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 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 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.

The following is a list of a number of recent incidents characterized as inspired by Islamophobia by commentators.

Note that "Islamophobia" became a popular term in ideological debate in the 2000s, and it may have been applied retrospectively to earlier incidents.

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.

Islamophobia in Norway refers to the set of discourses, behaviours and structures which express feelings of anxiety, fear, hostility and rejection towards Islam and/or Muslims in Norway. Islamophobia can manifest itself through discrimination in the workforce, negative coverage in the media, and violence against Muslims.

Islamophobia in Canada refers to set of discourses, behaviours and structures which express feelings of anxiety, fear, hostility and rejection towards Islam and/or Muslims in Canada.

Particularly since the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, a variety of surveys and polls as well as reported incidents have consistently given credence to the existence of Islamophobia in Canada.

Islamophobia has manifested itself as vandalism of mosques, and physical assaults on Muslims, including violence against Muslim women wearing the hijab or niqab. In January 2017, six Muslims were killed in a shooting at a Quebec city mosque. The number of Islamophobic incidents have significantly increased in the last two years. Islamophobia has been condemned by Canadian governments on the federal, provincial and municipal level.

The Canadian media have played a mixed role in their coverage of Islamophobia, and have been described as having perpetuated it and/or countered it for Canadian audiences. Canada’s public education system has also been scrutinized for its role as the site of Islamophobic incidents and of the development of Islamophobic attitudes in youth.

Islamophobia in the United States can be described as the unvalidated, highly speculative, affective distrust and hostility towards Muslims, Islam, and those perceived as following the religion and or appear as members of the religion and its associative groups. This social aversion and bias is facilitated and perpetuated by violent and uncivilized stereotypes portrayed in various forms of American media networks and political platforms that result in the marginalization, discrimination, and exclusion of the Muslims and Muslim perceived individuals. Media and politicians capitalize on public fear and distrust of Muslims through laws that specifically target Muslims, while the media emphasizes Muslim religious extremism in association with violent activity.

Advocacy groups like Center for American Progress explain that this social phenomenon is not new, but rather, has increased it’s presence in American social and political discourse over the past ten to fifteen years. They cite that several organizations donate large amounts of money to create the “Islamophobia megaphone”. CAP defines the megaphone analogy as “a tight network of anti- Muslim, anti- Islam foundations, misinformation experts, validators, grass root organizations, religious rights groups and their allies in the media and in politics” who work together to misrepresent Islam and Muslims in the United States. As a result of this network, Islam is now one of the most stigmatized religions, with only 37 percent of Americans having a favorable opinion of Islam, according to a 2010 ABC News/ Washington Post poll. This biased perception of Islam and Muslims manifests itself into the discrimination of racially perceived Muslims in the law and media, and is conceptually reinforced by the Islamophobia Network.

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).

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.

Xenophobia is the fear and distrust of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange. Xenophobia can manifest itself in many ways involving the relations and perceptions of an ingroup towards an outgroup, including a fear of losing identity, suspicion of its activities, aggression, and desire to eliminate its presence to secure a presumed purity. Xenophobia is a political term and not a recognized medical phobia.

Xenophobia can also be exhibited in the form of an "uncritical exaltation of another culture" in which a culture is ascribed "an unreal, stereotyped and exotic quality". The terms xenophobia and racism are sometimes confused and used interchangeably because people who share a national origin may also belong to the same race. Due to this, xenophobia is usually distinguished by opposition to foreign culture.

Below is a list of incidents in Albania that could be considered Islamophobic:

On 22 July 2016, a shooting occurred in the vicinity of the Olympia shopping mall in the Moosach district of Munich, Germany. Ten people, including the perpetrator, were killed and 36 others were injured. The shooting took place at a McDonald's restaurant near the shopping mall, in front of a Saturn electronics store nearby, and in the mall itself. The gunman, later identified as 18-year-old David Sonboly, died nearby from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. His motive for the shooting is under investigation.

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.

Islamophobia in Germany refers to the set of discourses, behaviours and structures which express feelings of anxiety, fear, hostility and rejection towards Islam and/or Muslims in Germany. Islamophobia can manifest itself through discrimination in the workforce, negative coverage in the media, and violence against Muslims. Various German Islamic groups have expressed concerns over the attacks targetting mosques.

