Search results

The purpose of this paper is to call to public leaders to exercise moral courage in choosing to understand and address phobic biases and prejudicial attitudes toward Muslims in the workplace. With reference to developments in the USA, workplace discrimination is framed as an ethical issue, with Islamophobia viewed as a rapidly growing concern.

This work is a practical application of existing theory and research in positive organizational scholarship to address the concern of workplace discrimination; specifically Islamophobia. Propositions are developed to depict how public leaders can address Islamophobia and other forms of discrimination by role modeling moral courage.

The findings show that Islamophobia is an ethical challenge for public leaders, one that can begin to be addressed by exercising character strength that promotes tolerance, civility, and respect. This proactive approach will enable public leaders to serve as pillars of openness, inclusion, and thoughtful regard for others, regardless of organizational members’ faith or culture.

The social implications are to encourage discourse among global public leaders, prompting awareness and concern for Islamophobia and promoting more informed paths for productive scholarship.

Studies of workplace discrimination typically focus on race and gender, with few considering how Muslims face increasing Islamophobia. This work adds value to the existing literature by explicitly encouraging public leaders to respond, rather than react, to discrimination with moral competency.

The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the paradoxes of mainstream French anti- racism regarding Islamophobia. The authors focus on the driving role played by French republican values in the recurring inability of anti-racist activism, and anti-islamophobia in particular, to act upon the structural character of racism in France.

The authors’ analysis draws on a longitudinal and qualitative investigation of the “Sud-Education 93” controversy (SE93). The authors use the analytical framework provided by controversy studies in order to focus on the aftermath, in the public sphere, of the organisation by a French labour union of a minority-only workshop designed to provide teachers with a space for expression and purposeful guidance, in order to face Islamophobia and racism issues within French public schools. The authors collected an exhaustive set of data about the comments, criticisms and debates that emerged in the public sphere as a reaction to the workshop. The authors drew on situational analysis methodology, providing controversy analysts with several power-mapping techniques, in order to conduct a discursive analysis of the statements and claims made by the protagonists of the controversy.

First, the authors’ insights point out that French Islamophobia relies on the myth of the universal republican citizen that acts as a context-specific form of colour-blindism. Second, the authors shed light on the discursive and relational mechanisms that characterise the denial of Islamophobia undertaken by political actors who use “reverse racism” arguments as a form of backlash, i.e. a strategy of “fragility” (DiAngelo, 2018) consisting in maintaining artificially a never-ending controversy over Islamophobia. Finally, the authors discuss the role played by these strategies of fragility in the recurring rejection of anti-islamophobia activism in France and the limitations and prospects they embody for future forms of anti-racist strategies.

The Latourian perspective adopted in the paper focuses on the implications of the controversy over Islamophobia within the public sphere. The authors’ fieldwork suggests, however, that the internal dynamics of minority-only organisations embodies sites and répertoires of micro-contestation capable of bypassing on the short run, and perhaps overthrowing, the power of French hypocrisy about anti-racism and the backlash processes the authors observed in the public sphere.

The authors’ contribution lies in the in-depth analysis of “reverse racism” rhetorics as a strategy of fragility and its implications in terms of colour-blindism and backlash.

The marginalization of Muslims can foster anxiety, anger, or fear in the workplace. Such negative reactions may prompt incivility among coworkers, denigrating a thoughtful regard for others. While legal protections are intended to promote fairness, mandates do not always prevent discrimination. As a result, management needs to frame anti-Muslimism as an ethical issue and proactively cultivate environments that support respect. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

To understand how anti-Muslimism may emerge in organizational settings, this work defines Islamophobia and examines how it manifests as workplace discrimination. The extant literature on the subject and a sample of anti-Muslim discrimination cases are studied to better understand this phenomenon.

An analysis of representative Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cases shows that a lack of accommodation for religious practices is a major ethical issue. Management can proactively address value tensions by creating safe spaces for organizational learning. Balanced experiential inquiry is offered as a process to help employees reveal their embedded biases through personal reflection and collective inquiry.

If managers intend to encourage equity and inclusion, they need to foster organizational learning that tackles emerging forms of discrimination like Islamophobia. A sustained focus on moral development becomes an imperative toward establishing an ethical climate and a workplace that fosters respect for all organizational members.

