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Abstract

British Muslims are facing Islamophobia at a “more explicit, more extreme and more dangerous” (Allen, 2010, p. 83) level than ever before. There is a tendency amongst scholars to couple Islamophobia with the post-September 11, 2001 (“9/11”) threat to national security narrative. While this narrative is not disputed, it has been two decades since 9/11 and Islamophobia in Britain remains as endemic, if not more.

This research project investigates the hypothesis that there exist narratives of Islamophobia beyond the post-9/11 threat to national security narrative in Britain and in the time of COVID-19; ‘in the time of COVID-19’ representative of contemporary views. In doing so, using Beydoun’s deconstruction of Islamophobia and Hesse’s theory of ‘White Governmentality’, it considers the Government’s and ordinary people’s contributions to the naturalisation of narratives of Islamophobia.

Through the thematic analysis of 80 Facebook comments obtained from a video posted publicly on Prime Minister, Boris Johnson’s official Facebook account on 30 July 2020, titled ‘Eid al-Adha 2020 message’, this research project determines three contemporary narratives of Islamophobia in Britain: Islam is a counter to ‘Britishness’; Muslims are subhuman; and Muslims are a demographic threat.

These findings conclude there exist contemporary narratives of Islamophobia in Britain, naturalised by the Government and ordinary people, to which Muslims are subject to.

Course: International Relations and Politics - BA (Hons) - C0694

Date Deposited: 2022-02-18

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis13829.html