ABSTRACT
After a critical reflection on the author’s positionality, the first chapter introduces the main purpose of the book, which is to offer readers a spatialized understanding of Islamophobia. A short outline of the genealogy of the term highlights that Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is commonly understood as a process of racialization and Othering that essentializes and homogenizes Muslims. To these existing definitions, this chapter adds that Islamophobia is also a spatialized process that occurs at various interrelated spatial scales: globe, nation, urban, neighbourhood and body (and mind). This spatial reading of Islamophobia highlights the various scales through which this phenomenon operates (from global to micro-local) and shows that Islamophobia changes its contours, effects, intensity and functioning according to the scale under study. This introduction therefore establishes this new concept of ‘Spatialized Islamophobia’ challenging the tendency of research on Islamophobia to overlook or side-step the significance of space. Since the following chapters provide an in-depth analysis of the three main levels of scales, this introduction focuses primarily on their complex interrelationships, thus emphasizing how spatialized and multi-scalar Islamophobia is.
