Islamophobia operates in three stages from stereotyping to symbol association

Evidence

There are three phases in the Islamophobic process. The first stage is stereotyping, which is the act of creating an evaluative hierarchy to enable the mainstreaming of individual meanings and knowledge inside society’s cognitive framework (Johnson et al. 2011). The identification of how symbols, such as the hijab as a sign of fundamentalism, express underlying meanings is the second phase in the process (Razali et al. 2023). Semiology, the process of creating identifiers to bring attention to the hidden meanings in symbols so that they might become a part of society’s social fabric, is the third phase. For example, hijābi are often associated with terrorists (Halim 2022). — Muhammad Asad Latif, The Identity of Religion Always Comes Up, 22

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives a usable three-stage framework for turning prejudice into mainstream social meaning.
• XREF: Echoes Stuart Hall-style encoding/decoding and semiotic work on the hijab as a floating signifier.