A Tale of Two Islamophobias: The Paradoxes of Civic Nationalism in Contemporary Europe and the United States

I argue that trends of diagnosing anti-Muslim attitudes and activism as “Islamophobia” in European and the U.S. contexts may actually aid and abet more subtle varieties of the very stigmatization and exclusion that the “phobia” moniker aims to isolate and oppose. My comparative purpose is to draw into relief—to make explicit and subject to critical analysis— features of normative public discourse in these two sociopolitical contexts broadly perceived to be peaceful, prosperous, liberal-democratic. The features I focus on function under the auspices of tolerant and nonexclusionary forms of “civic nationalism” that, in effect, fuel the conflict in question.