Our History
IISRA’s foundations were built upon the work of the Islamophobia Studies Center and Islamophobia Research (ISC) and Development Project (IRDP)at the University of California Berkeley under the leadership of Hatem Bazian, IISRA’s president. Following from the 10-year legacy of annual conferences that helped build and promote the field of Islamophobia Studies through the ISC at U.C Berkeley, IISRA was developed to formalize an independent, not-for profit academic association dedicated to carrying on this work in a transnational context.
Relevance
In the politically fraught global context where Muslim communities are facing genocides, ethnic cleansing, state suppression, systemic discrimination, hate crimes and terror attacks, and are subjects of organized disinformation campaigns, ISSRA’s mission to address and challenge these manifestations of Islamophobia through research and scholarship is a vital than ever. IISRA’s conferences allow for knowledge mobilization across disciplinary boundaries that interrogate in various ways the saliency of Islamophobia as a global crisis and seek to engage ways to address and combat it along with all its intersectional forms and dimensions.
