ISLAMOPHOBIA AND RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE: THREATS TO GLOBAL PEACE AND HARMONIOUS CO-EXISTENCE

Recent events show that there are heightened fear, hostilities, prejudices and discriminations associated with religion in virtually every part of the world. It becomes almost impossible to watch news daily without scenes of religious intolerance and violence with dire consequences for societal peace. This paper examines the trends, causes and implications of Islamophobia and religious intolerance for global peace and harmonious co-existence. It relies on content analysis of secondary sources of data. It notes that fear and hatred associated with Islām and persecution of Muslims is the fallout of religious intolerance as reflected in most melee and verbal attacks, anti-Muslim hatred, racism, xenophobia, anti-Sharī’ah policies, high-profile terrorist attacks, and growing trends of far-right or right-wing extremists. It reveals that Islamophobia and religious intolerance have led to proliferation of attacks on Muslims, incessant loss of lives, wanton destruction of property, violation of Muslims’ fundamental rights and freedom, rising fear of insecurity, and distrust between Muslims and Qudus International Journal of Islamic Studies (QIJIS) Volume 8, Number 2, 2020 DOI : 10.21043/qijis.v8i2.6811


A. Introduction
Religion remains one of the significant sources of intolerance, discrimination and marginalisation across the globe. In contemporary times, the activities of religions rather than encouraging peace and mutual tolerance, have exacerbated fear, mistrust and negative feelings, among their respective followers. Peaceful co-existence in the world has often been jeopardised and threatened by refusal of one religious or non-religious group to tolerate beliefs and practices of other persons based on their religious affiliations.
Shocking and breaking news on daily basis reflects violence related to religion. As Limon, Ghanea and Power (2014: 2) has observed, "it is almost impossible to turn on the news today without witnessing scenes of hatred, violence and intolerance perpetrated in the name of religion or belief." This shows that there are increasingly religious hostilities and discriminations in virtually every part of the world.
Islām teaches that we live in peace and harmony with people of different faiths, including Christians, Jews and others. Islām is a religion of peace -in theory, principles and praxis -that is against any form of oppression, discrimination, Kazeem Oluwaseun DAUDA co-existence the world over. Therefore, the central focus of this paper is to examine Islamophobia and religious intolerance with particular emphasis on their causes and implications for societal peace and harmonious co-existence around the globe.
B. Discussion

Islamophobia and religious intolerance: a theoretical and conceptual analysis
Scholars differ in their conceptual understanding on the term "Islamophobia". Suffice to note that the prominent use of the concept began with the report of the Runnymede Trust's

Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia (CBMI)
entitled Islamophobia: a Challenge for Us All (1997). The Trust provided a foundation upon which many other definitions emerged. According to the Commission, Islamophobia is "unfounded hostility towards Islām and practical consequences of such hostility in unfair discrimination against Muslim individuals and communities" (Runnymede Trust, 1997: 4). This definition reflects that Islamophobia could occur at both the individual and group levels. In a similar trend, Kumar (2018) argues that daily acts of hostility, hate crimes, and even job discrimination against Muslims are the outward manifestations of Islamophobia.
Moreover, Islamophobia involves socially reproduced prejudices and aversion to Islām and Muslims, as well as actions and practices that attack, exclude or discriminate against persons on the basis that they are or perceived to be Muslim (Gardell, 2010). It is an institutionalised, structural, and systemic war constituting a systemic form of racism and discrimination against anyone who is perceived as associated ISLAMOPHOBIA AND RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE: THREATS TO GLOBAL ….. with Islām and an intense hatred or fear of Islām, and hostility or prejudice towards Muslims (Abdulhadi, 2018: 14).
Islamophobia also involves discrimination against Muslims in employment and in the provision of health services, exclusion from managerial positions and jobs of high responsibility, as well as discrimination and exclusion from political and governmental posts (Abu Sway, 2005;Runnymede Trust, 1997).
In a broader context, Abadi (2018: 5)  States. It also suggests that Islamophobia is a new form of racism. This is buttressed by the Runnymede Trust (2017) in its 20 th Anniversary report which states that Islamophobia is anti-Muslim racism with the purpose of impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise of human rights, and fundamental freedoms of Muslims.
Flowing from the foregoing positions, Islamophobia in this context is a combination of two nuanced words: Islām -an Arabic word which signifies religion that exists to reflect total and voluntary submission to God Almighty, by those who desires peace, equity and wholeness, called Muslims; and phobia which means fear of something due to danger inherent in it. Thus, Islamophobia connotes uninformed fear associated with Islām by non-Muslims that do not believe in the peaceful notions of the religion of Islām. It is the term used to describe the hatred, negative stereotypes and hostility perpetrated toward Muslims due to wrong perception about Islām which reflects in verbal and physical attacks, harassment, discrimination, torture, murder, bombing, kidnapping, arson and vandalism, use of media agencies, hate speech, intimidation and marginalisation, and demonstrations, rallies and marches, as well as distribution of leaflets and other literature.
Religious intolerance is a broad concept. The relationship between religion and intolerance has been the subject of intense discourse. This is because religion and intolerance are inextricably linked. Religion as old as mankind has played a significant role in the human existence and interaction. This implies that religion is a universal phenomenon that largely revolves around the existence of man. Put differently, religion satisfies the spiritual and moderate material needs of man. It could mean the set of beliefs, feelings and practices defining the relations between human being and the supernatural. In other words, religion is man's efforts to establish and maintain cordial relations between them and spiritual powers on the one hand, and fellow man and other creatures on the other (Kareem, 2014). Etymologically, the term "religion" is derived from Latin word religare meaning "to create a tie to God" or "reunite with God." As a religionist, one could either belong to a polytheist, pantheist or monotheist.
Considering the trend of monotheistic religion across the world, one is convinced that what religion stands for is ISLAMOPHOBIA AND RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE: THREATS TO GLOBAL ….. peace and tranquillity in different societies, but the ignorance and the excesses of the adherents had brought its negative impact on the global societies. Conversely, intolerance has replaced tolerance amidst violence. Intolerance refers to the unwillingness to recognise and accept differences in opinions or beliefs of others. It has to do with difficulty to bear or endure the beliefs that are different from one's own (https:// www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/intolerance).

The Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human
Potential (2017) explains that religious intolerance includes acts of denying the right of people of another religious faith to practice and express their beliefs freely. It is a blind refusal to understand and respect views or positions that are opposed to one's cherished religious views. Raji, Abdullateef, Araba-Yusuf and Festus (2015) are of the view that religious intolerance involves when a particular group refuses to accept or accommodate the views, opinions of other opposing religious adherent, throw verbal insults at members of another religious group, attack with dangerous missiles, put up physical fights, deny some religious groups some fundamental social services, such as provision of land to build worship places, and mutilate any of the religious' holy books or tombs.
For the purpose of this study, therefore, religious intolerance implies the hostility, inability and difficulty in accepting other religious views, perhaps due to wrong religious ideology or bigotry. It is expressed in discrimination, repression and religious rivalry, and result in persecution. Religious intolerance leads to violence, distrust, disintegration, hostility and persistent hatred among religious groups within nations.

Historical context and emergence of Islamophobic discourse
Apparently, the emergence of "Islamophobia" has received tremendous scholarly attention with emphasis on its historical context, as well as the interplay between western cultures and fear of Islām and Muslims. According to Vertovec (2002), Islamophobia has not necessarily escalated in the past decades, but there has been increased scrutiny of it in public and scholarly discourse. Reflecting on the structural character and history of Islamophobia, Abdulhadi (2018) emphasizes that "Islamophobia" is not a new phenomenon, its historical roots can be traced to the European Crusades in the 11th to 13th centuries and expulsion of Muslim Arabs and Africans from Andalucía in the late 15th century. He adds that Islamophobia is rooted in colonialism by the European powers, as well as Orientalism and East-West dichotomy.
Similarly, Bleich (2011) has traced the coinage of "Islamophobia" as a new word to the publication of Edward Said's (1978) classic work, entitled Orientalism in the late 1970s. In this context, it was established and widely agreed that "the West" has long associated Islām with negative images, sentiments, and stereotypes. Orientalism describes the way western cultural, academic, and imperial projects have crafted a dehumanising representation of "the Arab" as an "exotic and barbarous Orients". By decoding the body of writing that compares a "civilised" West to a "backwards" Arab world, Orientalism provides one of the earliest critiques of stigmatised Muslim identities and the way in which Orientalists exploited the negative stereotypes of Eastern cultures as a justification for colonial ambitions (Itaoui & Elsheikh, 2018: 7). of British society and states allowed this to go unpunished.
In the views of Istriyani and Yuliatun (2016), the study of Islamophobia began in 1995 in England, while some studies show that Islām is perceived as a threat, while others consider it to have similarities with the Nazi and Communism that contains an overview of invasion, domination and infiltration. Bleich (2011) insists that Islamophobia originally developed in the late 1990s to draw attention to harmful rhetoric and actions directed at Islām and Muslims in western countries.
For Lee, Gibbons, Thompson andTimani (2009), andZúquete (2008), "Islamophobia" emerged in contemporary discourse with the 1997 publication of the report "Islamophobia: a challenge for us all" by the Runnymede Trust (1997). This publication indicates that the term "Islamophobia" has been popularised because of the resurgence in the post-Cold War and post-9/11 phenomenon in United States. Esposito (2017: xiv) asserts that Islamophobia like anti-Semitism and xenophobia, is historically rooted, but traced its contemporary resurgence to the significant influx of Muslims to the West in the late 20th century, the Iranian revolution,

Panoramic view, cases and causes of Islamophobia and religious intolerance
Across the globe, particularly in Canada, U.S., Australia,  The report reveals that "Right-wing extremist were behind nearly twice as many incidents" as terror acts associated with those identified as "Islāmist-domestic terrorism". Right-wing extremists, often White supremacists, were responsible for 115 incidents within the same period (Sampathkumar, 2017).

Other inducing causes include Orientalists' perceptions of
Islām, poor knowledge about Islām, growing number of Islamophobic industry, fear of domination, hate speeches of public figures, and public anxiety over immigrants and immigration programmes.

Nexus and implications of Islamophobia and religious intolerance for global peace and harmonious co-existence
There has been a growth in organisations that portray  whereas Islamophobia is specifically meant to promote hatred, fear and discrimination against Muslims. This agrees with Roald's (2004) perception that Islamophobia should be recognised as a form of intolerance alongside xenophobia and anti-Semitism.
Corroborating the above argument, Walzer (2015) contends that Islamophobia is a form of religious intolerance and hatred. He asserts further that contemporary Muslims in   In addition to security measure, religious leaders and scholars have a critical role to play. Religious leaders must preach peace, tolerance and love, rather than fuelling religious bigotry, hatred and extremism through their radical teachings.
In furtherance to this, scholars of Abrahamic religion must be guided by the notions of love, unity and peaceful coexistence in their writings and public discourses. Seeking for true knowledge about other religions is encouraged rather than following blind obedience. This is why Al-Qaradāwī