Image Credit: 17 United Against Islamophobia, Felton Davis, Wikimedia Commons 

Year after year, campaigns emerge urging Muslims to fight Islamophobia through better stories, counternarratives, respectability, dialogue and individual interaction. These efforts are well-meaning, but are often premised on understanding Islamophobia as arising out of misconceptions or ignorance. In reality, Islamophobia functions as a structural, institutionalised form of racism deeply woven into state practices, laws and public discourse. Misdiagnosing the cause leads us to fight the wrong battles and lose before we even begin. This is not to dismiss the value of embodying Islamic ethics, the significance of Muslim contributions to community life or the fact that individuals can sometimes unlearn prejudice. Rather, it is to insist that the real task lies in grasping the structural logics through which Islamophobia operates, and in prioritising political assertion and mobilisation, collective struggle and movement-building as the heart of any serious challenge to it.

Don’t Fight by Trying to Be a Good Muslim

One of the most common strategies is to showcase Muslims as model citizens: hardworking, charitable and peaceful. The assumption is that discrimination melts away once we prove ourselves. But this strategy backfires as it makes belonging conditional: Muslims are accepted and acceptable only when they perform goodness. It also creates a hierarchy between good Muslims (respectable) and bad Muslims (dissenters, activists, those who don’t fit the mould). Rights become privileges to be earned rather than guarantees that all citizens enjoy. This logic played out starkly during COVID-19. Muslim doctors and NHS staff were celebrated for their sacrifices, but almost immediately, the media returned to narratives of Muslims as rule-breakers when Eid gatherings occurred. Being good is never a shield; it only delays suspicion. You can’t out-behave a system that is designed to discipline and regulate you.

Furthermore, this silences differences as it discourages outspoken critique, dissent or practices that don’t fit the respectable mould. As Patricia Hill Collins reminds us, oppressed groups are often only heard when they frame their struggles in terms that reassure the dominant group. But doing so reshapes the meaning of their demands, making them more about comfort for the powerful than justice for the marginalised. The good Muslim script works in precisely this way, as it requires Muslims to translate their lives and grievances into a language acceptable to others, rather than insisting on their rights on their own terms. Hence, Muslim groups or individuals who are considered outspoken or are committed to a radical critique are often left out of Muslim coalitions, committees and boards that seek to fight Islamophobia.

Don’t Fight by Listing Contributions

Another tactic is to highlight Muslim contributions with examples ranging from wartime soldiers and NHS heroes to successful entrepreneurs and community leaders. The idea is that showing Muslims as useful strengthens belonging. But this reduces their lives to utility. We witness how Muslims are valued when their contributions align with state priorities, but sidelined or penalised when they critique state practices or express political solidarity, particularly around the genocide in Gaza. The question then arises: what about those unable to contribute in conventionally productive ways, the elderly, the unemployed, the disabled? Their right to dignity should not depend on measurable output, as equality ought to be unconditional.

The value of marginalised lives cannot rest on whether they can be narrated in ways that reassure authority. Such inclusion is always conditional as it invites some into visibility, but only as long as they can be folded neatly into institutional scripts. This logic erases those who do not occupy celebrated or high-visibility roles. Here, diversity becomes less about justice and more about showcasing palatable forms of difference. Those who refuse to perform respectability are rendered invisible. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham critiques this as the politics of respectability, where rights are precariously tied to exemplary conduct or elite service. Under this regime, equality can be revoked the moment one stops performing usefulness.

What this logic misses is that rights are not rewards for service. Scholars and activists have repeatedly underscored that justice requires dismantling structures of domination, not proving worthiness within them. Tying dignity to recognition by the dominant society repeats the same racial logics of subordination; that is, freedom is only extended when the oppressed appear legible to power. But our dignity cannot and should not hinge on whether society, the state or its institutions find us useful. It must rest on the principle of equal membership that is non-negotiable and beyond appraisal.

Don’t Fight by Reasoning with Islamophobes

Public debate often frames Islamophobia as if it were a matter of ignorance; if only racists understood Muslims better, prejudice would fade. This logic explains the recurring spectacle of Muslims debating far-right figures on social media, as though patient reasoning will convert hostility into acceptance. But this framing mistakes Islamophobia for confusion rather than a deliberate strategy of power.

