Overview
There is an alarming manner in which states in Europe have “racialized” the Muslim religious minority and subjected people within that minority to a range of discriminatory and racist laws, policies and practices. In a number of European states, authorities have invoked the threat of terrorism in the context of the refugee crisis, casting those fleeing war and violence and seeking safe haven in Europe as potential threats to national security.
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2. But these counter-terror initiatives have some features which are common across European countries, and are aimed at systematic discrimination against Muslim community. They derogate state’s commitment to human rights, consolidate power in the hands of executive while sidelining judiciary. The standard of proof for crime have fallen to mere “suspicion” and in some states to no suspicion at all, at the same time criminalizing legitimate protests and freedom of expression. They use tactics of “secret evidence” reducing transparency, and target migrants, refugees, political opponents and even journalists under the garb of “threat of terrorism”. These all are the finding of June 2022 report of Amnesty International titled “Regional Overview of Islamophobia in Europe”.
Islamophobia in Europe manifests itself through individual attitudes and behaviors, and the policies and practices of organizations and institutions. Examples vary across countries include the following :
Physical or verbal attacks on property, places of worship, and people—especially those who display a visible manifestation of their religious identity such as women wearing the hijab or niqab.
Verbal or online threats of violence, vilification, and abuse.
Policies or legislation that indirectly target or disproportionately affect Muslims, and unduly restrict their freedom of religion, such as bans on wearing visible religious and cultural symbols, laws against facial concealment, and bans on building mosques with minarets.
Discrimination in education, employment, housing, or access to goods and services
Ethnic and religious profiling and police abuse, including some provisions of counterterrorism policing.
Public pronouncements by some journalists and politicians—across the whole political spectrum—that stigmatize Muslims as a group and disregard their positive contributions to the communities and countries in which they live.
Islamophobic measures by European Government
1. Austria
In 2015 it banned foreign funding to religious institutions. Further it mandated only German language Qurans to be used by Muslims, banning Arabic versions. In 2020, under Operation Luxor, around 70 Muslim homes were brutally raided by more than 900 police and special forces aimed to “cut off the roots of political Islam”.
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2. Germany
In 2019 started a pilot project to train Imams, creating a special university course for them, i.e. training to religious leaders in a Public University. On New Year’s Eve 2023, unknown persons desecrated around 30 graves in the Muslim part of the main cemetery in Iserlohn. Tombstones were knocked over, decorative elements and plants were damaged and torn out. Hundreds of mosques are attacked in Germany every year, in 2021 alone there were 662 attacks.
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3. Italy
From 2015 to 2018 deported 16 radical Imams from their country. The right-wing coalition party in the Italian government led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has prepared a draft law intended to ban Muslim prayer spaces outside of mosques. The bill proposed by the Brothers of Italy (FdI) party. Cultural and religious organizations that have not signed an agreement with the Italian state will not be allowed to use a property as a place of worship, as per the bill, adding that the country's Muslim community has not signed any such agreement with the state.
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4. Denmark
Denmark went one step further requiring children from Ghetto communities (mostly Muslim) to spend 25 hours away from their families every week for mandatory instructions in Danish values and will be taught about Christmas and Easter despite being a secular country. Danish government has justified it saying it must be done to counter the rising threat of Islamism and is a constitutionally mandated process and does not interfere with religious values. After Sweden, in Denmark the Muslim Holy book, Quran was stomped and burnt in front of Iraqi Embassy and was live streamed, the same group repeated the act four days later with no action being taken by the government agencies.
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5. Poland
Poland‘s ultra-conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) government refuses to take any Muslim immigrants. The party says that “We don’t want Poland being taken over by Muslims, Buddhists, or someone else.”
6. Sweden
Recently, Sweden allowed a man to burn Quran outside a mosque in Stockholm to showcase their liberal approach towards individual’s right to expression over religious rights.
7. Switzerland
In 2009 Switzerland paased a resolution to curb religious practices of Muslims in an attempt to ban construction of minarets over mosques in the country. UN human rights chief called Swiss law banning minarets “clearly discriminatory”.
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This is place where UN Human Rights Commission is headquartered. And the islamophobia is to such extreme extent that despite the whole country having just 4 mosques with minarets, the people overwhelmingly voted to ban them. Not only this in 2021 Swiss once again showed islamophobia by banning Burqa and niqabs, even planning to impose $1000 fine for violation. Once again Islamophobia is evident from that hardly 150-300 people wear burqa or niqab in Switzerland.
