The United Nations has designated March 15 as the international day to combat Islamophobia.

This year it has coincided not just with the closing days of the holy month of Ramadan, but also in the midst of the illegal war of aggression launched by the US and Israel against Iran.

This war in West Asia has turbocharged Islamophobia throughout the West, already fuelled by the Israeli genocidal war against Palestinians, and before that by the US “War on Terror” of the past 20-plus years — which has in large part contributed to the decay of democracy throughout the world and spilt the blood of hundreds of thousands.

We have seen this Islamophobia in the comments of such voices as the Republican politicians such as Tuberville, Ogles, Fine and Trump, both in their reaction to Iranians’ continued self-defence, but also to support the assault on Somali and other Muslim immigrants, as well as the attacks on the Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani.

Nor is this restricted to the US — we see it clearly throughout Europe and Britain, as a constant throughout the far Right, be it Reform in the UK, Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, Rassemblement National in France and so on. In Bermuda it finds its echo in the online comments sections of our media, be it in articles relating to Palestine, the present war in West Asia or anything connected to Muslim-majority countries or Islam generally.

During the War on Terror, Muslims were subjected to harassment and bullying in both the workplace and the schoolyard, and it wouldn’t surprise me to hear if that is happening again today. The local Islamophobia seems to originate from an unholy alliance of Orientalism, Christian nationalism and the New Atheist movement.

At its most basic, Islamophobia is prejudice towards Islam; it is a form of religious or cultural bigotry. In practice it serves to dehumanise Muslims and provides an ideological basis to justify imperialism and acts ethnic cleansing (while Islam itself is a religion separate from any one ethnicity, it is often conflated with “Arabs”, “Palestinians”, “Iranians”, “Somalis” and so on). It is a form of “othering”. I believe the bulk of Islamophobes are so more out of ignorance than anything else — that is, they echo and internalise the Islamophobia of “thought leaders” such as Republicans mentioned above, as well as key media personalities or Christian leaders.

I do believe that the bulk of people who actually look behind the Islamophobic caricature that they are confronted with, and actually study Islam and interact with Muslims, who actually try to understand the religion, will see it as no different from any other religion. It is certainly not substantially different from its Abrahamic siblings, Judaism and Christianity.

As with them — and any religion really — aspects of the religion, taken out of context or interpreted literally, can indeed be used to justify any number of extremist and violent positions. The history of Christianity, and, indeed especially in the US today, its present, is littered with atrocity after atrocity, from the genocide of the Americas to the enslavement of Indigenous and African peoples, to Christian terrorist organisations such as the KKK, to the Christchurch shootings, to the racist Great Replacement groups, to the antiabortionist terrorists and so on, have all justified their actions based on Christianity.

And the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestine has also been justified by Zionists on the basis of certain interpretations of Judaism. Any religion can be twisted to justify such inhumanity. However, in my experience, such persons are far from representative of the faith they profess. Any religion — any philosophy even — can be twisted and abused to perpetuate inhumanity.

The issues around Islamophobia and Orientalism are complex and far more than I can realistically cover in a single opinion column. My hope is only to raise the issue, encourage critical thinking and perhaps point readers in certain directions for their own research. At best I can note some key aspects, such as how it frames uncritical thinking around certain issues — and in so doing, helps to legitimise imperialist actions, such as the war in West Asia or the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Orientalism essentially caricatures peoples, religions and cultures. It takes its name from the Western study and depiction of the Orient, which from the European (or Occidental) perspective was originally what we would today call West Asia, as well as North Africa. While it originated there, it can be applied to basically every place outside the core of the West (Western Europe and North America). One can see Orientalist perspectives related to Africa, to India, to East Asia and even to Slavs (it is a key aspect of Russophobia) and even to our Caribbean region (though we may call it the “tourist gaze“).

Fundamentally, it is used to justify Western domination, to justify imperialism as a “civilising mission”. Applied to Islam (and countries with Muslim majorities) it “others” Muslims, dehumanising them, renders them inherently alien, violent and inferior to the West (and Whiteness and Christianity). It is used to invoke the need for Western intervention, be it on the basis of women’s rights or LGBTQ+ rights or the need to “bring democracy”. None of these can actually be delivered by military or economic terror — these things can be used only to coerce and to steal resources.

It can also be used to not just justify war to “bring democracy” but also to justify support for dictatorships and coups, be it al-Sisi in Egypt or MBS in Saudi Arabia — on the grounds that the people of these countries are uniquely incapable of self-governance and so need despotic rule propped up by Western weapons to govern them. The reality is that all people are more than capable of democracy and self-governance, just that because of their experience of Western imperialism, they would vote “the wrong way” as regards Western interests. And so we see some elites of these countries cultivate an Orientalist narrative of their own culture inasmuch as it supports them staying in power, backed up by Western militaries.

We see this today still in cultural depictions of Muslims on TV or in movies, where they are invariably portrayed in stereotypical ways (terrorists, violent mobs, various sexual pathologies, despotic, exotic). In the news media we see similar narratives. Non-Western governments are referred to as “regimes” while Western governments are “administrations” (I have sought to subvert this). Muslims, Arabs, Iranians, Palestinians passively “die” (no mention is made as to who is dropping bombs on them), but Christians, Jews, Israelis, White people generally are actively “killed” by Muslims, Arabs, Iranians, Palestinians, people of colour.

Our news reports begin from Iran’s acts of self-defence and retaliation, but not from the initial assault by Western forces. Britain is shocked at the attack on Diego Garcia, but not by the US attacks on Iran launched from Diego Garcia. Iran is “reckless” for attacking civilian infrastructure, but silence on US and Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure and the atrocity at Minab. Iran is condemned for its self-defence, but the US and Israeli war is at best “incompatible with international law”. Colonisers only blame the natives for resisting, and are silent on the violence of imperialism.

As noted, the issue is more complex than I can cover in one column. However, I hope that readers will take the time to reflect on the points and learn more about Islam beyond the stereotypes. Importantly, I hope readers will see the Islamophobic and Orientalist framing that permeates so much of Western depictions of Islam.

• Jonathan Starling is a socialist writer with an MSc in Ecological Economics from the University of Edinburgh and an MSc in Urban and Regional Planning from Heriot-Watt University