Islamophobia, a European problem

On 24 October, the European Union Elementary Rights Company (FRA) revealed a report on Islamophobia in 13 EU nations. In response to the information within the report, 50% of Muslims within the EU expertise discrimination of their each day lives, rising from 39% in 2016. In distinction, 21% of the final inhabitants expertise discrimination (Eurobarometer knowledge, 2023).

What this implies is that, in keeping with these two surveys, Muslims in Europe in 2024 are uncovered to nearly double the danger of discrimination.

“The difficulty of Islamophobia is a world downside, which has been amplified all over the place since 11 September 2001,” says Julien Talpin, a French sociologist on the CNRS (Centre Nationwide de la Recherche Scientifique), who specialises in questions associated to integration and discrimination.

The FRA report relies on a pattern of 9,604 folks in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Eire, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.

The best figures seem in Austria (74% during the last 5 years) Germany (71%), Finland and Denmark (64%). The bottom are in Sweden (23%), Spain (31%) and Italy (34%).

A “socially acceptable” racism?

Austria stands out within the FRA survey. In Could 2024, the Austrian Documentation Centre for Islamophobia reported 1,522 reviews of anti-Muslim racism in 2023: a file quantity, and a rise of about 200 instances in comparison with 2022. Greater than a 3rd of those instances had been reported since October 2023, i.e. after the Hamas assault on Israel and the next Israeli army escalation. In response to 2022 knowledge from the Federal Statistical Workplace, Muslims in Austria signify 8.3% of the whole inhabitants.

In an interview with the Austrian each day Der Customary, Désirée Sandanasamy, authorized advisor for the anti-racist organisation Zara, explains that anti-Muslim racism has elevated within the nation and, extra considerably, that it has change into “socially acceptable”, even past the political spectrum occupied by the FPÖ (far proper, the nation’s main social gathering). In response to Sandanasamy, the organisation reviews of younger folks being insulted for merely talking Arabic on the street, for instance, and for this, the media bear nice duty.

One other key difficulty right here is structural racism. In response to the 2024 Zara report, barely multiple in ten instances of racism concerned state authorities or establishments. For instance, there have been 58 recorded instances of racist violence by the police.

Past the far-right

“On a European degree, the far-right is taken into account one of many largest danger elements for terrorism, but after we consider terrorism we consider Arabs. There’s a follow of institutionalised Islamophobia. There’s a neo-fascist and fascist far-right motion. We see it in France with Marine Le Pen, whose discourse is essentially anti-immigration and anti-Muslim, in addition to in Spain with Vox, or in Hungary with Viktor Orbán and in Italy with Giorgia Meloni,” says  Youssef M. Ouled in dialog with Ana Somavilla of El Confidencial. Ouled is a researcher at Rights Worldwide Spain (Ris), an NGO based by legal professionals and jurists specialised in worldwide legislation engaged on civil rights violations.

Ouled insists on one thing that would appear apparent, however which is a part of the semantic confusion with which public, media and political discourse usually performs: “You don’t must be a migrant to be a Muslim. And what the ultra-right is doing with the problem of Islamophobia is normalising it, normalising the rejection of the Muslim inhabitants, the criminalisation and unequal remedy by establishments. Consequently, the truth that migrants would not have the identical rights as us as a result of they aren’t absolutely built-in. signifies that they are often figured as ‘potential terrorists’”.

In response to Ouled, the “improve in Islamophobia is because of this development within the normalisation of Islamophobia”.

A “Muslim particular person”?

After Christianity in its numerous kinds, Islam is the second largest faith in Europe, though it’s tough to quantify precisely how many individuals follow Muslim faith or tradition.

One generally cited examine was performed by the Pew Analysis Heart, which dates again to 2017 and estimated the variety of European Muslims at 25.8 million. The EU Company for Elementary Rights nonetheless cites these figures in its report. Numbers are essential, and elementary to any understanding of actuality. However on their very own they aren’t sufficient.

Not like Catholicism for instance,  and in a “western” context, being a Muslim can imply, like Judaism, a cultural or household custom, fully unrelated to the follow of a religion.

It could additionally refer – and fairly often does – to the gaze that society imposes: pores and skin color, fashion of costume, geographical origin, occupation, postal code, title or surname: what, briefly, known as “racialisation”, the social attribution of ethno-racial traits. In different phrases, we change into “one thing” within the eyes of others, and inside a society’s particular energy relations.