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8. France
In 2021, France passed anti-Terrorism law and under its guise inspected over 89 mosques, closing over 20 of them under vague “secret evidence” clause.
Controversial bill by French President Emmanuel Macron to prevent “Islamist Separatism” and formation of Muslim “counter-society” on France. Racial attacks oon muslims have significantly incresed in France in last few years with the rise of fa-right parties. The below image shows, muslim residents walk past racial slurs painted on the walls of a mosque in the town of Saint-Étienne in central France.
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9. Belgium
In 2018, Belgium took back control of the Grand Mosque of Brussels by terminating Saudi Arabia’s lease of the building with immediate effect over concerns it promotes radicalism. In 2022, the minister of Justice Van Quickenborne pressured the leading imam of the Great Mosque of Brussels to resign or risk losing government funding for the mosque. A muslim woman was fired from job in Belgium for wearing a headscarf.
10. European Court of Justice
In July 2021, the European Court of Justice ruled that women could be fired from their jobs for refusing to remove their hijab if they work in a job that deals with the public. IN 2017 also ECJ rules against two women from , France and Belgium, who were dismissed for refusing to remove headscarf.
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11. Burqa Ban Across Europe
As of July 2023, the following European states have introduced full or partial ban of the burqa: Austria, France, Belgium, Denmark, Bulgaria, the Netherlands (in public schools, hospitals and on public transport), Germany (partial bans in some states), Italy (in some localities), Spain (in some localities of Catalonia), Russia (in the Stavropol Krai), Luxembourg, Switzerland, Norway (in nurseries, public schools and universities), and Kosovo (in public schools), Bosnia and Herzegovina (in courts and other legal institutions).
Refugee Racialism
The old debate about refugees and that Europe is full and cannot accommodate more refugees has suddenly collapsed. Suddenly, Poland was ready to accept millions of refugees, Germany was ready to shelter and accommodate millions of people from Ukraine. Incidentally, Europe does not have space only for Muslims, Arabs and Africans, although they are free to preach others. Majority of Europeans disapprove the refugee policy of EU and consider refugees as potential terrorists.
In 2015, media headlines and many of Europe’s politicians described refugees escaping bombs and violence in Syria as “invaders,” and framed them all as “terrorists.” “These are not the refugees we are used to… these people are Europeans,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov said for the Ukrainians. “These people are intelligent, they are educated people.... This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists…"
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As per 2016 Pew research, 28% UK citizens view Muslims as unfavourable, 29% in France and Germany, 35% in Sweden and reaching over 65% in Greece, Poland, Itlay and Hungary.
European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights
It says restricitons to religious freedom can be applied in pursuance of public order, health, morality and protection of rights & freedoms of others among others. This entails that reasonable restrictions can be imposed on Freedom of religion in national interest.
It has been misused by European states to spread Islamophobia and it is evident in the rising hate crimes against Muslims in Europe. The rise of rightist parties and their growing popularity is built of feeding islamophobia amongst public. The extant laws in these European countries are built for homogenous society, basically white Christians and turn out to be against other religions.
These very nations lecture the world on minority rights and in matters within their nation they discard hate crimes against religious minorities as fringe incidents, while the facts and statistics clearly state otherwise. They condemn developing nations having limited resources for not following a liberal refugee policy while they themselves follow a racially-biased policy. Their difference in attitude towards refugees from Iraq-Syrian war and the present Ukraine-Russia war is a testament in itself.
Comparison with India
India on the other hand provide constitutional safeguard for religious freedom to preach, profess and propagate ones religion. The state treats all religions as equal.
Even positive reforms in the society are targeted by vested interests as attacks on religious freedom and imposition of majoritarian will, like in case of Abolition of Triple Talaq law.
The attempts to bring a Uniform Civil Code has also faced similar roadblocks in the past and whichever government tries to bring this constitutionally prescribed law faces the heat from media, with global media presenting it as encroachment upon minority rights.
When India came up with CAA, a humanitarian policy to welcome religiously persecuted minorities from neighboring countries, the western countries tried to demean India by claiming it as anti-Muslim, while the politicians of these very nations whitewash Muslims fleeing war as terrorists and Ukrainians seeking refugee as intelligent-beings worthy of being provided asylm, exposing their racist mindset.
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