An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Ali Kassem (Alwaleed Postdoctoral Fellow 2021-22):
Islamophobia, Racism, and the Modern Condition: Theorising from West Asia North Africa
Islamophobia has received growing attention over the past years across public, media, and academic debates (Beydoun 2018; Kumar 2012; Lean 2012; Tryer 2013; Green 2015; Saeed 2016; Wolfreys 2016). Throughout, it is often assumed to be a ‘western’ phenomenon, and its study has almost exclusively focused on cases and happenings from the global north (Yel and Nas 2014; El Zahed 2019; Bayrakli and Hafez 2018).1 Working against this assumption, this project works to think and re-think Islamophobia’s workings from alongside the lived experiences of people in the West Asia North Africa region. Beginning with a case-study of Islamophobia in Lebanon and extending into comparative analysis examining islamophobia in Egypt, Tunisia, and Iraq, the project asks what it means to study Islamophobia as a form of racism within Muslim-majority and Arab-majority spaces and what such a theorisation raises in thinking racism and racialisation globally. Drawing on Latin American decolonial thought (Grosfoguel 2016; Mignolo 2011) as a form of south-south theoretical dialogue, the project argues for the need to re-think racism beyond its Euro-American confines as a global historical connected phenomenon from which the modern condition itself can be (re)understood.
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/81322391722
Passcode: Vr8f3ew2
Please note that this seminar will now take place on Friday 4 March due to strike action.