Anti-Muslim bias is denied legitimacy by framing Muslimness as voluntarily chosen.

Evidence

Meer and Modood identify a variety of reasons why the notion that Muslim minorities could be subject to racism by virtue of their real or perceived ‘Muslimness’ is met with much less sympathy than the widely accepted notion that other religious minorities in Europe, particularly Jewish groups, can be the victims of racism. They begin by elaborating the relationships between Islamophobia, anti- Muslim sentiment and cultural racism, before turning to the results of interviews with journalists who make allegedly formative contributions to our understanding of anti-Muslim sentiment. Meer and Modood delineate and discuss four tendencies. The first is the conceptualization of racism that assumes that the protections afforded to racial minorities conventionally conceived as involuntarily constituted should not be extended to Muslims because theirs is a religious identity that is voluntarily chosen. The second is that the way that religion per se is frowned upon by the contemporary intelligentsia invites the ridiculing of Muslims as being salutary for intellectual debate and not, therefore, an issue of discrimination. Third, while ethnic identities are welcomed in the public space, there is much more unease about religious minorities. Finally, some find it difficult to sympathize with a minority that is perceived to be disloyal or associated with terrorism, a view that leads to a perception of Muslims as a threat rather than as a disadvantaged minority, subject to increasingly pernicious discourses of racialization. — Nasar Meer, Tariq Modood, Refutations of Racism in the ‘Muslim…, 8

Categorization

• DEFINE: Lays out the four rhetorical moves that define how Islamophobia is culturally refused recognition as racism — central to the field’s definitional dispute.
• XREF: Directly engages Bleich’s neutral concept-formation vs. the critical framing; the ‘voluntary vs. involuntary’ identity distinction echoes the race/religion boundary debate also central to Halliday’s critique. — connects to: Essentialised ‘good Muslim’ framings exclude real Muslims from civic participation — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 401; Denying Islamophobia as ideas-criticism enables anti-Muslim feeling disconnected from real Muslims. — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 139; Islamophobic discourse denies Muslims the status of ordinary citizens (+8 more)

Related

• Labeling some Muslims ‘moderate’ marginalizes all others as its necessary counterpart. (similarity 0.85)
• Essentialised ‘good Muslim’ framings exclude real Muslims from civic participation (similarity 0.85)
• Denying Islamophobia as ideas-criticism enables anti-Muslim feeling disconnected from real Muslims. (similarity 0.84)
• Anti-Muslim signification is culturally constructed rather than biologically grounded. (similarity 0.84)
• Muslims were told anti-Muslim racism cannot exist because Muslims are not a race (similarity 0.83)
• Muslim identity is real but never the sole or primary form of social self-understanding. (similarity 0.83)
• Critics of multiculturalism deserve reasoned evaluation, not merely rhetorical condemnation. (similarity 0.83)
• Recourse to Muslim culture masks Islamophobia while homogenizing all Muslims (similarity 0.82)
• Anti-Islamophobia must not become the sole analytical frame for studying Western Muslims (similarity 0.82)
• Muslims suffer hostility for perceived identity beyond any voluntary religious choice. (similarity 0.82)
• Mainstream anti-Islamophobia defense framed bias as cultural misunderstanding, not racism (similarity 0.81)
• Muslim identity cannot be reduced to religion alone (similarity 0.81)
• Islamophobia is best understood and countered as a form of anti-Muslim racism. (similarity 0.81)
• Racism scholarship’s biologistic paradigms long excluded anti-Muslim discrimination as unclassifiable (similarity 0.81)
• Anti-Muslim sentiment terminology mirrors the older, unresolved antisemitism debates about racism vs. religious prejudice. (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Muslims were told anti-Muslim racism cannot exist because Muslims are not a race #exemplifies (0.85) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 583
• Anti-Muslim signification is culturally constructed rather than biologically grounded. #expands (0.80) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 822
• Denying Islamophobia as ideas-criticism enables anti-Muslim feeling disconnected from real Muslims. #qualifies (0.75) — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 139
• Essentialised ‘good Muslim’ framings exclude real Muslims from civic participation #expands (0.70) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 401
• Islamophobic discourse denies Muslims the status of ordinary citizens #complicates (0.70)