Islamophobia

The increasingly visibility of Muslims in Europe is a favorite topic of nationalist/populist activists. They are not the only political factions prone to discussing the role of Islam on this uniting continent—at any rate, drawing a line between where chauvinism ends and rational discussion begins is not always easy. While talk of an invasion, a flood, or demographic conquest certainly entails the former, what about questions over how far Islam fits in with a liberal democracy? Is this a generalization bordering on racism or a thesis worth pondering?

Some specialists believe that accepting these sorts of far-reaching opinions means we can equate Islamophobia with antisemitism. Like Jews seen by racists, Muslims are reduced to pawns of a malicious conspiracy, regardless of their personal decisions and preferences. Moreover, as one Spanish scholar stresses, Islam is often depicted as an unchanging monolith, as if the religion of the seventh-century Arabian Peninsula in no way differed from modern forms of worship.³

At the same time, although Muslims, as representatives of a faith of universal dimensions, are not by definition tied to any ethnic group, it is hard not to notice that in Europe they are mainly immigrants from Africa and the Near East or their descendants. In this way, critics can vent their real racist feelings without reference to biological or ethnic features.

Intellectuals on the other side of the fence, such as left-wing historian Antonio Elorza, stress that they are not criticizing the religion as a whole, only its present form.⁴ This form is often the result of a literal reference to the first years of Muhammad’s work and his heirs. It is not the critics of Islam who are guilty when they link an aggressive form of conversion characteristic of the creed’s original expansion and its twenty-first-century form, Elorza contends. The abuses come from the radical preachers, cherry-picking certain strains from the rich, polyphonic history of this civilization.

Social life does not revolve around academic discussions, and for ordinary “native” Europeans everyday contact with Muslims is more important. These are not always relations that seek understanding, because of sometimes different social standards.⁵ We often hear that it is necessary to adapt new citizens to the host country’s prevailing customs. A Turkish sociologist points out that Islamophobia is greater where the religion is associated with exotic changes to the local fabric, such as the Orientalizing architectural form of mosques.⁶ On the other hand, a vital question arises—if European societies have been internally diverse for centuries and are presently stressing shared, democratic establishment of the rules of coexistence, then why should the Islamic inhabitants simply adapt to the norms, and not try to change them to their advantage, as other minorities do?⁷