World View: Islamophobia is a clear and present danger

An odious racialisation of Muslims in Europe and the United States is under way, driven by increased migration from Muslim-majority countries.

It is characteristic of identity politics mainly on the right and far right of the political spectrum, boosted by the political competition created by recent successes of such parties in national politics. This happens despite Muslims being on average less than 5 per cent of the population in European countries. Surveys show they are just as diverse and patriotic as other minorities. But racialised politics enormously distorts the assumed numerical threat from Muslims, especially where they are fewest in number.

Racialisation defines a group as an “other” by describing its presumed psychological and moral characteristics and proclaiming an unbridgeable gulf between “them” and “us”. It then assumes they conspire to take us over. The characteristics identified are atemporal, ahistorical and immutable, giving an essentialist portrait of the group incapable of change.

Religion, language and race are mobilised into a false homogenous group portrait. Islam is defined as inherently alien and unassimilable in Christian Europe and the US. It is portrayed as seeking dominance and world conquest. Violence and terrorism are constant features. The Muslim Brotherhood is seen as the chief conspirator on their behalf.

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Politics adds private targeting of individual Muslims for racist abuse and attacks to public executive orders like Donald Trump’s ban on immigration from six Muslim countries. The Danish ban on burkas and its ghetto laws require children to spend 25 hours a week apart from their parents learning the Danish language and values. Seven per cent of the Danish population is Muslim, 200 women wear the face veil and seven the burka. In the main ghetto, 43 per cent are jobless, 51 per cent in poverty and 53 per cent poorly educated.

Discourse of othering

A political discourse of othering and fear links these private and public spaces. A good example was Trump’s remarks on immigration during his press conference last month with Theresa May. “You are changing culture, you’re changing security,” he said of Europe. “Look at what’s happening to different countries that never had difficulty, never had problems. It’s a very sad situation, it’s very unfortunate, but I do not think it’s good for Europe, and I don’t think it’s good for our country.”

Linking Islamophobia and anti-Semitism is a toxic issue in the current British Labour party row on Zionism

Understanding how a group is racialised in this way is important when making comparisons and drawing historical parallels. Islamophobia, a term coined in the 1980s, is now used to describe how Muslims are being racialised in Europe and the US despite their actual diversity, loyalty to their new countries if they are recent immigrants and the decentred nature of their religion, as shown in specialist analyses and surveys.

Comparing Islamophobia and anti-Semitism is now a commonplace in commentary and analysis. Similar group portrayals of Jews highlighting their otherness, wealth and conspiratorial power in the later 19th century laid down a template first for discrimination and then for Nazi exterminism in the Holocaust – and for their own political struggles over assimilation in European societies versus Zionism’s commitment to a new national home in response.

Identity and racism

Jews and others who make or resist such comparisons are part and parcel of the contemporary politics of identity and racism in Israel, Palestine, Europe and the US. The Israeli liberal newspaper Ha’aretz noted that just as the Knesset was passing the nation-state law restricting full citizenship to Jews and downgrading the status of Arabic last week, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu welcomed Hungarian prime minister Victor Orban on a two-day visit. Netanyahu has made common cause with Orban on immigration and Muslims even while Orban demonised George Soros as a Jewish financial and political manipulator. A much more right-wing Israeli coalition shares more with ethnocentric nationalism in Europe than with older universalist versions of Zionism.

Linking Islamophobia and anti-Semitism is a toxic issue in the current British Labour party row on Zionism. The party executive’s decision to accept an international definition of anti-Semitism without its illustrative example of opposing Israel as a Zionist project has outraged established Jewish members of the party. Their critics say the main fascist threat now arises from Islamophobia. The issue overlaps a lot with Blairite opposition to Jeremy Corbyn.

Trump is surrounded by people who, like him, have bought deeply into Islamophobic ideology and propaganda as formulated by writers and agitators like Brigitte Gabriel, Frank Gaffney and Bet Ye’or, whose book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis is deeply influential on both sides of the Atlantic. Islamophobic racism is a clear and present danger.