Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire: Twenty Years After 9/11

By Deepa Kumar

Book Overview

A critically acclaimed analysis of anti-Muslim racism from the Crusades to 9/11, in a fully revised second edition

In this incisive account, acclaimed scholar Deepa Kumar sketches the rise of the Muslim enemy in the western mind, from the Crusades of the eleventh century to the Islamophobia of the War on Terror in the twentieth and twenty-first. A pioneering analysis of anti-Muslim racism in the United States, this book outlines how contemporary Islamophobia emerges from various institutions--the media, think tanks, the foreign policy establishment, the university, the domestic security apparatus and the legal sphere.

Importantly, Kumar argues that anti-Muslim racism has historically been tied to empire-building, and rulers have used the specter of a Muslim enemy to further European and American projects of colonization and war in the Middle East and North Africa. The rise of Islamophobia, she notes, not only has horrific consequences for Muslims living in the West, but has become central to the United States's never-ending War on Terror.

Every chapter has been revised to help strengthen the core arguments of the book; to include more scholarship by Arab and Muslim scholars; and with a new chapter on feminism, empire, and race.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1788737210
• ISBN13: 9781788737210
• Release Date: September 2021
• Publisher: Verso
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.2"