Within the case of the FRA knowledge cited above, the folks interviewed declared themselves to be training Muslims. However, because the report specifies, the information present “that an individual’s pores and skin color or faith might be the set off for discrimination”.

“In some methods, the problem lies in what’s counted. What does it imply to be a Muslim at present? Is it practising the religion? And practising in a particular means? Does it imply to be culturally Muslim?” asks Julien Talpin. With Olivier Esteves and Alice Picard, Talpin is the creator of a guide primarily based on sociological analysis that’s particularly attention-grabbing within the French and European context: La France, tu l’aimes mais tu la quittes (“France, you like it, however you permit it”, Seuil, 2024).

France’s very peculiar mind drain

The guide brings collectively the outcomes of a survey of 1,070 French residents, together with 139 in-depth interviews. All of the individuals who took half within the survey outline themselves as having a Muslim faith or tradition, and all of them have determined to go away France.

The peculiarity of this statistical pattern is that almost all, about three quarters, come from a working-class background within the working-class neighbourhoods of huge cities and have achieved a speedy social ascension due to their research. Most had been born to first-generation immigrants to France. All of the folks interviewed left the nation to work overseas in positions of usually nice duty: finance, analysis, the well being sector… Thus, a really peculiar mind drain. Most declare that they wish to go away behind the “atmospheric Islamophobia” current in France within the media, establishments and the office. It is a local weather that worsened  after the 2015 Paris assaults. The guide is filled with voices that testify to the struggling particular to a complete section of French society: the discrimination, the insults, the jokes, the gaze, the exclusion from work and housing.

A few of these folks follow the religion, however some don’t, or not repeatedly. As Talpin explains, “Within the interviews we had been capable of conduct, typically folks say ‘I’m Muslim, or at the least a bit of bit, culturally’, due to ‘household heritage’, and so on. ‘However I don’t really feel that Muslim’, they are saying”.

Among the many nations chosen by these French residents are the UK and Canada, adopted by the Gulf nations, and Dubai particularly, in addition to North Africa and Turkey, that are in some instances the place the mother and father of the folks interviewed initially got here from. Right here, the folks interviewed say, they’ll “breathe”.

One thing that Talpin, Esteves and Picard’s analysis brings into the sunshine of day is the extent to which identification is a social assemble: a number of the interviewees who emigrated to the UK, for instance, say that they’re now perceived firstly as French, not as Muslim. “The truth that these French residents don’t undergo Islamophobic discrimination doesn’t imply that such discrimination doesn’t exist within the UK, in fact, however that it’s primarily directed at totally different folks.” The principle victims of islamophobic discrimination within the UK are the descendants of the British colonies, i.e. folks of Pakistani or Indian origin, with whom Islam is related, explains Talpin.

“In France, Islam is linked to the Maghreb and Algeria particularly. Algerian residents had been known as ‘français musulmans d’Algérie’ (French Muslims of Algeria) throughout the colonial interval. and this leaves traces in cultural, social and semantic habits. Because the authors of the guide clarify, the query then turns into how the discourse weaves collectively a mixture of Arabic, Muslim, Maghrebi and Islam.

For a number of causes, the case of France is attention-grabbing on a European degree: theoretically, it’s the nation with the biggest Muslim group in Europe. Theoretically, as a result of ethnic statistics are normally banned as a way to keep away from, within the view of legislators, discrimination. “There’s a ban, in precept, of ethnic statistics, however with exceptions for public analysis,” explains Pierre Tanneau, head of the statistics and immigration part of INSEE (the nationwide statistics institute). That is why, for some research, it’s nonetheless potential to look at faith or nation of origin.

Whereas this may increasingly assist with interpretation of the information, it actually doesn’t correspond to what, within the Anglo-Saxon world, are referred to as “Ethnicity details and figures”, that are used to gauge the sensation and belonging of a person to a given social and cultural group.

Probably the most up-to-date official statistics are these of a examine by INSEE and INED, the institute for demographic analysis: Trajectoires et origines (TeO, “Trajectories and Origins”), which relies on a statistical pattern of 27,200 folks in metropolitan France aged between 18 and 49. This examine estimates the proportion of French folks of Muslim faith at 10%. In response to this knowledge, 19% of the respondents declare to have suffered discrimination (rising from 14 % in 2008-2009, within the first survey of this type), in comparison with 43% within the aforementioned FRA examine.

