Excerpt:
For more than seven hours Thursday, students and community members gathered at the UC Berkeley School of Law to discuss the presence of Islamophobia in culture and society.
At the Fifth Annual International Conference on Islamophobia Studies, founded and directed by UC Berkeley lecturer Hatem Bazian, attendees listened to panelists describe issues ranging from the discrimination against Muslims to the representation of Muslim women in the media.
Islamophobia is described by Bazian as "an irrational belief and hostile attitude directed toward Islam and Muslims that problematizes them as a subject matter."