From terrorist to victim: Western hegemony, Islamophobia, and the 2022 uprising in Iran

This paper critiques dominant postcolonial approaches to Islamophobia, arguing that their emphasis on Muslim victimhood, although intended to empower, inadvertently reinforces Western hegemony by sustaining a dualistic framework of West versus Islam. We define Islamophobia as any ideology, regardless of its origin, that essentializes Islam or reduces Muslim identity to a static set of characteristics. This includes both Western stereotypes and Islamic fundamentalist discourses. Our central argument is that Islamophobia is not confined to the West but also manifests in Muslim majority contexts where Islam is instrumentalized for state control. Using the 2022 Iranian uprising as a case study, we analyze how the Islamic Republic enforces a monolithic version of Islam to suppress dissent, particularly among women. Drawing on the concepts of antagonism and the constitutive outside, we explore how moments of political dislocation can enable the formation of alternative Muslim identities that challenge both Islamophobic and fundamentalist logics. The paper concludes by advancing the notion of Islamic humanism as a counter hegemonic project that affirms justice, plurality, and democratic agency within an Islamic framework. This approach moves beyond the reductive binaries that currently dominate Islamophobia discourse.