Within the European context, France can be attention-grabbing as a result of it’s the nation with the best proportional inhabitants of immigrant origin: 32% of the inhabitants underneath 60 years of age has a historical past of migration, starting on the finish of the nineteenth century.

Germany after Hanau

In Germany, too, assaults have given a lift to the expression of racism, as Petra Dvořáková of Denik Référendum explains. Right here, the scenario modified in 2020, when there was a taking pictures in Hanau by which 9 folks had been killed and 5 had been injured. After the assault, the Ministry of the Inside appointed a bunch of unbiased consultants who produced a report on Islamophobia (Islamophobia- A German Stability Sheet) revealed in 2023. In response to the information, about half of the German inhabitants agrees with anti-Muslim statements. Between 700 and 1,000 racist anti-Muslim acts (insults, threats, injury to property, bodily accidents) have been reported in recent times.

In response to the NGO CLAIM, 1,926 acts of anti-Muslim racism had been reported in 2023, 60% of which occurred after the Hamas assault on 7 October. Elisabeth Walser of CLAIM factors out that anti-Muslim racism happens in all areas and establishments: housing searches, the schooling system, public areas, and so on.

Muslim males, significantly black males, are those who expertise racial profiling and police violence essentially the most, Walser explains to Dvořáková: “Gender stereotypes are racialised; Muslim males are portrayed as aggressive, whereas girls are portrayed as submissive, docile, backward”. She remembers an incident within the well being sector: a Muslim lady carrying a veil requested for a check for sexually transmitted illnesses and the physician replied: “I don’t assume you want it”.

The (veiled) physique of ladies

Among the many FRA reviews, non secular costume is a crucial query. Ladies whose clothes is recognisably Muslim undergo extra discrimination than those that don’t put on them, particularly when they’re in search of a job (45% versus 31%). This determine rises to 58% for younger girls (16-24 years) who put on non secular clothes.

This development exists in numerous nations, in numerous contexts. The historic causes are usually not all the time the identical, however the penalties are sometimes related: discrimination, aggression, social and private struggling.

“Muslim girls who put on the veil are those that suffer essentially the most discrimination. We see the intersection of racism, sexism and the visibility of religiosity, which excludes them from public participation,” Walser continues.

France particularly is marked by a battle that it defines as “secular”, however which is seen as discriminatory overseas, particularly within the English-speaking world. Since 2004 (with the prohibition of spiritual symbols in colleges, the legislation on separatism, the controversy over the burkini or the hijab in sports activities… the checklist is lengthy) Muslim clothes and symbols have been on the centre of neurotic media battles. “On the one hand, there’s a sort of contradiction in France, between a particularly superior secularisation, which signifies that part of society finds the expression of spiritual emotions uncomfortable, no matter these emotions could also be, and a return of faith that we’re witnessing in latest many years all around the world, and never solely of Islam,” explains Talpin.

The difficulty, in keeping with Talpin, is “linked to the historical past of French republicanism, the Enlightenment and the concept that we will emancipate folks despite themselves […]. This was a really current and highly effective mannequin on the time of the Third Republic and the colonial interval. The French Republic supposed to emancipate, liberate and enlighten the ‘savages’. […] This type of republican [democratic] paternalism is being revived at present, significantly in relation to the scenario of Muslim girls and the carrying of the veil”.

That is although, Talpin provides, analysis reveals that within the overwhelming majority of instances girls who put on the veil freely select to take action.

As Polish thinker Monika Bobako tells Denik Référendum, “Islamophobia is manifested in numerous kinds. There’s nationalist-conservative Islamophobia, whereby folks attempt to defend their Christian nationwide identification from Islam. Then there may be progressive Islamophobia, current in liberal circles and even on the left. Liberals are usually not involved that Islam threatens conventional nationwide and cultural identification. As a substitute, they see it as an anti-civil faith that opposes liberal values and human rights, together with LGBT and ladies’s rights”.

‘We’re witnessing a worrying improve in racism and discrimination towards Muslims in Europe. This phenomenon is fuelled by the conflicts within the Center East and aggravated by the dehumanising anti-Muslim rhetoric we see throughout the continent,” concludes Sirpa Rautio, FRA’s director.

This text is a part of the PULSE undertaking and was realised due to the precious contribution of Petra Dvořáková (Denik Référendum), Ana Somavilla (Spain, El Confidencial), Kim Son Hoang, Muzayen Al-Youssef, Noura Maan (Austria, Der Customary) and Filippo Maria Ottani Sconza (Italy, OBCT).