Anti-"Muslim" Prejudice in Contemporary India : From the Issues of Communalism to the Theoretical Reconsideration of Religious Studies(<Special Issue>Islam and Religious Studies)

Abstract

This paper deals with anti-"Muslim" prejudice as a regulating force of everyday life in contemporary India. Picking up two stereotypes of "Muslims" as "foreigners" or "invaders, " and "fanatics" or "separatists, " it shows the particular historical background against which the category of "Indian Muslim" has been sustained in force. It is argued that such a prejudice is not just a fantasy or a lie, but common impressions based on some historical actuality, and that Indian society is endowed with a cyclic process where prejudice (re) produces a plethora of words and deeds that aggravate the prejudice itself. Furthermore, this paper argues that the underlying reality of communalism as shown above is correlated with the theories of religious studies. It concludes that it is quite significant for the argument on communalism to reconsider religious taxonomy, the concept of syncretism, the Judeo-Christian-Islamic bias on the concept of religion, and the conceptual association of religion and community.