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Islamophobia in the United Kingdom refers to a set of discourses, behaviours and structures which express feelings of anxiety, fear, hostility and rejection towards Islam and/or Muslims in the United Kingdom. Islamophobia can manifest itself through discrimination in the workforce, negative coverage in the media, and violence against Muslims.
As of 2017, acid attacks, arson attacks against mosques and vehicle ramming have statistically risen against Muslims, predominately in England and Scotland.
Islamophobia in Australia is a fear of Islam in Australian society; it has been associated with hostile and discriminatory practices toward Muslim individuals or communities and the exclusion of Muslims from social, cultural and political affairs.
Islamophobia and intolerance towards Muslims has existed well prior to the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Islamophobia in the media refers to the occurrence or perception that media outlets tend to cover Muslims or Islam-related topics in a negative light. Islamophobia is defined as "Intense dislike or fear of Islam, esp. as a political force; hostility or prejudice towards Muslims".
Islamophobia in Sweden refers to the set of discourses, behaviours and structures which express feelings of anxiety, fear, hostility and rejection towards Islam and/or Muslims in Sweden. Historically, attitudes towards Muslims in Sweden have been mixed with relations being largely negative in the early 16th century, improving in the 18th century, and declining once again with the rise of Swedish nationalism in the early 20th century. According to Jonas Otterbeck, a Swedish historian of religion, attitudes towards Islam and Muslims today have improved but "the level of prejudice was and is still high." Islamophobia can manifest itself through discrimination in the workforce, prejudiced coverage in the media, and violence against Muslims.
Islamophobia in Australia is understood as a set of negative beliefs concerning the Ideology of Islam, as well as a contemporary outlet for general public anger and resentment towards migration and multiculturalism.
Anti-Chinese sentiment in Japan has been present since the Tokugawa period. Anti-Chinese sentiments in Japan have been on a sharp rise since 2002. According to Pew Global Attitude Project (2008), unfavorable view of China was 84%, unfavorable view of Chinese people was 73%.
Anti-Arabism, Anti-Arab sentiment or Arabophobia is opposition to, or dislike, fear, hatred, and advocacy of genocide of Arab people.
Historically, anti-Arab prejudice has been suggested by such events as the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula, the condemnation of Arabs in Spain by the Spanish Inquisition, the Zanzibar Revolution in 1964, and the 2005 Cronulla riots in Australia. In the current era, racial prejudice against Arabs is apparent in many countries including Iran, Poland, France, Australia, Israel, and the United States (including Hollywood). Various advocacy organizations have been formed to protect the civil rights of Arab citizens in the United States, such as the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Anti-Chinese sentiment, Sinophobia (from Late Latin "Sinae" "China" and Greek φόβος, "phobos", "fear"), or Chinophobia is a sentiment against China, its people, overseas Chinese, or Chinese culture. It often targets Chinese minorities living outside of China and is complicated by the dilemma of immigration, development of national identity in neighbouring countries, disparity of wealth, the fall of the past central tribute system and majority-minority relations. Its opposite is Sinophilia. Factors contributing to sinophobia include disapproval of the Chinese government, historical grievances, fear of economic competition, and racism. Sinophobia also stems from older ethnic tensions, such as those related to Japanese nationalism, Korean nationalism, Indian nationalism and Vietnamese nationalism.
Islamophobia is an intense fear or hatred of, or prejudice against, the Islamic religion or Muslims, especially when seen as a geopolitical force or the source of terrorism.
The term was first used in the early 20th century and it emerged as a neologism in the 1970s, then it became increasingly salient during the 1980s and 1990s, and it reached public policy prominence with the report by the Runnymede Trust's Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia (CBMI) entitled "Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All" (1997). The introduction of the term was justified by the report's assessment that "anti-Muslim prejudice has grown so considerably and so rapidly in recent years that a new item in the vocabulary is needed".
