Editorial: Reflections on Islamophobia in Central and Eastern Europe

Islamophobia is a rather new term in scholarly fields but it is an old concept (Cesari 2009; López 2011, 569). All the variants of Islam and Muslims were perceived as a threat in Europe from its arrival in 7th century to at least second half of the 16th century (Said 2003, 59, 75) after the decisive bottle by Lepante as a turning point meant the irreversible retreat of Islam and Muslims from Europe. In the Renaissance period, the process of othering the Muslims and Islam [mainly – and rather undistinguishably – Ottomans or Persians] in an old continent was not any more based primarily on fear or the “true believers and infidels” divide, but the European perception of Islam transferred into civilizational differences emphasizing both “our” ancient Greek period and Hellas contrary to “them” labeled with the adjective “barbaric”, a notion typical for early modern literature (Lewis 1993, 25). Similarly, Maria Todorova describes “English images of the Turks during the sixteenth and much of the seventeenth centuries were ones of tyranny, arbitrariness, extortions, slavery, piracy, savage punishments, and Christian ordeals; they were also images of strangeness and a diatribe against Islam” (Todorova 2009, 90). The forthcoming era of Enlightenment founded on anticlericalism and a critique of religion further worsened the image of Islam in Europe. In that age, the decaying Ottoman Empire heavily contributed to the shared view in Europe of its despotic character, “the unreformability of the Muslim religion, afflicted with fanaticism and bigotry” (Todorova 2009, 76). Similarly, during the 19th and 20th centuries, the stereotyping image of “the mythical Orient” with the widely shared anti-Arabic and anti-Islamic prejudices further strengthened by the clashes between Arabs and Zionism, as Edward Said famously argued in his book Orientalism, became deeply embodied in the western history of orientalism (Said 2003, 27). Edward Said’s critical view on the widely accepted image in the West, which associated Islam with negative stereotypes fully conformed to emerging postcolonial and postmodern theories aimed at the deconstruction of European grand narratives and its conviction of (whether former colonial or newly neo-imperial) supremacy over the rest of the world. Nevertheless, I