ISLAMOPHOBIA
Cyber Homo Sacer A critical analysis of cyber Islamophobia in the wake of the Muslim Ban BY ZEINAB FAROKHI
H
atred toward marginalized communities, particularly Muslims, in the West is at its peak in the IT era, where social networking sites (SNS) like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram dominate digital spaces. The reliance upon SNS, as well as their ubiquity and accessibility, not only allow far-right extremists and Islamophobic discourses to proliferate at alarming rates, but also help create Islamophobic cyber communities that connect like-minded groups worldwide. Research conducted by Imran Awan (onlinelibrary.wiley. com/doi/abs/10.1002/19442866.POI364), Matthew L. Williams and Pete Burnap (academic.oup.com/bjc/article/56/2/211/2462519) and Walid Magdy, Kareem Darwish, and Norah Abokhodair (arXiv:1512.04570v1) are very informative in this regard. Despite general perceptions, anti-Muslim rhetoric in cyberspace is hardly organic. Rather, in many cases it is carefully orchestrated to present Muslims as “radicals,” “extremists” and “terrorists,” thereby criminalizing and dehumanizing them. The analysis of two hashtags, #BanMuslims and #Muslimban in “Cyber Homo Sacer: A Critical Analysis of Cyber Islamophobia in the Wake of the Muslim Ban” (www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/ islastudj.6.1.0014#metadata_ info_tab_contents), demonstrates how the Muslim body in cyberspace has become a site of contestation and a space of exception, where the law that
ought to restrict the dissemination of hatred and fake news, despite being present, restricts itself from operating. Moreover, it shows how the enactment of the state of exception is carried out upon Muslim bodies in cyberspace as well as how they have been placed between outside and inside, exception and rule, where juridical protection makes no sense and offers no succor. Furthermore, the parallel drawn between Girgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer:
In this way, this figure expelled from society is included in the form of exclusion and therefore stands both outside and inside the law simultaneously. The homo sacer analogy shows that Muslims have been forcefully reduced to homo sacer, to “bare life,” and thus stripped of any social and political rights and dignity. Muslims are being excluded, expelled and even killed virtually in cyberspace, all of which encourages their death in the “real” world.
THE HOMO SACER ANALOGY SHOWS THAT MUSLIMS HAVE BEEN FORCEFULLY REDUCED TO HOMO SACER, TO “BARE LIFE,” AND THUS STRIPPED OF ANY SOCIAL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS AND DIGNITY. Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998) conception of homo sacer and Muslim bodies shows that in cyberspace, where the exclusion of bodies can occur, Muslims render a homo sacer figure par excellence: those who cannot be sacrificed but can be killed with impunity. In the context of cyber space, I refer to this figure as cyber homo sacer who can be injured or killed endlessly by anyone with full impunity. In other words, in cyberspace, the Muslim body is reduced to a depoliticized, naked or bare life who can be excluded or exempted from society. They, therefore, can be violated by anyone with full impunity.
42 ISLAMIC HORIZONS HORIZONS JULY/AUGUST 2021
By focusing particularly upon the proliferation of virulent, anti-Muslim rhetoric and discourse on Twitter, as well as following the hashtags #Muslimban and #BanMuslim, I demonstrate how the concept of homo sacer helpfully illuminates the ways in which current Islamophobic and anti-Muslim sentiment online can be understood as a refiguration of Muslims as bodies that exist in a state of in-betweenness. Trump’s Muslim Ban, which originally barred Irani, Iraqi, Libyan, Somali, Sudanese, Syrian and Yemeni nationals from entering the U.S., made him the hero of anti-Muslim movements. Trump
supporters deployed Twitter hashtags such as #BanMuslims and #Muslimban to endorse it. According to some users, politics like the Muslim Ban are paramount and the contagion (read “Muslims”) should be quarantined outside the system for the wellbeing of Western society. Some users argue that the ban is necessary because Muslims are inherently dangerous, are actively seeking to Islamize the public sphere and have no intention of integrating into mainstream society. Others indicate that Muslims threaten Western civilization and should be banned from entering the West. Some users even go further, demanding that Muslims in the West be removed and exterminated, if not from the world. Such comments reveal the degree of violence and horror directed at Muslim