The causes and characteristics of Islamophobia are still debated. Some commentators have posited an increase in Islamophobia resulting from the September 11 attacks, some from multiple terror attacks in Europe and the United States, while others have associated it with the increased presence of Muslims in the United States and in the European Union. Some people also question the validity of the term. The academics S. Sayyid and Abdoolkarim Vakil maintain that Islamophobia is a response to the emergence of a distinct Muslim public identity globally, the presence of Muslims is in itself not an indicator of the degree of Islamophobia in a society. Sayyid and Vakil maintain that there are societies where virtually no Muslims live but many institutionalized forms of Islamophobia still exist in them.
Doping in Russian sports has a systemic nature. Russia has had 51 Olympic medals stripped for doping violations – the most of any country, four times the number of the runner-up, and more than a third of the global total. From 2011 to 2015, more than a thousand Russian competitors in various sports, including summer, winter, and Paralympic sports, benefited from a cover-up.
Counter-jihad or Counterjihad or Counter-jihad movement is a political current loosely consisting of authors, bloggers, think tanks, street movements and campaign organisations all linked by a common belief that the Western world is being subjected to takeover by Muslims. Several academic accounts have presented conspiracy theory as a key component of the counter jihad movement.
While the roots of the movement go back to the 1980s, it did not gain significant momentum until after the September 11 attacks in 2001 and the 7 July 2005 London bombings. As far back as 2006, online commentators such as Fjordman were identified as playing a key role in forwarding the nascent counter-jihad ideology. The movement received considerable attention following the 2011 Breivik murders whose manifesto extensively reproduced the writings of prominent counter-jihad bloggers, and following the emergence of prominent street movements such as the English Defence League (EDL). The movement has been variously described as pro-Israel, anti-Islamic, Islamophobic, inciting hatred against Muslims, or far-right.
The movement has adherents both in Europe and in North America, which according to some vary in tone. The European wing is more focused on the alleged cultural threat to European traditions stemming from immigrant Muslim populations, whereas the American wing emphasizes an alleged external threat, essentially terrorist in nature.
States that agree to the Convention align their domestic rules with the World Anti-Doping Code, which is promulgated by the World Anti-Doping Agency. This includes facilitating doping controls and supporting national testing programmes; encouraging the establishment of "best practice" in the labelling, marketing, and distribution of products that might contain prohibited substances; withholding financial support from those who engage in or support doping; taking measures against manufacturing and trafficking; encouraging the establishment of codes of conduct for professions relating to sport and anti-doping; and funding education and research on drugs in sport.
Anti-Catholicism (also referred to as Catholicophobia or Catholico- phobia) is hostility towards Catholics or opposition to the Catholic Church, its clergy and its adherents.
After the Protestant Reformation and until at least the late 20th Century, the majority of Protestant states (especially the United Kingdom and the United States) made anti-Catholicism and opposition to the Pope and Catholic rituals major political themes, with anti-Catholic sentiment at times leading to violence and religious discrimination against Catholic individuals (often derogatorily referred to in Anglophone Protestant countries as "papists" or "Romanists"). Historically, Catholics in Protestant countries were frequently suspected of conspiring against the state in furtherance of papal interests or to establish a political hegemony under the "Papacy", with Protestants sometimes questioning Catholic individuals' loyalty to the state and suspecting Catholics of ultimately maintaining loyalty to the Vatican rather than maintaining loyalty to their domiciled countries. In majority Protestant countries with large scale immigration, such as the United States and Australia, suspicion or discrimination of Catholic immigrants often overlapped or conflated with nativism, xenophobia, and ethnocentric or racist sentiments (i.e. anti-Italianism, anti-Irish sentiment, Hispanophobia, anti-Quebec sentiment, anti-Polish sentiment).
In the Early modern period, in the face of rising secular powers in Europe, the Catholic Church struggled to maintain its traditional religious and political role in primarily Catholic nations. As a result of these struggles, there arose in some majority Catholic countries a hostile attitude towards the considerable political, social, spiritual and religious power of the Pope and the clergy in the form of anti-clericalism.
The International Convention against Doping in Sport is a multilateral UNESCO treaty by which states agree to adopt national measures to prevent and eliminate drug doping in sport.
