CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF CONTEMPORARY ISLAMOPHOBIC NARRATIVES: DECONSTRUCTING THE PHRASEOLOGY OF FEAR AND INTOLERANCE

Abstract

The malaise of Islamophobia has wide-ranging symptoms and calls for a sustained
critical response. Islamophobic ideologies seem to have been operating on the assumption
that Muslim societies suffer from some kind of cultural lacuna, which eventually prevent
them from ‘progress’ and increasingly draw them to violent and reactionary modes of
resistance. With these age-old orientalist and colonial clichés at its back, the present-day
Islamophobia is fast assuming the status of a civilizational and cultural racism reminiscent
of historical anti-Semitism. Though a complex socio-political and demographic phenomenon,
most often it tends to be oversimplified at best as a corollary of immigration and
multiculturalism and at worst as a ‘Return of Islam’. Islamophobia has occupied the central
stage due to incidents such as the Iranian Revolution, the Bali bombings, the Gulf War, 9/11,
just to name a few. Specifically, since 9/11, Islamophobia has been consistently expressing
itself in different genres and modalities ranging from verbal abuse and discrimination to
physical attack and racial profiling. Today, negative portrayals of Islam and Muslims abound
in the Western media and public discourses. The author examines different manifestations of
Islamophobia across a wide spectrum of socio-political perspectives taking into account
newspaper reporting, anti-Muslim ads, inclusion/ exclusion patterns and racist narratives.