Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Islamophobia & Europhobia: Subaltern Discourse & Its Limits, Peter O'Brien

Political Science Faculty Research

This essay examines resistance to Islamophobia in the form of Europhobia produced by Islamists in Europe. By "Europhobia" I mean essentializing and distorting depictions of Europe (and the West) as thoroughly decadent, corrupt, and sadistic. In a process that I dub "inverted othering" Islamists emulate the discursive strategies of Islamophobes but invert their negative stereotypes of Muslims to portray (non-Muslim) Europeans as a menacing threat to the umma, or Arabic community. I spotlight three forms of "inverted othering" through systematic comparison of both Islamophobic and Europhobic discourse in Europe (including in cyberspace): Islamists invert the claim that Islam is …

Islam Vs. Liberalism In Europe, Peter O'Brien

Political Science Faculty Research

In the West, Muslims are regarded with anxiety, mistrust, and fear. Many of us choose not to travel to Muslim countries for fear of becoming victims of terrorism. Most westerners worry about the Muslims' firm grip on the spigot of the world's oil reserves. And in 1991 we convinced ourselves that Saddam Hussein represented a threat on par with Hitler.¹

But Muslims cannot really scare us. After all, it took but a few weeks to vanquish fully the "Butcher of Baghdad," who had up until that time the world's fourth largest army. We united in a stalwart international coalition …