London protest, 2012. Demoted/Peter Marshall. All rights reserved.‘Islamophobia’ – fear, hostility or negative sentiments with regard to Islam and Muslims – comes in different forms and contexts. In this article, I identify two distinct paradigms: the racist and the secular-liberal, and implicit combinations of the two. The targets of ‘Islamophobia’ – Muslims – offer a range of public discourses and sentiments which interact with these paradigms. I shall attempt to sketch an ‘ideal type’ of what I call ‘Umma nationalism’, a discourse which enters into various sentiments and utterances of diverse actors in various situations, and in relation to pertinent contests. I will start with the historical background, which plays a part in shaping some Muslim attitudes and discourses about Islam and the ‘West’.
Muslims and Europe
The historical presence of Muslims in Europe was, for the most part, as rulers: first in Iberia and Sicily and later during the Ottoman rule of the Balkans and much of south-eastern Europe. The states in question were conceived in terms of religious confrontation: Islam versus Christianity. There were, in fact, many Christian and Jewish subjects of the Muslim states, who were formally protected as subordinate subjects on payment of additional taxes. In reality, their conditions and treatment varied over time and place, among different groups and classes, with instances of persecution as well as periods of calm. However, they were mostly better off than Jews and Muslims living in Christian Europe.
