What is Islamophobia, and How Much Is There? - Theorizing and Measuring an Emerging Comparative Concept

Abstract

Islamophobia is an emerging comparative concept in the social sciences. Yet most writers have an impressionistic understanding of the term at best. There is no widely-accepted, usable definition of Islamophobia that permits systematic comparative and causal analysis. In this essay, I analyze how the term Islamophobia has been deployed in public and scholarly debates in order to reveal how these discussions have taken place on multiple registers. I then draw on theoretical work on concept formation to offer a systematic definition of Islamophobia that is useful for social scientific purposes. I discuss the types of indicators that are most appropriate for measuring Islamophobia as well as the benefits of concept development for enabling comparative and causal analysis.

Keywords: Islam, Muslims, Europe, concept development, racism