Phobia of Islamophobia as the Basis for ‘Critical Muslim Studies’. How Ideology Became a Methodology for the Study of Islamic Communities in the West

Abstract

This article aims to deconstruct the research field of “critical Muslim studies” that is emerging within Western academic discourse. It seeks to expose the postcolonial injustices that Muslims are subjected to in the allocation of symbolic resources. Islamophobia is almost the dominant subject of research here, and the line between political activism related to the struggle for minority rights and academic knowledge becomes completely permeable. This article describes the epistemological foundations of critical Muslim studies and its conceptual language, developed by its proponents within the framework of postcolonial theory, related to the notions of racialization, Orientalization (and self-Orientalization), Eurocentrism and Westernization. The institutionalization of this trend is examined through selected European and American examples. Examination of the volume Islamophobia in Muslim Majority Countries demonstrates how left-liberal ideology, included in the production of academic knowledge, turns into a fully-fledged methodology that is desirable to a wide range of researchers.