Author: Md. Mahmudul Hasan

Organization/Publisher: IIUM Press 

 Date/Place: Intellectual Discourse, 20; 1(2012), Malaysia 

Type of Literature: Journal Article 

Number of Pages: 23 

Link: https://journals.iium.edu.my/intdiscourse/index.php/islam 

Brief: 

This article esplores Islamophobia and especially about its feature of criticizing Islam as oppressive to woman and misogynistic. The negative representation of the “Islamic East” portrays Muslim women as in need of help from the “civilized” West for emancipation and so it is an easy job for them to introduce the western feminist concepts in Muslim societies. The construction of Muslim men as religiously and culturally misogynists, and Muslim women as passive, powerless and quintessential victims of “Islamic patriarchy” arise from ignorance and prejudice. But like other phobias and racisms, “Islamophobia is “an incapacity to cope not only with difference but with resemblance.” If charges of misogyny against Islam are true, the religion resembles medieval Europe; and if the charges are unfounded and based on misapprehension of the religion, and if Islam is proved to be gender egalitarian, then to a great extent there exist commonalities between its treatment of women and women’s independence in today’s West. The author says that studies have proved that the uncritical imitation of Western ideas and the mimicry of Western modernity never ameliorated the condition of women. The author concludes that Islamophobia, similar to anti-Semitism or any other kind of religious prejudices, is a kind of racism.