This chapter examines the conceptual distinctions and overlaps between racism and Islamophobia, and some key issues for comparative research. The term Islamophobia has frequently used in academic journalism, it has also been used by Muslims to describe the own situation, and the has fed gradually into wider media discourse. In the sense, Islamophobia is an adaptation of Orientalism, a concept most famously associated with Edward Said’s critique, Orientalism. Religious prejudice is older than racism, but the two can be compares, and they do overlap, as the example of anti–Semitism demonstrates. There seems to be a danger of ‘conceptual inflation’, which leads to such a broad definition of Islamophobia that it becomes difficult to subject it to critique. The link is certainly not a direct correlation; nevertheless, a strong link between the two phenomena may be a heuristic hypothesis with which to begin comparative research on the relationship between racism and Islamophobia.