Muhammad Asad Latif

It has been more than 1,400 years since Muslim communities were classified as “other.” Understanding the ideological background is crucial to comprehending the subtleties of Islamophobic thought, as seen by how Muslims have been portrayed as threats throughout history. Human rights have suffered because of the unjustified fear of Islam and its adherents. Numerous citizens faced prejudice, which hindered their freedom and resulted in some losing their lives. The purpose of this research is to elucidate the causes of this phenomenon’s continued existence. The following study employed a quantitative method to analyze Carr’s Islamophobic and neoliberalism theory, U.S. funding sources for Islamophobic content (2009-2011), six prominent international press media analyses (2014-2017), and the latest Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) report analysis on Islamophobia. The study’s findings suggest that Islamophobia –the term for the irrational fear of Islam and its adherents– persists because neoliberalism as an ideology supports it. Neoliberalism sees Islamic teachings as a danger to its system and uses a tactic known as cultural cleansing as a result. This tactic is applied in two stages: (i) cultural unification and (ii) intellect depletion. The civilizing mission – which divides citizens into good and evil categories– is accomplished based on these two processes. The ideology of neoliberalism in this situation will view a good Muslim as terrible and a bad Muslim as good.