Islamophobia, blackness, gender and misogynoir: living on the margins of social invisibilisation

Abstract

Islamophobia towards Black African and Afrodescendent communities is difficult to address due to orientalism and processes of stereotyping what is imagined to be a Muslim person as well as the racialisation of a spiritual status. This negative and reductionist perception of Islam and of Muslims as a homogenous and monolithic entity reinforces and configures power dynamics. In the Spanish state orientalism reduces the Muslim person to the ‘Arab’ subject, racialising a religious identity due to the fear and terror held towards particular historic and structural races, encouraging a social racist signaling that surveils and follows. This has erased other communities who also are subject to Islamophobia and who are not included in the canon of the othering of ‘Arabs’. This article holds a clearer notion of the reality of Muslims, allowing for an improved identification of Islamophobia in Spain.