Shoot the Muslim: Racism-Religion relations in the New World Configuration

MARIELA CUADRO

Relaciones Internacionales

INSTITUTO DE RELACIONES INTERNACIONALES, FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS JURÍDICAS Y SOCIALES, UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE LA PLATA

Lugar: La Plata; Año: 2008 vol. 4 p. 91 - 113

1515-3371

Taking as a starting point the question of the Other (What is the Other? Who is the Other?), it is sought to think of racism conceptually and also to think of racist discourse at present, starting from the hypothesis that since September 11 Otherness has had to do with the religious sphere. Islam became the main enemy in the structuring of hegemonic discourse and faithful subjects were encompassed in a suspicious coherent whole which made persecution an dehumanisation possible at a world level. Racism does not start from an enumeration of characteristics -even some condered negative by dominant discourse- which Muslim people could have. It has its starting point in an inversion of principles by cirtue of which those people have those characteristics BECAUSE they are Muslim. That BECAUSE implies some essential assumptions that not only produce false defferences and identities, but it also separates certain political practices from a certain historic, social, political, cultural and economic situation for the peoples of the Middle East.