Islamophobia Worryingly On The Rise In Europe

By Iman Kurdi,
ikurdi@bridgethegulf.com
Saturday, 26, May, 2007
(09, Jumada al-Ula, 1428)
ArabNews

The European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) published its annual report this week. The report deplores the growing rise of Islamophobia across Europe and highlights ECRI’s concern over the climate of hostility toward Muslims.

This will come as no surprise to Muslims living in Europe. Hostility, whether real, projected or imagined, has become part of every day life.

Islamophobia is a difficult term. Whereas anti-Semitism clearly denotes hostility, prejudice and discrimination aimed at people of a specific race, Islamophobia confuses hostility toward Islam as a religion and hostility toward Muslims as individuals. It is an all-encompassing term that describes not only a hatred toward Islam but a view of Islam that — to my mind — is directly derived from the deranged teachings of Al-Qaeda et al.

It draws a direct line between Muslim, Islam and extremist fanatic: We all get tarred by the same brush. But that is the essence of much — though not all — of the hostility toward Muslims today.

The writers of the ECRI report highlight their concern with the consequences of the fight against terrorism. Again this is not news to most Muslims. Since 9/11, we have seen terrorism define Muslim identity or at least define the agenda by which Muslims are perceived.

This has been compounded by the material consequences of the fight against terrorism: Muslims are now suspect and there is a whole host of legislation that either directly or indirectly discriminates against Muslims.

The other big issue is immigration and integration. Again the ECRI report flags up the growing trend for xenophobic political discourse and its entry into the mainstream political arena, particularly in countries that are experiencing a difficult transition into a multicultural society.

This is well highlighted by recent elections where immigration and national identity have played a key role in the election campaign.

For example in France, immigration was a core issue in this month’s presidential election campaign. We witnessed the somewhat incongruous situation of a president who is the son of an immigrant and whose wife boasts about not having a drop of French blood in her veins upping the nationalist rhetoric, so much so that he has set up a Ministry for Immigration, Integration and National Identity.

Muslims make up a large proportion of the immigrant population of Europe and consequently associated fears about security and unemployment have directly fed into discrimination against Muslims.

But this is compounded by Islamophobia which results in the commonly touted view that Islam is incompatible with integration into secular Western society, which in turn leads to the commonly-held view that it is not immigrants per se, but Muslim immigrants who are the problem.

It would be a grave mistake to see discrimination against Muslims in isolation to other forms of racism. One begets the other. You cannot expect to eradicate racism, or even to significantly reduce it, unless you tackle the underlying causes of all racism. In other words, it is racism per se that must be fought.

Discrimination, prejudice or hostility toward any group or individual based on their race, skin color, religious beliefs, nationality or ethnicity cannot and should not be tolerated. It is no good getting up in arms about hostility toward Muslims only to go on to express hostile views toward other groups, something which alas is rather common in Arab and Muslim discourse.

This is particularly the case with respect to anti-Semitism, which ECRI reports is also on the rise in Europe. This fact is supported by the growing incidence of violence and desecrations of Jewish targets such as synagogues and cemeteries, something I deplore.

It is also supported by a recently released survey by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) that looked at attitudes toward Jews in five European countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal.

It found an increasing prevalence of anti-Semitic attitudes, such as the belief that Jews have too much power in business and finance and the belief that Jews talk too much about the holocaust.

And if you dear reader also adhere to these beliefs, I ask you to question not only where they come from but also the role they play in propagating an ever-increasing cycle of hate between Muslims and their Semitic cousins.

The truth is that many Arabs and Muslims like to believe in a view of the world where Jewish interests control everything from the media to the planes that crashed into the twin towers on 9/11.

They like this view because it focuses the blame for everything that is wrong in the Arab and/or Muslim world on dark Israeli forces.

The State of Israel has much blood on its hands, and the Israeli lobby is indeed powerful in international relations, but it is a gross simplification to credit the Israelis with more power than they have. It is also a gross simplification not to differentiate between Israeli and Jew.

Supporting the plight of the Palestinians should not be discredited by resorting to anti-Semitism. It is morally wrong and it does not help the Palestinian cause.

It is no different in principle to those who think all Muslims are terrorists. If you want to fight Islamophobia, the first step is to start clearing your own closet of racial prejudice.