VIOLENCE AGAINST MOSQUES AND ḤIJĀB AS A MEASURE OF INTERNATIONAL ISLAMOPHOBIA, CONTRIBUTING TO GLOBAL INEQUALITY

Abstract

Islamophobia impacts the economic and social progress of Muslims around the world. This research focuses on the worst consequences of Islamophobic tropes, extant since the colonial era, and permeated into post-colonial international tensions, feminist misrepresentation of women in the Muslim world, and culminating in continued foreign economic and military intervention in favor of suppression and erasure of Islamic heritage in many parts of the Muslim world. This paper identifies the destruction of mosques by official State policy, as an example of, and an indication of wider attempts to disenfranchise and suppress Muslim culture, security, and economic and social growth. Collating historic and contemporary attempts to erase Islamic heritage in both times of war and peace, this research finds that substantial international indifference to overt Islamophobia persists throughout large parts of the modern world, obstructing the growth and progress of Muslims individually and as political societies. Pertinent examples such as in Bosnia, India, and Palestine, further demonstrate the ineffectiveness of the United Nations as a postcolonial arbiter.