Iconophobia (literally "fear of icons") refers to an aversion to images, especially religious icons. "Iconophobia" is differentiated from "iconoclasm" in that "iconophobia" refers to the aversion to or hatred of the images whereas "iconoclasm" refers to the actual destruction of images that may arise from iconophobia.
Chari Larsson wrote:
“If iconophobia is defined as the suspicion and anxiety towards the power exerted by images, its history is an ancient one in all of its Platonic, Christian, and Judaic forms. At its most radical, iconophobia results in an act of iconoclasm, or the total destruction of the image. At the other end of the spectrum, contemporary iconophobia may be more subtle. Images are simply withdrawn from circulation with the aim of eliminating their visibility.”
The history of iconophobia begins with ancient Greece and Rome and continues with the violent iconoclasms of the period 726-842 in the Eastern Orthodox Church within the Byzantine Empire. But it is the Protestant Reformation that is most associated with iconophobia: “The Protestant Reformation, initiated by Martin Luther in 1517, brought iconophobia to the forefront of contemporary politics... Iconophobia was pushed to its extreme in the teachings of John Calvin... Protestant iconophobia had a huge and not exclusively negative impact on aesthetics and the history of art. It permanently affected the ways images were made, exhibited, and judged.”
Specialists may prefer to avoid the suffix "-phobia" and use more descriptive terms such as personality disorders, anxiety disorders, and avoidant personality disorder.
Biologists use a number of "-phobia/-phobic" terms to describe predispositions by plants and animals against certain conditions. For antonyms, see here.
Some researchers point to the Iranian Revolution in 1979 as a starting point for Islamophobia in the United States. It may be due to the growing influence of political Islam around the same period. In his book, "The Modern Middle East", author Mehran Kamrava notes that the "rise in the popularity and spread of political Islam can be traced to the 1980s and even earlier, when a general trend in the politicization of Islam began sweeping across the Middle East following the Arab 'victory' in the 1973 War and the success of the Iranian revolution." Others find Islamophobia present in the United States far earlier and argue that Americans were using the fear of Islam as a unifying concept in defining America. Some also believe that the phenomenon of Islamophobia is a psychological defense mechanism, which is spreading through mass media like a virus. Regardless, negative media images of Muslims in the 1980s and 1990s were compounded by reporting on Islam and Muslims that relied on Samuel Huntington's 1993 idea of a "clash of civilizations" for their framework; one that "the American media were all too ready to embrace after the fall of Communism in the late 1990s."
Counter-jihad is a transatlantic "radical right" wing movement which, via "the sharing of ideas between Europeans and Americans and daily linking between blogs and websites on both sides of the Atlantic" "calls for a counterjihad against the supposed Islamisation of Europe".
While the roots of the movement go back to the 1980s, it did not gain significant momentum until after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
The authors of "Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse" describe the movement as heavily relying on two key tactics. "The first is arguing that the most radical Muslims – men like Osama bin Laden – are properly interpreting the Quran, while peaceful moderate Muslims either do not understand their own holy book or are strategically faking their moderation. The second key tactic is to relentlessly attack individuals and organizations that purport to represent moderate Islam...painting them as secret operatives in a grand Muslim scheme to destroy the West."
Benjamin Lee describes the "counter-jihad scene" as one where "Europe and the United States are under threat from an aggressive and politicized Islamic world that is attempting to take over Europe through a process of "Islamification" with the eventual aim of imposing Sharia law. In this process, the threat is characterized by the perceived removal of Christian or Jewish symbols, the imposition of Islamic traditions, and the creation of no-go areas for non-Muslims. The construction of mosques in particular is seen as continued reinforcement of the separation of the Muslim population from the wider populous. As strong as the threatening practices of Muslims in descriptions of the counter jihad are images of a powerless Europe in decline and sliding into decadence, unable to resist Islamic takeover. The idea that European culture in particular is in a state of decline, while a spiritually vigorous East represented by Islam is in the ascendancy in civil society, is a common sentiment in some circles."
