A brief, and incomplete, history of the term “Islamophobia”
When was a word used for the very first time? As is the case with many terms, we have no certainty as to when the term ‘Islamophobia’ was first used. A lot of people, when asked, refer to two publications from 1910: Alain Quellien’s book La politique musulmane dans l’Afrique occidentale, and the article by Maurice Delafosse L’état actuel de l’Islam dans l’Afrique occidentale française in Revue du Monde Musulman.[1]
Excavating “Islamophobia”
Quellien defines Islamophobia as “a prejudice against Islam spread among peoples of Western and Christian civilization” whereby Islam is considered to be an “implacable enemy of the Europeans” and cites several recurring themes such as the holy war, slavery, polygamy and fatalism. According to the proponents of Islamophobia, because of Islam, phenomena such as the holy war, slavery, polygamy and fatalism have been imposed upon the Africans. Without the influence of Islam Africans would, otherwise, have welcomed French colonial rule. Quellien’s contribution is an exploration and analysis of the historical prejudices against Islam, seen as an enemy of progress, Christians and the West. Delafosse sees Islamophobia as integral to the government of colonies. He contrasts the concept with Islamophilia.
There are, however, older references. For example, in The Enemies of Islam, written by Abdul Hadi el Maghrabi (Ivan Aguéli) in 1904 in Italian (Islamofobia) in Il Convito. https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/anarchist-artist-sufi-the-politics-painting-and-esotericism-of-ivan-agueli/ch17-the-enemies-of-islam Hadi el Maghrabi sees Islamophobia as a form of hatred, prejudice, ignorance or as a form of racism against Muslims.
But this is not the oldest reference. A few years ago, after giving a lecture in Belgium about my book Five myths about Islamophobia, one of the visitors alerted me to an 1877 edition of the British periodical The Atheneum. And indeed, there we find the use of the word Islamophobes in a review of two books which attempted to “rectify” some of the prejudice and stereotypical representations of Muslims and Islam. These two books may, according to the author, help “some Islamophobes” to “acquire a little idea of the moral sense of the professors of this religion.”
This is the oldest reference I could find; it also contradicts the suggestion by Andrew Hammond on Twitter that the term Islamophobia came after the use of Judeophobia or Judenphobie.
origins of the term Islamophobia – in this study La politique musulmane dans l’Afrique Occidentale Française (1910), a bureaucrat in the African colonial administration who could see tropes being disseminated with the underlying aim of discrediting resistance to French rule pic.twitter.com/3XaJfTObHF
— Andrew Hammond (@Hammonda1) December 27, 2022
According to Hammond, the Russian Jewish activist Leon Pinsker coined that term in 1882 in his work Autoemancipation:
Judeophobia is a form of demonopathy, with the distinction that the Jewish ghost has become known to the whole race of mankind, not merely to certain races… Judeophobia is a psychic disorder. As a psychic disorder, it is hereditary, and as a disease transmitted for two thousand years it is incurable… Thus have Judaism and Jew-hatred passed through history for centuries as inseparable companions… Having analyzed Judeophobia as a hereditary form of demonopathy, peculiar to the human race, and represented Jew-hatred as based upon an inherited aberration of the human mind, we must draw the important conclusion, that we must give up contending against these hostile impulses, just as we give up contending against every other inherited predisposition.
Indeed, to a certain extent the words do seem to follow a similar logic, but Islamophobia appears to predate the term Judeophobia. I say appears to, because I’m not sure these are indeed the oldest references. It only means I could not find any others. I don’t think it is very likely that a term like ‘islamophobes’ would be used in the Atheneum article for the first time: if so, would the author not have explained it?
So, as far as I can tell, 1877 is the oldest reference, but there is more to say about the longer history of the term. Other important, but newer, references can be found in a 1918 book written by Etienne Dinet and Sliman Ben Ibrahim called La vie de Mohammed, prophète d’Allah. They used the term in this, and later works, to refer to the hostility of Europe vs. Islam and to denounce the roles of ‘Islamophobes’. This original work was first published in French, then translated into English, but the term Islamophobia was not used in the English version (instead, ‘feelings inimical to Islam’ was used instead).
