Global Islamophobia Muslims and Moral Panic in the West

The decade since 9/11 has seen a decline in liberal tolerance in the West as Muslims have endured increasing levels of repression. This book presents a series of case studies from Western Europe, Australia and North America demonstrating the transnational character of Islamophobia. The authors explore contemporary intercultural conflicts using the concept of moral panic, revitalised for the era of globalisation. Exploring various sites of conflict, Global Islamophobia considers the role played by 'moral entrepreneurs' in orchestrating popular xenophobia and in agitating for greater surveillance, policing and cultural regulation of those deemed a threat to the nation's security or imagined community. This timely collection examines the interpenetration of the global and the local in the West's cultural politics towards Islam, highlighting parallels in the responses of governments and in the worrying reversion to a politics of coercion and assimilation. As such, it will be of interest to scholars of sociology and politics with interests in race and ethnicity; citizenship and assimilation; political communication, securitisation and The War on Terror; and moral panics.

Notes on Contributors, Foreword, Introduction: The Transnational Folk Devil, 1 A School for Scandal: Rütli High School and the German Press, 2 A Panicky Debate: The State of Moroccan Youth in the Netherlands, 3 Italian Intellectuals and the Promotion of Islamophobia after 9/11, 4 The Sweden Democrats, Racisms and the Construction of the Muslim Threat, 5 The Social Construction of Iraqi Folk Devils: Post-9/11 Framing by the G.W. Bush Administration and US News Media, 6 Local Islamophobia: The Islamic School Controversy in Camden, New South Wales, 7 Perverse Muslim Masculinities in Contemporary Orientalist Discourse: The Vagaries of Muslim Immigration in the West, 8 A Failed Political Attempt to Use Global Islamophobia in Western Sydney: The ‘Lindsay Lea??et Scandal’, 9 Moral Panic and Media Representation: The Bradford Riot, 10 Moral Panics, Globalization and Islamophobia: The Case of Abu Hamza in The Sun, 11 Criminalizing Dissent in the ‘War on Terror’: The British State’s Reaction to the Gaza War Protests of 2008-2009, 12 Where’s the Moral in Moral Panic? Islam, Evil and Moral Turbulence, Index

George Morgan is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney, Australia, author of Unsettled Places: Aboriginal People and Urbanisation, and co-editor of Outrageous! Moral Panics in Australia. Scott Poynting is Professor of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is co-author of Bin Laden in the Suburbs: Criminalising the Arab Other, and Kebabs, Kids, Cops and Crime: Youth, Ethnicity and Crime, and co-editor of Contemporary State Terrorism: Theory and Practice, and Outrageous! Moral Panics in Australia.