Dismantling Islamophobia At Global Level: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Imran Khan’s Speeches

Abstract

Addressing Islamophobia is crucial not only for the affected communities but also for promoting global peace and harmony. This study aims to explore the linguistic choices used by Mr.Imran Khan in his selected speeches as a political discourse to dismantle the Islamophobic myth a challenge to global harmony and its implications at the national and international levels. Moreover, this is Mixed-Method research, and the selected samples from Imran Khan's speeches are analyzed under a Three-Dimensional model (Fairclough, 2001) and the Seven Building Blocks Model (Gee, 2017). Thereupon, the findings show numerous terms appear in both speeches, indicating the repetition of certain words e.g. the term "India" a total of 45 times, Kashmir" 28 times, and "Kashmiris" 48 times. This raises public awareness about the harsh policies of the Indian government, references were made to Modi, the curfew, Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJK), and the RSS. Moreover, the speaker reflects on the ways Western societies often fail to understand authentic Islam and are instead influenced by anti-Islamic propaganda. Following 9/11, fear and suspicion towards Muslims significantly increased in Western societies. Thus, this dismantles the misconceptions about Islam and fosters understanding among different cultures. By shedding light on these issues, he hoped to bridge gaps between communities and promote global harmony. The selected speeches may be explored from under SFL by Micheal Halliday.