The term itself was coined in the 1990s, an era defined by the end of the cold war and triumph of capitalist globalisation
The mass incarceration of Uighurs in China. Rohingya terrorised and driven out of Burma. Indians hacked to pieces and burnt alive in Delhi. Germans of Turkish origin shot dead by a far-right activist in Hanau. All recent events that tell us how disconnected populations have been brought together as global targets for anti-Muslim activism. Like the militant Muslims who inspire and enrage them, these activists invoke lengthy histories of conflict spanning the world, the narrative of one being used to justify that of the other in a paradoxical partnership.
In fact, anti-Muslim feeling was sporadic and lacked a global dimension until recently. Despite having been classified by colonial governments in religious terms, the immigrants who came to European countries after independence neither asserted their religious identities nor experienced discrimination based on it. In the United Kingdom, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh migrants from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh rarely defined themselves by religion in public life, and were seen by government as well as anti-immigrant movements in racial or national terms.
The Rushdie affair laid the groundwork for an anti-Muslim rather than an anti-Asian or anti-immigrant response in Europe
Related: Islamophobia and racism aren’t restricted to a few Tories and far-right thugs | Omar Khan
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