Africana Perspectives on Islamophobia

Introduction

This roundtable advances an Africana religions approach to understanding a global array of anti-Muslim practices. The years since September 2001 have witnessed unprecedented public attention toward Islamic religion and Muslim practitioners, largely through media coverage and scholarly studies of state policies promoting repression, cultural bias, and populist violence against Muslims. Public attention to this phenomenon, commonly termed "Islamophobia," has tended to minimize or altogether erase the presence of Africana peoples. The customary focus on non-Black Muslims and references to the "Muslim world" as the Middle East (so, exclusive of Africa) have meant that the public meaning of global Islam is also typically divorced from considering Africana religions. This is a puzzling phenomenon for many reasons. The overwhelming majority of Muslims in the Americas throughout history have been Africana peoples. Much of Europe's Muslim population is Africana. Islamic history, moreover, is part and parcel of African history, as numerous Muslim polities emerged and flourished throughout Africa for centuries.

It is urgent to recognize the history of Africana religions encompasses the hundreds of millions of Africana Muslims whose lives have been affected by historical and contemporary patterns of antipathy toward Islam. For this reason, the following roundtable examines Islamophobia through an Africana religions approach. The authors examine multiple regions, periods, and contexts to elucidate what anti-Muslim practices have meant for global communities of Black religion. As they demonstrate, the contemporary targeting of Muslims as political enemies has numerous historical antecedents and a broad reach across the Africana world. This roundtable develops a more comprehensive understanding of how Islamophobia has impacted the history and present of Black religions.

We note, finally, that the very term "Islamophobia" has come under rigorous scrutiny, as it can be interpreted to denote fear instead of the conflicts over social and political power that have inspired anti-Muslim behavior. As evidenced by the thoughtful essays that follow, the purpose of this roundtable is to elucidate precisely those conflicts and to demonstrate theoretical and methodological approaches that reveal the human cost of vilifying Islam.