ABSTRACT
How can we explain Islamophobia? That is the intriguing question we want to answer in this chapter. Islamophobia is on the rise in several countries in Europe and is also clearly present in the USA and various countries in Latin America and Asia (Pew Research Center 2007, 2008). It is important to study Islamophobia because it is one of the main explanatory factors of negative behavior toward Islam and Muslims. Increasing negative attitudes toward Islam and Muslims among non-Muslims may result in increased social exclusion and discrimination against Muslims by non-Muslims, which then may result in radicalization among Muslims, which in turn may contribute to a further increase in negative attitudes among non-Muslims, and so forth. Attitude research provides an indication as to whether there is fertile ground for more negative behavior and how to stop the negative spiral. The academic inspiration to carry out this study came when we discovered in 2005 that there was no generally accepted instrument for measuring Islamophobia, and we could not find an explanation for this attitude in the existing literature. In this chapter we present our new Islamophobia measure, a predictive model, the survey findings, and our conclusions about the origins of Islamophobia. 1
