What do we mean when we talk about Islamophobia and why is it important to debate it in different contexts? The following article is a critical debate over the increasing consensus about constructing a universal account of Islamophobia. It will, then, discuss the intense prejudice and systematic discrimination against Muslims in Russia. The authors consider the Russian example and attempt to explain if Islamophobia extensively exists in Russian society and why there is an absence of the language of Islamophobia in the country’s academic and media discourse. Using existing research about different expressions of Islamophobia and its political, cultural, racial, and economic attachments, supplemented by a historical debate of the history of the Russian encounter with Islam as the holy other, the authors argue that the existing language of Islamophobia is unable to explain the prejudice against Muslims in Russia and how we can further address this issue by rejecting a universal Western-orientation of the nature of Islamophobia as a phenomenon.
