-
Essay / How Islamophobia threatens to become the defining condition of the new Europe
This article addresses the theme of multiculturalism in Europe, with Islamophobia and the attitude towards “the other” as a point of reference. Many argue that current negative attitudes toward Muslims living in Europe are a result of recent migration trends, the current "refugee crisis," and fear propagated by right-wing nationalist parties and amplified by the media. . Matti Bunzl analyzed this new condition and compared it to the anti-Semitism of the 1920s and 30s and how this discourse is linked to xenophobia and the exclusion of the non-European “Other”. I will examine his arguments by exploring the relationship between Islamophobia and the reconfiguration of contemporary Europeanness. Here I will refer to Buchowski and Sayyid, who described Islamophobia as a means of reproducing the imaginary of a European society based on xenophobic exclusions and visions of the future. This analysis takes into account not only prejudices, media representations and psychological processes, but also the form of governmentality that defines the current situation. Islamophobia is a form of racism in which constitutive antagonism is directed toward manifestations of Muslimness. Consequently, it attempts to limit or deny the action of Muslims and their participation in the European project. The global increase in Islamophobia is not simply a consequence of acts of violence committed by individual Muslims, but rather a function of how the relational logic of racism is constructed. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essay In “Between Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Some Reflections on the New Europe,” Bunzl argues that the only similarity between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, is their ideological character of exclusion, based on the construction of a foreign “Other”. Both Jews and Muslims have therefore been subjected to “right-wing Christian fundamentalism”. Apart from this, these are two different projects of exclusion since anti-Semitism was mobilized as part of the nation-building project in the 19th and 20th centuries, while Islamophobia is a more current phenomenon associated with European integration and geopolitics. Bunzl associates this with a shift in thinking towards the national state towards the European state and towards a question of protecting "Europe" and "Europeans" rather than national purity. He affirms that apart from anti-Semitism, Islamophobia responds less to the interest of national purification than to “a means of strengthening Europe”. Furthermore, Bunzl emphasizes that none of Europe's far-right movements today practice conventional forms of anti-Semitism. On the contrary, Jews have been accepted into European society and are now victims of violence at the hands of disenfranchised young Muslims fighting against this new Europeanness. In today's Europe, Islamophobia is built through public debates on immigration, the status of Islam as well as the possibility of Turkey joining the EU. Bunzl argues that these debates reflect a widespread fear, not only among the far right, about the future of Europe. By identifying conventional anti-Semitism and Islamophobia as two temporarily different entities, Bunzl ignores historical colonial discourse, living memory, and larger global contexts. . Scholars such as Sayyid, however, argue that Islamophobia is a product of the "processes and legacies of European colonial world-building" and therefore must be understood in the context ofbroader structures of European domination. Sayyid further explains that the colonial enterprise was intrinsic to the formation of a European identity. The meaning of Europeanness in the 19th century was determined by ideas embedded in the racial-colonial order and white supremacy. He claims that this is not only reflected in prejudice against Islam today, but is also expressed "culturally and socially, as well as militarily and politically." As De Genova argues, the European question involves a persistent amalgam of migration, race, and Muslim identity as floating signifiers of the “contradictory mediation of protracted and contemporary postcolonial agony.” Consequently, questions around Europe are increasingly shaped against the postcolonial specter of an invasion of “non-whites” and “non-Europeans”. Bunzl bases his argument on a construction of the European Union as a “state” in the same way that Anderson defined it. the state as an imagined community draws on a shared ideal of what it means to be a member of that community. European identity is arbitrary, imagined and contextual because it only exists in relation to other identities. It therefore appears more clearly and clearly when it is compared to something which is “non-European”: “the foreigner”, “the immigrant” and “the Other”. Without minorities, the idea of majority loses its meaning. Islamophobia is a form of governmentality that supports the Westernizing horizon, where this Western ideology is reinforced by opposing it to the Islamic one. Sayyid emphasizes that what illuminates the vision of the Middle East is the contrast between it and Europe, rather than any "indigenous recognition of its continental coherence, its geographical unity or its social homogeneity." Furthermore, the discourse on Muslims in Europe is largely dominated by the “immigrant imagination”. Here, immigrants are accepted by the West neither as full citizens nor as true “foreigners”. Consequently, Muslims as immigrants are only able to express certain aspects of their complex identity and are denied the social and cultural capital that allows them to identify as full European citizens. As DuBois explains, this “double consciousness” describes the internal conflict experienced by subordinate groups in an oppressive society. The immigrant's identity is divided into many parts, making it difficult to develop a unified identity. Bunzl describes how Islamophobia relies on and reproduces the common notion that Islam engenders a worldview that is "fundamentally incompatible with and inferior to Western culture." The racially marked body of the Muslim is characterized as “misogynistic, racist, violent” and therefore antithetical to the “fundamental liberal values” of the West. As Buchowski asserts, these negative attitudes toward Muslims are not the result of personal experiences but rather “represent the result of the power of symbols and associated fears.” These symbols are influenced by the monolithic position of the Christian Church as representative of Europeanness, as well as nationalist and racist ideas conveyed by right-wing political discourse and Western media. This “phantom thread” that encompasses historical myths about “infidels” influences people's thoughts and actions, including those of European Union politicians. The homogeneity of Europe has become a value and “strangeness” is seen as “something out of place”. In this context, Europe is not only a geographical entity but a project. It is this “Europeanness” which determines the character, the extent and the depth of what is. 36: 1–24.