Two central Counter-jihad themes have been identified:
- the notion that Islam poses a threat to "Western civilisation" with a particular focus on "Muslims living in Europe", that is, within the European Counterjihad Movement (ECJM), "seen predominantly in terms of immigration" particularly Muslim immigration.
- a lack of trust in regional, political and economic "elites", with a particular focus against the European Union (EU).
There are a number of other possible terms which are also used in order to refer to negative feelings and attitudes towards Islam and Muslims, such as anti-Muslimism, intolerance against Muslims, anti-Muslim prejudice, anti-Muslim bigotry, hatred of Muslims, anti-Islamism, Muslimophobia, demonisation of Islam, or demonisation of Muslims. In German, "Islamophobie" (fear) and "Islamfeindlichkeit" (hostility) are used. The Scandinavian term "Muslimhat" literally means "hatred of Muslims".
When discrimination towards Muslims has placed an emphasis on their religious affiliation and adherence, it has been termed Muslimphobia, the alternative form of Muslimophobia, Islamophobism, antimuslimness and antimuslimism. Individuals who discriminate against Muslims in general have been termed "Islamophobes", "Islamophobists", "anti-Muslimists", "antimuslimists", "islamophobiacs", "anti-Muhammadan", "Muslimphobes" or its alternative spelling of "Muslimophobes", while individuals motivated by a specific anti-Muslim agenda or bigotry have been described as being "anti-mosque", "anti-Shiites". (or "Shiaphobes"), "anti-Sufism" (or "Sufi-phobia") and "anti-Sunni" (or "Sunniphobes").
In the early 16th century, popular ontological discourse in Sweden regarding Islam was largely negative, portraying the religion as fatalistic, fanatic, violent, cruel, and aggressive. A popular painting from the same century depicts Saint Christopher carrying Jesus as a child on his shoulder, saving him from water in which the Pope and Muhammad drown. The painting was aimed at Catholicism, and portrayed the Pope and Muhammad as false prophets. Turks were often used synonymously with Muslims, as a prayer book of Caspar Melissander from 1609 reads, "Sweet Lord Jesus Christ, keep us from the Turk, the Tattar, the Pope and all sects." Decrees during the 17th century eventually made practicing Islam illegal, as well as any other religion outside of the Church of Sweden. In 1734, membership in the Church of Sweden was established as a precondition for citizenship, and any non-Lutheran could be banned from entry into the country.
During the 18th century, public opinion towards the Muslim world improved with continuous contact to the Ottoman Empire. King Karl XII made exceptions to the aforementioned citizenship laws in 1718, allowing Muslim and Jewish migrants from the Ottoman Empire the right to perform their religion. Opinion towards Islam and Muslims deteriorated once again in the early 20th century with the rise of nationalism and Orientalism in Sweden. Archbishop Nathan Söderblom, teacher and mentor of several of the leading Swedish Orientalist scholars, was highly critical of the faith. Söderblom's attitudes were very impactful to academic discourse, seeing as few Swedish scholars at the time had connection with the Muslim.
After the Second World War, the concept of multiculturalism gained support in among the Swedish public and the Swedish government. By the 1980s, the presence of Islam became visible in the Swedish society for the first time and was met with mixed responses. Jonas Otterbeck, a Swedish historian of religion, claims that most Anti-Muslim sentiment in the country were derived from an opposition to traditional Islamic clothing such as the hijab and a belief that Saudi Wahhabism (a extremely conservative movement within Islam) was representative of the entire religion. At the end of the 1980s, extremist xenophobic groups began targeting Muslims as a severe societal problem and causing the recession in Sweden’s economy.
Håkan Hvitfelt conducted surveys in the 1990s to research the Swedish public's attitudes towards Islam. He found that the majority of Swedes had "a rather or very negative attitude to Islam" and considered Islam "incompatible with democracy, oppressive against women, and expansive" in nature. Hvitfelt claimed that media was largely responsible for negative attitudes. Attitudes towards Islam and Muslims in the late 90's and early 21st century have improved but according to Otterbeck, "the level of prejudice was and is still high."
