Reflections on the Christchurch Massacre: Incorporating a Critique of Islamophobia and TWAIL

Abstract

On March 15, 2019 in Christchurch, New Zealand, a white supremacist entered a mosque full of worshippers and gunned down over 50 people. In the wake of that massacre, Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, called for a global war against racism. This essay contextualizes that call and centralizes the ongoing struggle against racism, imperialism and white supremacy by peoples of the Global South for the last 500 years. The essay further examines the use of national security as means of regulating people of color and the complicity of the postcolonial state in advancing the discourse and practices of national security regimes. It suggests that the analysis that the study of Islamophobia offers should be incorporated into the Third World Approaches to International Law framework to better illuminate the current violence in majority Muslim states and against Muslim minorities.

Keywords: International law, religion, Islam, third world, national security, terrorism, immigration