicates things further for the super powers, and that becomes a big problem. The US fears domination, and the recent Islamic revivalism has become perceived as a major threat. During the Cold War period, the West constantly scrutinized the Muslim world in an attempt to divert their ties with the Soviet Union, because even Communism at the time was considered a big threat. Though the Jews were often stigmatized as "the colonizers of progress" and during the era of Social Nationalism, were considered a great threat to the sovereignty of a Pure German state - hence the 'Jew', although completely enlightened, became degraded into the 'condition of a species'. Moreover, the 'Jew' was not seen as a minority but an opposing 'race'. This idea of the 'opposing race' is resurrected in the 'struggle' between the West and Islam, specifically in the theory of the 'inevitable clash of civilizations' posed by Samuel Huntington and many other neo-conservatives. His theory evokes much of the same ideas about Muslims which were previously concocted about the Jews. To say that the process of racialization of the 'Jew' and 'Muslim' are equal is taking the topic a little too far, but nonetheless, the idea of an 'opposite race' is a prominent one. "The Clash of Civilizations" theory has many flaws, but this is not an essay intended to point them out, rather to take it as an example of how the West is framing the 'Muslim' as a collective entity - the same way the 'Jew' was treated in Europe. The way that the 'Jew' then was blamed for the misfortunes of capitalism as a collective - the 'Muslim' is blamed for the tragedies of global terrorism in the same collective manner.
Inevitably, Jews became scapegoats for all faults of German society; the mare fact that a person is called a Jew is an invitation forcibly to make him over into a physical semblance of that image of death and distortion. Perhaps we cannot see this type of extremism in the broader sense of the 'Muslim Question', but if we take a look at the Bosnian Genocide, things become - in a way- much more clear.
Bosnia, being in Europe has also been part of much of the history which surrounded the continent, including the process of enlightenment and modernization. The Muslim population of Bosnia, directly or indirectly, had undergone a similar transformation from a religious group to a 'racial' group, much like the Jews of Europe. What we refer to today as 'Bosnians' or 'Bosniaks' are peoples who were ethnicized as 'Muslims' for centuries up until the genocide and the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992. 'Muslim' in this context did not refer to ones religious affiliation alone (though that was part of it). Many of the people killed in the genocide from 1992 to 1995, were not even practicing Muslims. They only carried a 'Muslim' name, which was 'threatening' enough to the Fascist Serb perception of a 'perfect' social order in the Balkans. Many women were raped because 'Muslim' blood was considered 'impure' and therefore needed to be 'purged' of its 'filth'. Muslim women were then forced to carry their (Serb) children, and participate in much gruesome acts which were clearly forbidden in Islam. Most often then not, they were killed in the end. Bosnia is, however, only one case study of the extreme implications the term 'Muslim' brought with it in the Balkan region.
Today, the 'Muslim' identity is mostly framed around the concept of terrorism. Although we may think of terrorism as a separate phenomenon executed by some crazy fanatic groups of people who happen to be 'Muslim' - it is important to understand that this assertion is not completely correct. 'Terrorism' has largely become a response to the driving forces of modernity. So they work hand in hand. The increasing influence of globalization has brought modernism to all parts of the globe, and different groups responded to the phenomenon differently. Specific forms of 'terrorism' existed in all societies through out History, but what makes the termed 'Islamic Struggle' movements different is that they are intrinsically modern. They respond to a modern force. Many of these 'terrorist' organizations were rooted in the decolonization period, when people like Franz Fanon sought violence as a necessary weapon in combating Western European Imperialism. And while the limits of enlightenment are clearly visible in the self destructive nature of liberal capitalism, the flaws have been even more ostensible in the rise of global terrorism as a countering force to rapid modernization of the world. In a way both the 'Jew' and 'Muslim' are culprits of exposing the limits and dangers of extreme modernity and enlightenment - which is why both have been 'racialized' into an 'opposing race' which ultimately destroy the harmony of the idealized social order of the new world order system of capitalism and modernity.
