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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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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.
Vegaphobia (or vegephobia) is the aversion to and discrimination against vegetarian and vegan people.
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...".
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.
Specialists may prefer to avoid the suffix "-phobia" and use more descriptive terms such as personality disorders, anxiety disorders, and avoidant personality disorder.
Schwabenhass (German for "hatred against Swabians") is a political slogan about aversion to the approximately 300,000 strong Swabian minority in Berlin. In 2013, the so-called "spätzlestreit" gained nationwide attention.
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).
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.
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."
Giacomo and Giovanni Battista Tocci were two-headed conjoined twins born in Locana, Italy between 1875 and 1877 on either July or October 4.
Ladan and Laleh Bijani (in Persian: ) (January 17, 1974 – July 8, 2003) were Iranian conjoined twin sisters. They were joined at the head and died immediately after their complicated surgical separation. Coincidentally, the twins were born 100 years to the day of the deaths of Chang and Eng Bunker, also conjoined twins, famously known as the "original" Siamese twins.
Below is a list of incidents in Albania that could be considered Islamophobic:
Dancing mania (also known as dancing plague, choreomania, St John's Dance and, historically, St. Vitus's Dance) was a social phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time. The mania affected men, women, and children who danced until they collapsed from exhaustion. One of the first major outbreaks was in Aachen, in the Holy Roman Empire, in 1374, and it quickly spread throughout Europe; one particularly notable outbreak occurred in Strasbourg in 1518, also in the Holy Roman Empire.
Affecting thousands of people across several centuries, dancing mania was not an isolated event, and was well documented in contemporary reports. It was nevertheless poorly understood, and remedies were based on guesswork. Generally, musicians accompanied dancers, to help ward off the mania, but this tactic sometimes backfired by encouraging more to join in. There is no consensus among modern-day scholars as to the cause of dancing mania.
The several theories proposed range from religious cults being behind the processions to people dancing to relieve themselves of stress and put the poverty of the period out of their minds. It is, however, thought to have been a mass psychogenic illness in which the occurrence of similar physical symptoms, with no known physical cause, affect a large or small group of people as a form of social influence.
Maria and Daria ('Masha and Dasha') Krivoshlyapova (Мария и Дарья Кривошляповы) (3 January 1950 – 17 April 2003, Moscow) were "Ischiopagus tripus" conjoined twins from Russia.
They were removed from their mother's custody at birth to be studied by Soviet physiologists. Their mother was told that her daughters had died soon after their birth.
The outbreaks of dancing mania varied, and several characteristics of it have been recorded. Generally occurring in times of hardship, up to tens of thousands of people would appear to dance for hours, days, weeks, and even months.
Women have often been portrayed in modern literature as the usual participants in dancing mania, although contemporary sources suggest otherwise. Whether the dancing was spontaneous, or an organised event, is also debated. What is certain, however, is that dancers seemed to be in a state of unconsciousness, and unable to control themselves.
In his research into social phenomena, author Robert Bartholomew notes that contemporary sources record that participants often did not reside where the dancing took place. Such people would travel from place to place, and others would join them along the way. With them they brought customs and behaviour that were strange to the local people. Bartholomew describes how dancers wore "strange, colorful attire" and "held wooden sticks".
Robert Marks, in his study of hypnotism, notes that some decorated their hair with garlands. However, not all outbreaks involved foreigners, and not all were particularly calm. Bartholomew notes that some "paraded around naked" and made "obscene gestures". Some even had sexual intercourse. Others acted like animals, and jumped, hopped and leaped about.
They hardly stopped, and some danced until they broke their ribs and subsequently died. Throughout, dancers screamed, laughed, or cried, and some sang. Bartholomew also notes that observers of dancing mania were sometimes treated violently if they refused to join in. Participants demonstrated odd reactions to the colour red; in "A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany", Midelfort notes they "could not perceive the color red at all", and Bartholomew reports "it was said that dancers could not stand... the color red, often becoming violent on seeing [it]".
Bartholomew also notes that dancers "could not stand pointed shoes", and that dancers enjoyed their feet being hit. Throughout, those affected by dancing mania suffered from a variety of ailments, including chest pains, convulsions, hallucinations, hyperventilation, epileptic fits, and visions. In the end, most simply dropped down, overwhelmed with exhaustion. Midelfort, however, describes how some ended up in a state of ecstasy. Typically, the mania was contagious but it often struck small groups, such as families and individuals.
Their mother Maria Luigia Mezzanrosa was 19 years old; she had an easy time with the birth as they were rather small. They were delivered normally, with one head appearing first, the other head and torso second, and the pelvis and legs third. The one on their right was named Giovanni Battista, and the one on their left Giacomo. They had one umbilical cord and one placenta. Their father Giovanni Tocci had a breakdown due to the appearance of his first-born sons and was put into a lunatic asylum until he recovered a month later.