"Islamophobia, unlike law, which is concrete and legitimate, is an ambiguous, contested, and emerging doctrine fighting for existence."

With these words, Khaled Abou El Fadl, the renowned US-based Muslim scholar, began his lecture on Islamophobia in the West at the American University in Cairo in Egypt on March 6, 2006.

Abou El Fadl is a distinguished fellow in Islamic Law at the University of California, Los Angeles. With a bachelor's from Yale, a law degree from University of Pennsylvania, and a doctorate from Princeton in Islamic Studies, Abou El Fadl has written several books on Islamic law and on universal themes of morality and humanity. In 2005, he was named Carnegie Scholar in Islamic studies.

He teaches Islamic law, Middle Eastern investment law, immigration law, and courses related to human rights and terrorism. He works with various human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and the Lawyer's Committee for Human Rights.

His books include Conference of the Books:The Search for Beauty in Islam (2001); Rebellion in Islamic Law (2001); Speaking in God's Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women (2001); and And God Knows the Soldiers: The Authoritative and Authoritarian in Islamic Discourse (2nd ed. revised and expanded, 2001).

During his talk, he went about analyzing the term "Islamophobia," and the socio-political dynamics that surround it and its usage. According to Abou El Fadl, words do matter. "In law, the whole edifice of authority rests on a foundation of words and terminology," he said. This is why he began his lecture by outlining the origins of the word "Islamophobia."

"You're not going to open a dictionary and find a definition of Islamophobia. Maybe a young scholar might entertain it as a formal word in the dictionary of Islamic terms, but most of the older scholars will be hesitant, because it is unsettled. So if we have a word that is still in the state of formation, evolution and in fact in the process of conception then a lot of people will use it meaning different, sometimes contradictory things," he said.

It's important to look at a word like Islamophobia and to try to understand why some people try to establish it as a part of social discourse and others are resisting it adamantly and vehemently, explained Abou El Fadl.

After the attacks of September 11, there was sheer shock of the moral depravity and complete disregard of the value of human life, he said. "Taking civilians, who are in a plane going to see their mommies and daddies and smashing them into a building of other civilians working to pay their bills and turning it all into one big rumble, was abysmal," said Abou El Fadl

The consequence of the event was a flood of books and literature that seemed to have an insatiable market. "Books were titled The truth about Islam, Islam Unveiled, The Trouble about Islam, What Went Wrong, Islam Exposed, Politically Incorrect Islam, all with the same idea of stripping Islam naked," he said.

"The genre of literature I'm talking about are books that speak about the 'truth' about Islam. As though saying, 'not the political correctness of President Bush, because he could say it's a peace loving religion all he want', they, made it seem that they knew the thinly veiled secret about the Islamic faith," he explained.

That secret, according to the authors, was that Islam, as a religion, is inherently and fundamentally dangerous, immoral, depraved, and unfit to allow for coexistence.

"They said that the doctrines of Islam, the theology itself, makes it so that Muslims can either dominate other human beings or be dominated. …The argument in this genre of literature that's being spewed out after September 11 says that the only way Muslims could exist in the world is to dominated."

Abou El Fadl said the authors argued that the only way to have Muslims around is to keep them on a short leash so that they are not allowed to either harm others, but more importantly for their own good sake.

He criticized American scholars like Daniel Pipes who say that Muslims must be saved from their own faith and that scholars need to regrettably supervise Muslims closely enough so they don't end up being victimized by their own heritage, ideology, and system of thought.

There are many Muslims who think that one of the positive consequences of September 11 is that the world became interested in Islam and many books are being written, he said. "Those people don't know what they're talking about. The jump in sales after September 11 was of the genre I'm talking about. Now, let's get the facts straight," he added.

In addition, the media talking heads and the academics-turned-media-consultants who appear in the media were all churning out the same rhetoric, explained Abou El Fadl. "Every time a bomb goes off they say, 'Well, Tom, all Muslims think the same way and have exactly the same feelings, so give me my $30,000 check and let me go!'"

On the radio, it became normal to hear things that were simply unthinkable just a few years earlier. "People began talking about shooting Muslims. Those people were not interested in concealing their bigotry," he said.

Perhaps, Abou El Fadl, pondered that is what is meant by Islamophobia. "Perhaps it is some kind of belief that Muslims are a fundamental threat to existence. Or perhaps it is something more complex," he said.

To understand its significance, he stressed the importance of understanding the motives of those struggling to bring about the term Islamophobia into existence. "It's a linguistic shortcut, like many other terms. A linguistic symbol that is hoped would invoke an emotive response of denunciation, repulsion, revulsion, all conveyed by the use of one word," he explained.

This word would invoke in the listener the image of something that's very bad, that should be condemned in the strongest terms. "What's described as Islamophobic conduct is equal to another linguistic shortcut that's the word 'boogeyman,'" he said.

This happens when Muslims and Islam are packaged together in one lump sum, dried out of their layers and complexities and packaged in a reducible fashion that can be objectified. They're reduced to a phenomenon, the reduced concept of Islam and Muslim that has turned into something that is threatening, he explained.

"Something scary, but like the boogeyman, highly ambiguous and vague. If the boogeyman has very clear features and there's no mystery to it, the boogeyman doesn't become a boogeyman anymore. There must be smoke, mirrors, and mystery. The idea is that all you see is not all what you get. It's a stereotype that makes Muslims utterly understandable in one small phrase. That construct, Islamophobia, is clear enough so that the category of Muslim or Islam is clear enough, has enough mystique to be sufficiently scary and has a 'spook' effect," he explained.

"I think it is useful to invent a linguistic shortcut to describe individuals who seem to believe that Muslims are either so bad or potentially so bad that they ought to be contained. Having a short cut like Islamophobia to describe such thinking seems to be a very reasonable idea," he said.

Muslims are accused of being obsessed with conspiracy theories and that they can't think that anything is but a conspiracy. But, in fact, the work of Islamophobes is itself based on conspiracy theories. "It's founded on a massive Muslim conspiracy to takeover the world. For all the Muslims out there who think they're hopelessly divided, there's good news for you. Pipes thinks you're coordinated, you have your act together and you know what you're doing and for good reason," said Abou El Fadl.

He said there were three forms of the articulation of "Islamophobia." The first was the loaded question of "Why do they hate us?" "But even by phrasing the question, you've already prejudiced the issue." The second, which Abou El Fadl says is the "most vulgar," is that Islam is a threat and a danger. "This empowers the powerful to erase the powerless," he said.

The third form, said Abou El Fadl, is the "most devious and problematic." It is the battle over who or what is a moderate Muslim. "Like all social phobias, it's a mechanism of protectionism to maintain a privilege or power. Islamophobes try to maintain a privilege position, a power dynamic vis-à-vis Muslims by defining who is a moderate Muslim and hence someone we could deal with and not someone we ought to erase," he said.