Islamofobia y antimusulmanismo en Espa a: el caso de César Vidal

In this paper we analyse the book by César Vidal Espa a frente al islam. First of all we show how the book has been written from an undisputed a priori: the threatening image of islam. In other words: the book has been written from an islamophobic point of view. Secondly we show how that image is built from an essentialist point of view. From that essentialists and islamophobic starting points, the Islamic sacred texts are used with the pretension of “penetrating” the “essence” of islam (its “soul”). A selective reading of those texts, guided by the undisputed premise that islam is a threat, allows the author to use them to “prove” that islam is actually a threat. At the same time, the using of the medieval texts reinforces the essentialist image of an islam that is incapable of changing, neither in time, nor in space. That image is also reinforced by the recurring use of anachronisms and of parallelisms between past and present. Finally, this threatening image of islam is used in order to legitimate discriminatory measures against the Muslim population in Spain.