The Racialization of Islamophobia and the Space Between Us
This project was supported by My faculty sponsor, Dr. Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and my graduate mentor, Amanda D. Perez, for their guidance, intellectual generosity, and mentorship. Their expertise in intergroup relations and prejudice reduction shaped the conceptual foundation of this study and supported its development from idea to implementation.
the Racialization of Islamophobia
Islamophobia is often spoken about as purely religious intolerance. But years of research — and the lived reality of millions — suggest otherwise: Islamophobia in the United States is deeply racialized. People are targeted not only for being Muslim, but for looking Muslim: their skin tone, accent, features, or perceived ethnicity become stand-ins for assumed religious identity.
After 9/11, Arabs of diverse faiths — Muslim, Christian, and non-religious — were racialized as Muslim in the American imagination. “Muslim” became an ethnicized category. And “looking Muslim” often became more consequential than actual religious affiliation.
This phenomenon has profound implications. Muslims report some of the highest levels of discrimination in the country, yet the mechanisms behind Islamophobia remain poorly understood. Very few empirical studies have tested how people visually identify a “Muslim,” or how the intersection of skin tone and religious cues shapes biased responses.
My goal in this project was to bring an intersectional, empirically grounded lens to a conversation that is often flattened or oversimplified.
Research Question
The core question guiding this work was:
Does skin tone influence the intensity of Islamophobic stereotypes and desired social distance, even when religious cues are held constant?
Or in clearer terms:
Is Islamophobia actually racialized?
To test this, I designed an experiment examining the interplay between racial cues (skin tone) and religious cues (symbolic affiliation).
Study Design: A 3×3 Experiment
I used a 3 (skin tone) × 3 (religious association) design. Participants saw one image of a man and rated him based on:
Skin Tone
White
Light Arab
Dark Arab
T-shirt Symbol (Religious Cue)
No symbol
Christian cross
Muslim crescent
Participants then rated the target on:
Positive Muslim stereotypes (e.g., faithful, generous)
Negative Muslim stereotypes (e.g., violent, intolerant)
Desired social distance (comfort with the person as a neighbor, coworker, friend, etc.)
I also measured participants’:
Social Dominance Orientation (SDO)
Openness and Big Five traits
Openness-to-Others (O²)
Implicit bias toward Arabs (IAT)
Social desirability
Demographic variables
The sample consisted of 450 U.S. adults recruited through MTurk.
Key Findings
1. Skin Tone Matters: Islamophobia Is Racialized
One of the strongest patterns: Light Arab men were rated more positively and encountered less desired social distance than Dark Arab men.
Skin tone often overshadowed religious affiliation.
Darker-skinned Arab men — regardless of symbol — were perceived more negatively and as “more Muslim” in stereotypical ways.
This demonstrates that:
Islamophobia in the U.S. operates through a racialized and colorist lens.
2. Religious Cues Did Not Consistently Shift Bias
Contrary to expectation, the explicit religious symbol (cross vs. crescent vs. none) did not significantly change how participants rated the target.
Many participants failed to encode or consciously process the symbol at all.
This suggests:
Perception of “Muslimness” is largely determined by racial cues, not by explicit religious indicators.
3. Christianity Was Not a Reliable Protective Buffer
Arab men wearing a Christian cross were not consistently seen more favorably than Arab men wearing a Muslim crescent.
This indicates:
Whiteness, not Christian affiliation, is the strongest buffer against racialized suspicion.
4. Individual Ideology Shapes Islamophobic Responses
Consistent with broader intergroup research:
Higher SDO predicted more negative stereotypes and greater social distance.
Higher Openness predicted fewer negative stereotypes and greater acceptance.
Higher Openness-to-Others was especially protective against Islamophobic attitudes.
This shows that Islamophobia is shaped not only by the target’s identity, but by the observer’s worldview and psychological orientation.
Limitations
Some participants did not process the T-shirt symbols consciously, which may have muted religious cue effects.
Social desirability may have led participants to underreport overt prejudice.
Only male faces were used; women, especially hijab-wearing women, experience Islamophobia differently.
The study included Arab men only; Black, Asian, and multiracial Muslim identities require further examination.
The sample size, while adequate, limits the power of certain interaction analyses.
Application: What These Findings Mean for Real-World Contexts
The implications of this study span policy, education, advocacy, and everyday practice. Understanding the racialization of Islamophobia changes how we talk about it, measure it, and intervene in it.
1. Legal and Policy Implications
Expand hate crime tracking: Bias crimes should include individuals targeted for perceived religious identity based on race or skin tone, not just declared religious affiliation.
Strengthen civil rights protections: Anti-discrimination frameworks in workplaces and schools must explicitly account for racialized religious bias.
2. Education and Organizational Training
Move beyond generic “religious tolerance” modules.
Incorporate discussions of racialization, skin tone bias, and intersectionality.
Highlight how people’s automatic associations about who “looks Muslim” shape behavior.
3. Media, Tech, and AI
Newsrooms should avoid collapsing “Arab,” “Muslim,” and “Middle Eastern” into one monolithic category.
Tech companies developing algorithms must account for how racialized assumptions about Muslim identity can be encoded in datasets.
4. Mental Health, Community Work, and Clinical Practice
Practitioners should ask clients about both religious and racialized forms of discrimination.
The findings help clinicians contextualize the compounded stressors experienced by individuals who are “read” as Muslim based on appearance.
5. Advocacy and Cross-Community Coalition Building
Communities can use findings like these to strengthen intersectional coalitions across Arab, Muslim, Black, and South Asian groups.
Understanding colorism within Islamophobia helps organizers tailor outreach and support strategies.
Closing
This study underscores a crucial truth: Islamophobia in the United States is not simply about religion. It is shaped by race, skin tone, phenotype, and the assumptions society makes about who belongs.
If we want to decrease Islamophobia, we must confront the racial and intersectional dynamics that drive it.
Only by acknowledging the full complexity of how people are perceived — and misperceived — can we create policies, classrooms, communities, and institutions that truly protect those most vulnerable to bias.