Description
There are approximately 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide, making up 25.8% of the global population. As of 2017, over 300 million Muslims reside in countries as minorities globally accounting for 1/5 of the global Muslim population. In Europe, Muslims are an estimated 25.8 million – 5% of the population. This data indicates that rest of the Muslims Muslims live as minorities outside of Europe.
Since the end of the Cold-War, and particularly post-9/11, there has been a proliferation of Islamophobic literature and content produced in the West. This raises questions about the kind of impact these highly sophisticated ideologies have on countries in the Global-South where Muslims constitute a minority because rules that determine and guide the place of production of Islamophobia are usually different from those that govern the place it receives.. When it travels from the West without its context and field of production and inserts itself in countries such as India (with the rise of right-wing Hindu nationalism), it configures differently. As such, India which is home to the second-largest Muslim population (200 million) in the world, produced 55% of the world's anti-Muslim content on X in 2022. Muslims are the largest minority in India. In Sri Lanka, located south of India, Muslims make-up the second-largest minority which at 9.7% of the population. The Islamophobia produced in India is consumed and has ripple effects in Sri Lanka.
This paper will look at the first and second order spillover effect of Islamophobia produced in the West in countries like India and Sri Lanka. The paper will present research findings from a discourse analysis that will connect Islamophobic themes originating in the West with the Islamophobic knowledge re-production in India and their impact in Sri Lanka.