Because organizations are at the intersection of business and society, it is incumbent upon managers to create environments that reject hostilities toward those who may be perceived as different.

In today’s sociopolitical climate, the concern of discrimination toward Muslims is a mainstream ethical issue. A compliance-based approach to advance organizational ethics is not enough. The authors present a way forward, building moral strength through moral competency.

Islamophobia is a growing social problem that leads to the discrimination of Muslims. Using Group Conflict Theory and the Integrated Threat Theory as the theoretical frameworks, this study aims to measure the presence of Islamophobia in the hiring practices of the most southern state of Switzerland.

An experimental formative research study was conducted with employees. Based on CVs for two positions, back-office and front-office, candidates were selected for interviews and reasons were provided. Two variables were manipulated to represent the “Muslim appearance” on the CVs: the picture and the name. A content analysis of reasons was conducted in addition to descriptive statistics of survey responses.

A negative perception of Muslim candidates emerged from the answers with a clear difference between the two scenarios: candidates perceived to be Muslim were not rejected from the back-office position, but they were from the front-office position.

Results demonstrate that hiring practices in Ticino Switzerland are, in some cases, based on a prejudicial attitude. As long as Muslims were “not seen as Muslims to the customers,” they were judged as acceptable for the job. This has implications for social marketing research and practice aimed to change this discrimination behavior. A next step could be to understand if it is fear of Muslims or fear of what the public might think of Muslims that cause the selection difference between the two jobs. Systems-wide and macro level social marketing research is well suited to investigate such problems and test solutions, in a local context, following the methodology used in this study.

A disturbing escalation of the phenomenon of Islamophobia has emerged across the globe. This paper examines a fundamental issue in equity and prosperity, which is equal opportunity for employment. Using experimental design, the authors find that discrimination exists in hiring practices, which is a problem that social marketing is well equipped to address.

The increase of Islamophobia-inspired hate crimes toward Sikh Americans led the Sikh Coalition of America and the National Council for the Social Studies to request social studies educators to conduct a content analysis on the presentation of Sikhism in social studies textbooks. The Sikh Coalition hopes to use the findings of such research to encourage more appropriate inclusion about the religion in textbooks by the leading publishing companies and as a legitimate social studies subject of instruction in the state standards for all 50 states. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The incorporation of critical pedagogy, as a tool of critical multiculturalism, serves as the theoretical design of this study. Content analysis serves as the method of research for this study. The authors also employed an online survey to determine the scope of religious literacy of the pre-service teachers with regard to Sikhism before the conducting of content analysis of social studies textbooks for the presentation of Sikhism.

The current presentation of Sikhism in social studies textbooks has the potential to help fuel the Islamophobia that Sikh Americans now face. The authors found that the pre-service teachers possess little religious literacy regarding Sikhism. Furthermore, from the content analyses, the authors found that a total of 21 out of the sample of 32 textbooks (5 elementary, 11 middle grades and 16 high school) mention Sikhism. Eight textbooks include a mention of the origins of Sikhism. Nine textbooks misidentify the religion as a blending of Hinduism and Islam. Nine textbooks mention the religion in relation to the assassination of Indira Gandhi.

The originality of this research led the authors to find that the very limited and inaccurate information we found present in the most-used textbooks for elementary, middle grades and high school social studies made the employing of inferential statistics like correlation difficult. Also, the authors found from the literature that research addressing Islamophobia in the classroom has centered on the role of licensed teachers only. The research gives a model to how pre-service teachers may address Islamophobia in the classroom and also gain religious literacy regarding Sikhism.

The rise of Islamophobia-inspired violence toward students of South Asian descent has led to the call to address this matter. The research introduces a method to how social studies education professors may help engage their pre-service teachers in proactively addressing Islamophobia. Social studies professors have a responsibility to help promote social justice through critical pedagogy that explores the religious literacy of their pre-service teachers beyond Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism.

The Sikh Coalition, by telephone, has formally acknowledged to the authors that the textbook research has been the most extensive they have received since making their joint request with the National Council for the Social Studies. They have used the research to successfully convince the state education boards of Texas and recently Tennessee to adopt the inclusion of Sikhism in social studies content. More Americans, at a young age, need to learn about Sikh culture, so they are less likely to develop prejudicial ideas about Sikh Americans and commit violent acts of religious-based discrimination.

