Islamophobia – The Experience in Worlds Old and New Lessons from Europe and Australia

Abstract

Organized jointly by the Australian Intercultural Society, the Australian
Catholic University, and Monash University together with the Gülen conference
a few days earlier, this conference was devoted to a particularly important and pressing topic: the anti-Islam discourse slowly becoming a standard
feature of western political competition and media coverage. As the topic is
similarly a rather polarizing one, an event of high scholarly quality could not
be taken for granted. However, this is just what organizers, speakers, and
audience managed to achieve during this event, held during 18-19 July 2009
at Monash University in Melbourne. The phenomena subsumed under the
term Islamophobia, their expressions, preconditions, and multiple roots and
facets were discussed through different approaches in theoretical, descriptive,
and analytical terms ...