Many studies and surveys have concluded that Muslims face discrimination in the work force. Research in 2014 by Dr Nabil Khattab and Professor Ron Johnston using data from the Office for National Statistics' Labour Force Survey found that "Muslim men were up to 76% less likely to have a job of any kind compared to white, male British Christians of the same age and with the same qualifications." An April 2016 report by Nabil Khattab and Shereen Hussein found that first-generation Muslim women from Bangladesh were over six times more likely to be unemployed than White non-Muslim women when adjusting for factors such as "level of education, family situation and age." First generation Muslim Pakistani and Muslim Black women faced less discrimination but were still four times more likely to be unemployed than White non-Muslim women when adjusting for those same factors.
A September 2017 Social Mobility Commission report concluded that Muslims were being held back in the workplace by widespread Islamophobia, racism and discrimination. Despite outperforming their non-Muslim counterparts in education, Muslims were roughly half as likely to hold higher managerial, administrative, and professional occupations. Almost 50% of Muslim households are considered to be in poverty, compared with less than 20% in the overall population. The report listed barriers to success including negative stereotypes about Muslims, a lack of Muslim staff or role models in the classroom, bullying, and harassment. The report revealed that women wearing headscarfs face particular discrimination once entering the workplace. Professor Jacqueline Stevenson of Sheffield Hallam University which led the research, stated that "Muslims are being excluded, discriminated against or failed at all stages of their transition from education to employment."
Arabs are people whose native language is Arabic. People of Arabic origin, in particular native English and French speakers of Arab ancestry in Europe and the Americas, often identify themselves as Arabs. Due to widespread practice of Islam among Arab populations, Anti-Arabism is commonly confused with Islamophobia.
There are prominent Arab non-Muslim minorities in the Arab world. These minorities include the Arab Christians in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Kuwait, among other Arab countries. There are also sizable minorities of Arab Jews, Druze, and nonreligious. Most Arabs are Caucasian. Exceptions are Mauritanian, Sudanese, Eritrean, Somali, and Comoran Arabs.
The leading historian of English Protestantism, Patrick Collinson, applied the term iconophobia to a specific period in post-Reformation England in his 1985 Stenton Lecture, "From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia: the Cultural Impact of the Second English Reformation". The arguments also informed chapter 4 of his 1988 book, "The Birthpangs of Protestant England". Collinson’s work has shaped a generation of scholarly enquiry into the impact of religion on culture, and of culture on religion, in post-reformation England. Scholars have accepted, rejected, and modified Collinson’s arguments, but one way or another they continue to exert a powerful influence over reformation studies.
Collinson carefully re-defined "iconoclasm" (generally defined as “the destruction of religious icons and other images or monuments for religious or political motives”) in his essay as follows:
“The first generation of Protestant publicists and propagandists, the Edwardian generation, made polemical and creative use of cultural vehicles which their spiritual children and grandchildren later repudiated, as part of their rather general programme of rejection. They wrote and staged Protestant plays. They sang Protestant songs and godly ballads to secular and popular tunes. And they made brilliant use of the graphic image, both to attack Catholicism and to commend their own religious convictions and values. These strategies constitute, for my purpose, what is meant by Iconoclasm ... Iconoclasm in this sense may imply the substitution of other, acceptable images, or the refashioning of some images for an altered purpose.”
Iconophobia, by comparison, is defined as “the total repudiation of all images”, which Collinson associates with a watershed moment around 1580, introducing a “sudden and drastic” change. This “secondary thrust” of reform “came close to dispensing with images and the mimetic altogether, while disparaging the tastes and capacities of the illiterate, the mass of the people”.
Collinson describes the “age of extreme iconophobia” as “quite short, equivalent to little more than a single generation”. Nevertheless, much subsequent scholarship has suggested that iconophobia characterised post-Reformation Protestantism from 1580 onwards.
WADA publishes annual summaries of anti-doping rule violations (ADRV). Russia ranked first in the world for ADRVs during 2013, 2014, and 2015.