Islamophobia Conference-University of Louisville

Religious and ethnic discrimination has a significant history in the West from the Inquisition which targeted Muslims and Jews in the Iberian Peninsula to the Chinese Exclusion Act in the US, among others. Islamophobia is a form of racial, religious, and ethnic discrimination and is on the rise in the US.  Once thought to be confined to the margins of the America political spectrum, it has moved to the mainstream. Indeed, it occupies a prominent position in an election year and at a time when unprecedented numbers of refugees have appeared on the doorstep of Europe. In the US, Islamophobia is manifested in attacks on mosques, in acts of violence against individual Muslims, and in attempts to prohibit refugees from Muslim-majority areas entering the US. Not surprisingly, there is an institutional structure undergirding contemporary Islamophobia. Over seventy groups in the US form a network of prejudice that promotes anti-Muslim activities. Animating this one-day conference on Islamophobia is the fundamental violation of the American principles of equality, religious freedom, and civil rights.

This one-day conference will consist of three panels of scholars exploring a holistic understanding of contemporary Islamophobia from a multidisciplinary perspective.