The Redeployment of Orientalist Themes in Contemporary Islamophobia

This article aims to contribute to the understanding of contemporary anti-Muslim hostility, focusing on a specific national embodiment of it, namely Islamophobia in Britain. Globalization notwithstanding, anti-Muslim discourse does vary across different national contexts (witness, for example, the relatively strong opposition to manifestations of religion in the public sphere in France). However, these variations have not so far been the subject of any extensive empirical or comparative study. Discourse cannot be properly analyzed or understood in isolation from the context in which it arises, and the extent to which anti-Muslim rhetoric is linked to the concerns and anxieties of those who propagate it should not be overlooked. Questioning the claim that is sometimes made, by various interested parties, that contemporary Islamophobia is merely the most recent manifestation of an age-old hostility to Islam on the part of Christendom/the West which has existed since the very beginning, this article illustrates some of the ways in which the discursive content of selected themes has changed and evolve