Reading Islamophobia Through the Lens of James Baldwin

This article challenges the claim that the statement ‘Islamophobia without Muslims’ is unique to the Eastern part of Europe, which is populated by a very small number of Muslims. Rather, it argues that every form of racism essentially relates not to realities but imaginations, not to ontological categories of Muslimness, Jewishness, or Blackness, but imaginations about the racist’s perceptions. The existence of racism is to be understood as a projection of the racists, and as something that tells us more about the racists than about the racially excluded. This argument is developed on the basis of the writings of James Baldwin.