Digital Geopolitics and the Cultural Production of Islamophobia: Gaming, Representation, and Postliberal Racism

It has become a common conception that the Global War on Terror targets those of the Muslim faith. The widespread use of digital war games and the geopolitically fueled mass virtual killing of Muslims often employs the same pretext of the War on Terror. It thereby creates and perpetuates misleading stereotypes and sentiments of Islamophobia. During times of war and geopolitical turbulence, nation-states teach their citizens to fear and hate certain people by constructing them as the enemy. They are portrayed as threats to security and as cultural others. Therefore, such depictions foster fear and prejudice. Furthermore, digital war games have been widely used as tools to promote sentiments of Islamophobia. Several popular games depict the killing of Muslims as a means of enhancing global security and fighting against evil. This article examines the issue of Islamophobia from both a geopolitical and digital perspective, with a particular focus on the current trends of postliberal racism, which is prominently portrayed in digital war games. The goal of this article is also to initiate a rethinking of Islamophobia through a social justice lens. This article also introduces the idea of “digitally driven neo-Islamophobia,” which shifts the conventional media-based framing of Islamophobia into the context of virtual mass killing to propagate an ideology of hatred toward a group of people.