Islam and the West: The Politics of Phobia

Abstract

The dawn of 21st Century inherited the bad relations between the Muslim World and the West. Primarily, the unresolved political issues of the Cold War shaped the agenda for the post-Cold War scenario. Especially, the political script of post-Cold War period dominated by Huntington’s Clash of Civilization theory, which portrayed Islam as the greatest threat to Western culture and values. This notion was being applied on various domestic vis-à-vis global situations that had nothing to do with the Muslims, and this fear of Islam or Muslim - Islamophobia - in the West created a gulf between the Muslim world and the Christian West. Islamophobia is a much talked about phenomenon; however, little attention was given to the fact that the Muslim world and some Western critics were also blaming the West as one of major source of political unrest in the Muslim world, which perpetuated bad relations between the two. Resultantly, evolving the geopolitics of emotions around politics of phobia(s) or xenophobia intensified the core basis of political processes in international relations. Similarly, in Muslim World, the very foundations of the phobia(s) or emotions of fear, suspicion and humiliation evolved or studied through historical prisms that include the history of Crusades, the era of colonialism and geopolitical maneuverings in post-colonial settings, developed serious levels of mistrust referred to as Westophobia. The global ramifications of these phobias are worrisome developments not only for the Christian West but also for Muslim world and it is high time to mitigate the socio-political gaps between the Muslim World and the Christian West. This paper attempts to explore the conceptualization of politics of phobias, especially the Islamophobia and Westophobia; to further examine the role of religious identity in creating a schism and to seek the differences as well as common grounds between the two communities, for mutual benefit and peaceful coexistence, to bridge the widening gulf between the two.