The research is extremely rare. To date, no one else in the country has conducted research on the presentation of Sikhism in textbooks to the extent that the authors have. The authors hope that the research will encourage more dialogue and further research. The authors hope that the research will help prevent further acts of religious-based violence toward followers of the world’s sixth largest religion.

This chapter explores the theoretical foundations of Hazeen, a Muslim blackened death metal band formed in 2015 by the authors - Safdar Ahmed on guitar and vocals, and Can Yalcinkaya on the drums and darbuka. It provides insights into the musical and performative practices of our band that are informed by traditions of black and death metal, but which also re-interpret them through an engagement with anti-fascist, anti-Islamophobic politics as well as Sufi/batini elements. Hazeen responds to a rising tide of Islamophobia in Australia, using our lyrics and performances to attack racist stereotyping and the dehumanisation of Muslims. In our performances, we dress in black, Islamic attire and apply ‘corpse paint’ to become the much feared ‘other’ of the post-9/11 world - the monstrous, rabid, zombie-like Muslim that has haunted the right wing/conservative imagination in the West. Our lyrics address such issues as the inhumane treatment of refugees and asylum seekers in Australia, halal food conspiracies, orientalism and the so-called ‘clash of civilisations’. This chapter presents a critical exegesis of Hazeen’s output in the form of live gigs, art performances and studio recordings. It seeks to identify Hazeen’s place within the broader Australian metal scene, posing questions of authenticity and how metal enables us to question hegemonic notions of identity. Hazeen’s use of art spaces as venues of performance and involvement in the indie/zine community highlights an unconventional position within the local metal scene.

This chapter critically focuses on Islamophobic practices that are embedded in travel and tourism environments. Muslims, especially those journeying to other Western nations, are finding that their freedom of movement is restricted within environments perceived to be hostile, particularly in the context of post-September 11. The premise of this chapter is to illustrate the role of travel and tourism in continuing to reinforce Islamophobic attitudes of the West to Muslims worldwide. Importantly, the discussion critically highlights ways in which religious abhorrence, orientalist perspectives, ethnic detestation, and xenophobic intolerance significantly affect tourism experiences. These factors marginalize communities from appreciating the global attributes of tourism, especially elements that express the importance of cosmopolitan forms of citizenship.

This study explores how one novice teacher navigated his first-year teaching sixth-grade social studies.

One-sixth grade novice teacher was observed during his unit on the Islamic Empire. The teacher was interviewed before the unit began to understand his approach to combating Islamophobia and interviewed again after the unit so he could reflect on the unit and discuss if he believed he had accomplished his original goal. Classroom artifacts (handouts, slide decks, etc.) were collected.

The findings highlight the various forces that impacted the decisions the teacher made in the classroom. Lack of support from administration and various colleagues left the teacher feeling overwhelmed and unable to accomplish his goals. While the teacher started the unit with a clear purpose for teaching against Islamophobia, he ultimately taught a unit where students memorized discrete pieces of information.

This study adds to previous research on the need for providing administrative support for novice teachers to be able to teach in ambitious ways by highlighting the numerous shortcomings.

This chapter is intended to elaborate on the existing academic literature addressing the migration of constitutional ideas. Through an examination of ongoing efforts to enshrine “defamation of religion” as a violation of international human rights, the author confirms that the phenomenon of migration is not restricted to positive constitutional norms, but rather also encompasses negative ideas that ultimately may serve to undermine international and domestic constitutionalism. More specifically, the case study demonstrates that the movement of anti-constitutional ideas is not restricted to the domain of “international security” law, and further, that the vertical axis linking international and domestic law is in fact a two-way channel that permits the transmission of domestic anti-constitutional ideas up to the international level.

In reaching the findings presented herein, the chapter also adds to the universalism–relativism debate by demonstrating that allowances for “plurality consciousness” on the international level may in certain instances undermine fundamental norms previously negotiated and accepted as authoritative by the international community. From this perspective, the movement in favor of prohibiting “defamation of religion” is not merely a case study that helps to expand our understanding of how anti-constitutional ideas migrate, but also indicative of a reenergized campaign to challenge the status, content, and stability of universal human rights norms.