Islamophobia: Why we have to get over our fears President of the Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (ICCS), Nicolas Blancho delivers a speech during a protest against 'islamophobia and racism' organized by the ICCS, on October 29, in Bern. 'Islamophobia is the new racism' is now a seeming truism, or so Baroness Warsi and many others would have us believe. She claims that Islamophobia has 'passed the dinner table test' and that anti-Muslim prejudice is now normal and uncontroversial in respectable society. Warsi's views are echoed by many British Muslims, who claim to experience such prejudice daily. Like many a clever coining, the term 'Islamophobia' remains undefined and its existence uncontested.  The first recorded use dates back to 1990 in the American magazine Insight , although its etymology can be tracked to the mid 1920s. Since then after being a sociological concept largely restricted to Britain its use increased exponentially when it was declared a new form of global racism by the UN in 2001. In its simplest form, and just going by the term itself, 'phobia' can be defined as 'an intense but unrealistic fear that can interfere with the ability to socialize, work, or go about everyday life, brought on by an object, event or situation'. Adding the prefix 'Islam' therefore implies that this irrational fear is triggered by Islam and directed at Muslims. But are we conflating run of the mill prejudice that a few may encounter with a national epidemic of irrational hatred against Muslims? Or