It is interesting to me how many people do not see Islamophobia as both a form of racism, but also an ideological weapon of western imperialism. I pose this because people seem to be easily susceptible to it. This is curious to me, especially among Black folks in the US, for whom Islam has been interwoven with Black nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and Black critical consciousness for nearly a century. A number of scholars such as Michael Gomez in Black Crescent and Sohail Daulatzai in Black Star, Crescent Moon explicate this history. Further, Maulana Karenga frequently addresses this in his writings and talks on Malcolm X.
If memory serves me correctly, this also came up on Wise the Dome TV recently where Bro. Rakeem Shabazz interviewed Bro. Rashad Abdul-Rahmaan.
While I am not a muslim, I find Islamophobia deeply problematic given its implications for how we reckon with our own history and the history of our movement, in addition to how we reckon with other people’s resistance to imperialism. We need to come correct in our analysis, and parroting the position statements of our oppressors is not the way to freedom.