SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Women disproportionately bear the brunt of Islamophobic racism in the UK. Scholarly explanations of this compound inequality, influenced by Jasmine Zine’s pioneering work on gendered Islamophobia in Canada, often point to the fact that women may bear more visible markers of ‘perceived Muslimness’, such as wearing hijab or niqab. Some scholars further locate the specificity of gendered Islamophobia in the broader context of generalised patriarchal oppression and violence that is typical of societies like the UK. Less attention has been paid, however, to the economies that constitute gendered Islamophobia. This chapter extends emerging research on the political economy of Islamophobia, and the analysis of ‘colonial global economy’, placing these literatures in conversation with the concept of racist ‘libidinal economy’ as it is developed by Frank Wilderson and others. In so doing, the chapter shows how gendered Islamophobia serves specific racist logics that are: (a) framed by, and reproduce or extend, colonial thinking on socio-economic entitlement and disentitlement, and (b) characteristic of racist libidinal investments, where the demonisation of a racially minoritised and gendered group is bound up with desire and enjoyment. The chapter concludes that the three interpretive frames of political, colonial, and libidinal economy each add a useful lens through which to better critically explain gendered Islamophobia in the UK context.