In English, the term first appeared in scientific studies in 1923 in the Journal of Theological Studies (referring to the publication by Dinet and Ben Ibrahim) and later again in 1976 in the International Journal of Middle East Studies by Anawati.[2] This latter is important in the sense that it uses the term almost in opposition to the way it was deployed by Dinet and Ben Ibrahim and in a way very much akin to contemporary debates on wokeness, Islamo-leftism and so on. Islamophobia as an “accusation” here could make it difficult to engage in a critique of Islamic traditions. Using the word Islamophobia, Edward Said connects “hostility to Islam” with anti-Semitism: “…hostility to Islam in the modern Christian West has historically gone hand in hand with, has stemmed from the same source, has been nourished at the same stream as anti-Semitism”.[3]
This shows that the term does not mean the same thing in every instance of its use and is partly of a colonial making by people who do not follow Islamic traditions, and by those who do. The development of the concept is therefore very versatile and not always clear, as it is in the case of terms such as ‘homophobia’ and ‘antisemitism’. So, is the first use in 1877 indeed the first use of the word Islamophobia in the same way as many academics, anti-racism activists and religio-political leaders use it today? Yes and no, as prejudice and hostility to Islam and Muslims seems to have been integral to the term from the first instance. Yet, there are different uses and oppositional uses as well. As is also the case with terms like racism, antisemitism, homophobia and so on.
Popularization of the term
As a term that specifically refers to the hostility of non-Muslims towards Muslims and Islam, it seems that the term ‘Islamophobia’ emerged in the course of eighties in England. The rise of the term parallels the strong growth in anti-racist discourse at that time. In the first instance, that discourse focused mainly on the racism that black citizens experienced in England, but gradually a stronger focus on specific migrant communities arose. The term Islamophobia, therefore, seems to have given British Muslims an advantage; on the one hand, one could insert one’s own experiences of discrimination into the prevailing anti-racist discourse and, on the other, one could also maintain a separate position.
Later, after the Rushdie Affair in 1989, the focus on Muslims became more important in British popular discourse, and in politics, and the term Islamophobia continued to gain popularity, especially after it was included in an important report compiled by the Runnymede Trust in 1997.
In the more than twenty-year history of this report, there has been lots of discussion about its meaning, the way it defined Islamophobia and, in particular, the emphasis it places on irrational fear. The report does not use a strict definition of Islamophobia, but does list eight criteria that point to an Islamophobic attitude. Importantly, the report does not state that a person is immediately Islamophobic just because one of these criteria for some reason applies to a person. Only if several of these criteria were found to be strongly present in the ideas, motives and actions of individuals, groups, institutions or governments, could they be identified as Islamophobic.
The intention behind the origin myths
There is probably much more to say about the history of the term Islamophobia and its various usages, but what is relevant for now is that it is not a recent term, not an invention by the Ayatollah Khomeiny, or the Muslim Brotherhood, or the OIC who allegedly wanted to make criticism of Islam impossible. As some critics have it. If it were, it would also be a spectacularly ineffective term.
When politicians and opinion makers argue that the term ‘Islamophobia’ was made up
by Khomeini or the OIC, this is often a prelude to saying that Islamophobia does not exist, that it’s not that bad and/or that it’s just another example of Muslims being very thin skinned and unable to tolerate criticism of Islam. Citing erroneous origin myths is, therefore, often the beginning of a longer argument pitched to throw the whole concept of Islamophobia in the rubbish bin.
Such an argument is, of course, problematic. Because even if it were the case that the term ‘Islamophobia’ is sometimes wrongly used as a reproach or as a ‘show stopper’, even then that does not mean in any way that we should throw the term completely overboard. One obvious comparison can quickly make that clear: the fact that some individuals, organisations and states use the term ‘anti-Semitism’ as a defense against any criticism of the State of Israel or Judaism doesn’t mean that anti-Semitism is therefore nonsense, that it does not exist or that anti-Semitic feelings are justified. I hope.
[1] Bravo López, Fernando. “Towards a definition of Islamophobia: Approximations of the early twentieth century.” Ethnic and racial studies 34.4 (2011): 556-573.
[2] Stanley A. Cook, Chronicle: The history of religions, Journal of Theological Studies, Vol. 25, no. 97, 1923, p. 101-109; Georges C. Anawati, Dialogue with Gustave E. von Grynebaum, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 7, no. 1, 1976, p. 12
[3] Said, Edward W. 1985. ‘Orientalism Reconsidered’, Cultural Critique 1: 89-107 (99).