Respectable intellectual argument is a particularly dangerous vehicle for Islamophobia

Evidence

I was speaking about those who display their bigotry overtly, but also those who do so more subtly in the most respectable of settings – middle-class dinner tables. It is this more covert form of Islamophobia, couched in intellectual arguments and espoused by thinktanks, commentators and even politicians, that I have spent the last decade trying to reason with. … The rationalizing of bigotry is not new. Discrimination has always been subject to ideological and intellectual justification. Whether this is directed against women, black people, Jewish people or LGBT communities, history shows that it’s always possible to rationalize racism and couch bigotry in ‘acceptable’ arguments; this form of hatred is the most dangerous. Muslims are the latest in a long line caught in the crossfire of these so-called rational arguments. Islamophobia is Britain’s latest bigotry blind spot. — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 34

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Runnymede framework’s emphasis on ‘closed views of Islam’ being espoused in respectable intellectual circles, and resonates generally with analyses of respectable racism against other groups. — connects to: Covert intellectual bigotry is more dangerous than overt Islamophobia — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for Us…, 29
• SEED: An essay angle on how ‘bigotry blind spots’ get produced precisely by their intellectual respectability — the dinner-table test as a diagnostic.

Related

• Covert intellectual bigotry is more dangerous than overt Islamophobia (similarity 0.91)
• Generalizing from a few examples to 1.5 billion Muslims is the core of bigotry (similarity 0.85)
• Criticism of religious ideas should never be restricted as Islamophobic (similarity 0.80)
• Ideologically rationalized bigotry historically recurs against successive target groups (similarity 0.80)
• The ‘unfounded hostility’ frame forces interpretive judgments about reasonable criticism. (similarity 0.79)
• Separating Islamophobia as ideology from racism undermines anti-racist struggle (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Covert intellectual bigotry is more dangerous than overt Islamophobia #corroborates (0.92) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 29