Equality and Diversity Lecture 2021 - Islamophobia and the Struggle for Recognition

The Faculty of Law is delighted to welcome​ Professor Tariq Modood (University of Bristol) to deliver the Oxford Law Faculty’s Annual Equality and Diversity Lecture for 2021, with a lecture entitled ‘Islamophobia and the Struggle for Recognition’.

The event will be chaired by Professor Tarun Khaitan (University of Oxford; Head of Research at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights), with an introduction by the Dean of the Oxford Law Faculty, Professor Mindy Chen-Wishart.

Abstract for the lecture: The concept of Islamophobia as anti-Muslim racism is establishing itself in social science and public discourse alike. Yet there is a tendency to focus on Muslims as an ‘Other’, an ascribed identity, at the expense of Muslim inter-subjectivity and agency. ‘Othering’ analysis also does not attend to how to distinguish between Islamophobia and reasonable criticism of Muslims and Islam. This suggests the need for a multiculturalist rather than merely an anti-racist understanding of Islamophobia; one which sees discrimination within a larger frame of a struggle for recognition and institutional accommodation of difference.