Özet:

Islamophobia, which can most clearly be defined as anti-Islamism and hatred, is a current problem that has been studied in detail in many fields from sociology to politics, psychology to international relations, but its theological dimension has mostly been ignored. Therefore, the idea that Islamophobia has a theological dimension at its origin and then transformed into a socio-cultural and industrial form in the historical process is a subject worth examining. The Islamic civilization, which emerged from a relatively ineffective region and tribe in the era in which it emerged, soon challenged Christian Rome. The rapid spread of Islam in the areas dominated by Christianity and its determination to shake the foundations of the Christian faith led Christianity to see Islam as an important rival, and this rivalry continued throughout history. The Christian Western world, which for many years was in conflict with pagan culture, with the Jews, then with itself, and eventually with Islam, brought the religious wars it waged in the Middle Ages to the scientific world with orientalism, and updated and institutionalized anti-Islamism with the concept of Islamophobia. John of Damascus, who formed the first theological foundations of the concept of Islamophobia, created an important line of tension and rupture between Christians and Muslims with his works. John of Damascus, who was active in the 8th century when important debates took place, was the first important figure who caused the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and Islam to be perceived negatively during the Middle Ages. The Christian-Islamic debates, which started with John and took shape on polemics, served as a source for many theologians in the following centuries. Islam and Christianity have largely spread in the same geography. Muslims conquered Jerusalem, Spain and Istanbul, which are important for the Christian world, and reached the gates of Vienna to reach Rome, the spiritual centre of the Christian world. The challenges that the Christian era ended with the coming of Islam and that divine salvation is only in Islam constituted the theo-political origin of Islamophobia. That is why, for most of the Middle Ages, Islam was seen as a symbol of mortal danger, and this approach has been maintained until today. One of the main reasons why Christianity has targeted Islam since the early times is their belief that both Christianity and Islam will take over the world from each other. Especially the rapid spread of Islam through conquests and its reach to very distant geographies increased these fears of Christians in the Middle Ages over time. Today, this situation has not changed; on the contrary, Islam has continued to spread despite all the negative propaganda. The historical fears of the Western World that the nearly two billion Muslim community will wake up from a deep sleep of several hundred years, become stronger again, erode European values, destroy Western civilization and establish an Islamic order, reveals the hostility to Islam in their subconscious. For, according to the Christian West, the main source of motivation behind the conquering understanding of Muslims since their early times is the relationship they established between Islam's very strong belief in a single god and the vision of political domination. Muslims' establishment of a new civilization focused on science, philosophy, art and thought, together with their political power, was perceived as a socio-cultural threat, and theological prejudices played a decisive role in the formation of this situation. Therefore, we think that comprehensive studies should be conducted on the theological roots of Islamophobia, and that such studies will contribute to social awareness that the main problem when dealing with Islamophobia is not the East-West conflict, but anti-Islamism (the reality/phenomenon), which is a reflection of the historical subconscious of the Christian world.

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