ABSTRACT
Despite having established itself in the lexicon of both public and political discourses over the past two decades, Islamophobia remains something of a complex, much-contested and highly emotive issue. Having first raised political awareness following the publication of the Runnymede Trust’s ground-breaking report, Islamophobia: a challenge for us all (the Runnymede report) in 1997, it continues to be one of the most salient socio-political issues facing many contemporary Western societies, along with the role of Muslims and Islam more broadly. Defined as being little more than a fear or dislike of Islam that by consequence extends to all Muslims without differentiation (Commission on British Muslims 1997), some critics and detractors of the term – and of Muslims and Islam also, it must be stressed – contend that in the contemporary climate there is a clear rationale for being ‘fearful’ of Islam. Andrew Shyrock (2010: 9) agrees with this view, arguing that speaking about Islamophobia tends to be overly simplistic and impervious to nuance, while Salman Sayyid (2010: 1–4) and George Readings et al. (2011) stress the need for better articulation and for differentiating the analytical from the polemical, which are somewhat different and distinct from each other.