Islamophobia is a neologism formed by combining "Islam" and the suffix "-phobia", implying the basic meaning of "Islamophobia" to be "fear of Islam" or "aversion to Islam". The definition of the term can vary. The Ontario Human Rights Commission gives an example definition of Islamophobia: "stereotypes, bias or acts of hostility towards individual Muslims or followers of Islam in general." The Oxford English Dictionary defines Islamophobia as "intense dislike or fear of Islam, esp. as a political force; hostility or prejudice towards Muslims". The Oxford dictionary pinpoints the term's first known usage in English to 1923, although the historical origin of the term is contested. This definition reflects the view that hostility toward Islam as a religion can potentially overlap with the more xenophobic and racialized forms of hostility toward Muslims as a community or people.

In 1996, the Runnymede Trust in the United Kingdom established the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia. In "Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All", a 1997 report of the Commission's findings, Islamophobia was defined as "an outlook or world-view involving an unfounded dread and dislike of Muslims, which results in practices of exclusion and discrimination." "Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All" outlined the following eight recurring views of Islam that constitute Islamophobia:

After analyzing the nuances in many definitions of Islamophobia, Robin Richardson, a former director of the Runnymede Trust and the editor of "Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All", concludes that the term can be acceptably defined as "a shorthand term referring to a multifaceted mix of discourse, behaviour and structures which express and perpetuate feelings of anxiety, fear, hostility and rejection towards Muslims, particularly but not only in countries where people of Muslim heritage live as minorities."

Specialists may prefer to avoid the suffix "-phobia" and use more descriptive terms such as personality disorders, anxiety disorders, and avoidant personality disorder.

The English suffixes -phobia, -phobic, -phobe (from Greek φόβος "phobos", "fear") occur in technical usage in psychiatry to construct words that describe irrational, abnormal, unwarranted, persistent, or disabling fear as a mental disorder (e.g. agoraphobia), in chemistry to describe chemical aversions (e.g. hydrophobic), in biology to describe organisms that dislike certain conditions (e.g. acidophobia), and in medicine to describe hypersensitivity to a stimulus, usually sensory (e.g. photophobia). In common usage, they also form words that describe dislike or hatred of a particular thing or subject (e.g. homophobia). The suffix is antonymic to -phil-.

For more information on the psychiatric side, including how psychiatry groups phobias such as agoraphobia, social phobia, or simple phobia, see phobia. The following lists include words ending in "-phobia", and include fears that have acquired names. In some cases, the naming of phobias has become a word game, of notable example being a 1998 humorous article published by "BBC News". In some cases, a word ending in "-phobia" may have an antonym with the suffix "-phil-", e.g. Germanophobe / Germanophile.

A large number of "-phobia" lists circulate on the Internet, with words collected from indiscriminate sources, often copying each other. Also, a number of psychiatric websites exist that at the first glance cover a huge number of phobias, but in fact use a standard text to fit any phobia and reuse it for all unusual phobias by merely changing the name. Sometimes it leads to bizarre results, such as suggestions to cure "prostitute phobia". Such practice is known as content spamming and is used to attract search engines.

An article published in 1897 in "American Journal of Psychology" noted "the absurd tendency to give Greek names to objects feared (which, as Arndt says, would give us such terms as klopsophobia – fear of thieves, triakaidekaphobia – fear of the number 13...".

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."

In October 2015, a Muslim convert named Malika Bayan was turned away from a hair salon in Bryne by a hairdresser named Merete Hodne who said the Bayan's headscarf was "a totalitarian symbol." Hodne also said that Islam was not a religion, but rather a political ideology. Hodne was subsequently charged 10,000 kroner for religious discrimination. Former MP Peter N. Myhre sided with Hodne, arguing a hijab was similar to a Nazi uniform and denounced the court system for convicting her of discrimination. It was revealed by Norwegian media prior to the court ruling that Merete Hodne was once a member of the anti-Islam group PEGIDA.

Dictionary definitions of "xenophobia" include: "deep-rooted fear towards foreigners" (Oxford English Dictionary; OED), and "fear of the unfamiliar" (Webster's). The word comes from the Ancient Greek words ξένος ("xenos"), meaning "strange", "foreigner", and φόβος ("phobos"), meaning "fear".

A scholarly definition of xenophobia, according to Andreas Wimmer, is "an element of a political struggle about who has the right to be cared for by the state and society: a fight for the collective goods of the modern state". In other words, xenophobia arises when people feel that their rights to benefit from the government is being subverted by other people's rights.

At 17:52 CEST (15:52 UTC), a gunman opened fire at a McDonald's west of the Olympia shopping mall in the Moosach district of Munich, Germany. Despite initial reports of multiple attack sites, police could not confirm attacks in any other locations besides the shopping area.

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").

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).