Islamophobia as racialised biopolitics in the United Kingdom

Abstract

This article provides a Foucauldian perspective on the racialised biopolitics of Islamophobia in the global north. It is argued that a pervasive, wide-ranging racialised logos is being used to undermine the citizenship potential of Muslim groups now forming an active presence in urban concentrations across wide political and cultural spaces. The negative characterisations of Muslim minority groups in the global north focus on various parameters of othering, with the experiences of Muslim minorities in the United Kingdom acting as a test case. A dominant hegemonic discourse perpetuates the view that British Muslims are undesirable because (a) they embody the most extreme ‘other’, (b) they are a risk to national security due to dangers associated with inherent radicalisation and (c) Muslim voices of resistance are untrustworthy. These forms of Islamophobia provide perspectives on anti-immigration, xenophobia and depopulation that racialises the Muslim minority category in the sphere of neoliberal globalised capital accumulation. It has significant local area implications for Muslim minority and wider identitarian politics, ultimately perpetuating a cyclical process through which political biases within dominant politics reproduce the racialised discourses of Islamophobia.