Religious Hatred: Prejudice, Islamophobia and Antisemitism in Global Context

Abstract

not limited to religious considerations. Her analysis of how ‘Islamic fashion’ is promoted in light of capitalist consumerism is thought-provoking, but she disappoints with her recurring simplifications and essentialization, her idealization of ‘Western styles’, and her biased judgements of the Iranian context, monolithically juxtaposing an oppressive religio-political regime with ‘youth and urban Iranians’ (410), who are allegedly in favour of ‘Western’ liberalism. Kayla Renée Wheeler’s chapter on constructing the ‘proper’ representation of how Muslim women dress is far more convincing. Through a feminist critical discourse analysis, she discusses the multilayered functions of the four biggest Muslim-owned fashion industries’ advertisements, which create racialized types of the ‘ideal Muslim woman’. Shabana Mir inspects the situation of Muslim women in — as she argues — aggressively laïcist and structurally anti-Muslim France. This vivid, enriching, and at times cynical feminist critique of secular body politics peruses social constructions of Muslim women’s body practices, especially sartorial modesty. Kristian Petersen’s superb chapter exceeds the ‘examination of the cinematic lives of Muslim women, as both images and image makers’ (458), focusing on the transnational, intercultural, interzonal transformative aspects of South Asian and other Muslim female filmmaking. Much of the substance of Megan Goodwin’s chapter on gendered anti-Muslim resentments is discussed in preceding chapters. Her analysis of American anti-Muslim hostility, white supremacy, and their gendered dimensions is particularly informative and an appropriate conclusion to this anthology, with its strong focus on North America.