Far-right groups deploy anti-Muslim rhetoric not out of misunderstanding but to mobilise supporters, grow political capital and consolidate exclusionary national identities. Debating them lends their views legitimacy, re-centring racists as the audience who must be persuaded. Reasoning with racists also rests on a deeper liberal assumption that Islamophobia is primarily pathological, something that exists in people’s heads as bias or prejudice. This reduces Islamophobia to a matter of ignorance, to be corrected through education and dialogue. Here, ignorance should be understood as more than merely the absence of knowledge. Charles W. Mills talks about ignorance as being structural, and specifically ‘white ignorance’ as systemic and not random misconceptions of a few individuals. It’s about how entire systems of thought, culture and society keep certain truths hidden and sustain false beliefs. For Mills, this form of ignorance is a way of misperceiving the world that protects privilege and power. In this sense, racism is not cured by information because its ignorance is structured and wilful.

For example, when cases of police brutality against Black or Muslim people are reported, they are often dismissed by well-meaning folks as the work of a few bad apples, explained away by suggesting that the victim must have been at fault, or denied outright with claims that there is no proof race had anything to do with it. These responses refuse to acknowledge the systemic nature of racial profiling, stop-and-search practices and disproportionate police violence. So, the ignorance here isn’t simply not knowing. It’s a distorted worldview that explains away racism in order to maintain the belief in white innocence and institutional neutrality.

Additionally, we are placed in a double blind. We not only have to struggle against racial domination, but are also compelled to explain, justify and correct the oppressor’s misconceptions. Muslims are forced into the exhausting position of both resisting oppression and educating the oppressor. This is why reasoning with racists in the hope of solving Islamophobia is not only futile but dangerous. It distracts from the fact that Islamophobia is embedded in political institutions, not just extremist subcultures. Muslims do not need to win arguments with racists; they need structural justice that secures dignity beyond the shifting terms of public debate. Islamophobia is not simply a misunderstanding to be corrected; rather, it is a power arrangement to be dismantled.

Don’t Treat Islamophobia as Exceptional or Marginal

A recurring narrative frames Islamophobia as the preserve of fringe extremists or as an aberration in an otherwise tolerant society. But in Britain, Islamophobia is not marginal; it is woven into the fabric of governance and institutional practice. Take the Prevent framework. Teachers, doctors and even nursery workers are required to monitor and report signs of radicalisation, a duty that disproportionately targets Muslims. Scholars have shown that Prevent embeds surveillance into everyday life, producing hyper-visibility and disciplining Muslims into conditional belonging. This extends to the NHS, where Muslim healthcare workers have been profiled and associated with extremism under Prevent logics, normalising institutionalised suspicion.

Islamophobia operates through similar logics more broadly in education, immigration systems and public services where Muslims are more likely to be penalised, surveilled, or forced to prove loyalty. Thus, by treating Islamophobia as exceptional, we overlook how deeply it is mainstreamed through law, policy and bureaucracy. This is what David Theo Goldberg calls racism as a mode of governance. He demonstrates how modern states rely on racial ordering to manage populations, define belonging and distribute vulnerability. Islamophobia, seen this way, is not a misunderstanding or a fringe prejudice; rather, a systemic arrangement that sustains political projects and legitimates suspicion. To reduce Islamophobia to far-right hostility is to miss the point. The real danger lies not just in racist street movements but in the quiet, everyday embedding of suspicion into the structures of the state.

Combating Islamophobia

Fighting Islamophobia means moving beyond respectability and representation politics to systemic critique, which includes naming it as racism and treating Prevent, terror laws, immigration regimes and media narratives as racialised governance. Secondly, it means resisting the logic that Muslims must earn equality through good behaviour or contributions. Thirdly, it means building solidarity by linking Muslim struggles with the struggles of Black, migrant and working-class communities who also face systemic racism and eventually linking it to an Ummatic transnational solidarity. Ultimately, achieving justice means more than changing attitudes; it requires transforming institutions. From repealing discriminatory counterterrorism laws to holding the media accountable, the demand must be for structural reform and not just interpersonal shifts.