The Islamophobic Approaches of Orientalists (The Case Study of EI2 Encyclopaedia of Islam Entries, Leiden Edition)

The published Leiden encyclopedia is one source of information about Islam in Western and sometimes even Islamic societies. The Islam encyclopedia established itself as a standard reference in open science very quickly because it incorporated the goals of disseminating knowledge of all aspects of Islam, including the founder of Islam, the content and related historical developments, the developers of Islamic teachings, and all aspects of Muslim culture. Given that Islamophobia is a part of the epistemic life of Western intellectual systems, it has been reflected in the compilation of the Islamic Encyclopaedia, as stated explicitly in the first edition of the Islamic Encyclopaedia. Based on this assumption and far from portraying Islamophobia, the current descriptive-analytical study is based on historical articles related to the beginning of Islam (EI2). It attempts to trace, analyze, and explain biased approaches to depicting Islam through the Islamic encyclopedia. The authors of the entries used the othering approach, the economy-oriented approach, the skeptical approach, the adaptation-oriented approach, and the secular approach to create an image of Islamophobia.