“The scientification of Islamophobia: the case of WikiIslam”

Göran Larsson and Torkel Brekke

In this article, we introduce a concept of scientification of Islamophobia by looking closely at the case of a website called WikiIslam and at the way this website and its contents are used by other websites and by individuals in a complex global ecology of knowledge production and consumption regarding Islam and Muslims. We are making two claims in this article. Firstly, we believe that some Islamophobic activists and milieus in the Western world work to anchor prejudice against Islam and Muslims in what they see as scientific arguments about the nature and history of Islam. Secondly, we argue that the website called WikiIslam has emerged as an important point of reference and source of knowledge for the scientification of Islamophobia. We base these claims on an analysis of internet traffic to the pages of WikiIslam combined with a close reading of the articles written and curated by WikiIslam. However, our study of WikiIslam is only a limited case study of larger developments that merit further research.