The War Against Islam in Albania
In a recent publication from the Council of Europe, Islamophobia has been defined as: ‘a fear of, or prejudiced viewpoint towards Islam, Muslims and matters pertaining to them. Whether it takes the shape of daily forms of racism and discrimination or more violent forms, Islamophobia is a violation of human rights and a threat to social cohesion’. Islamophobia as a term first appeared in an essay by the orientalist scholar Etienne Dinet in L’Orient vu de l’Occident (1922). However the term became common parlance in defining the discrimination faced by Muslims in Western Europe only in the 1990s. Islamophobia, as it is currently understood, is a modern anti-Islamic discourse and practice which has intensified drastically in the West after 9/11. The term Islamophobia is contested by a number of writers, since it is often imprecisely applied to very diverse phenomena, ranging from xenophobia to anti-terrorism. As Marcel Maussen points out, “the term ‘Islamophobia’ groups together all kinds...