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Islamophobia Imported From Europe: An Ugly Trend Gets Uglier

1 year ago
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Sarah Wildman
Sarah Wildman
Foreign Policy Correspondent
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Among the many strange things this ugly August has wrought, perhaps the most peculiar -- and distasteful -- is a new kinship of intolerance many Americans now seem to share with Europeans. As born out by the "Ground Zero mosque" controversy, it is a fellowship of hate and of fear, a fellowship we once would have spurned because Americans, by self-definition, believe in religious freedom, in religious pluralism, in multicultural identities, in a nation up built by the immigrant experience.

For many years, anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe, embodied by protests against mosque minarets and headscarves, was a wave that did not reach our shores. But now we have headscarf controversies and mosque-banning campaigns of our own, from Tennessee (where some residents of a Nashville suburb are convinced that a mosque is really a terrorist training ground) to Wisconsin to California to, of course, Lower Manhattan. "Politicians, pundits and ordinary Americans see Islam -- not political groups using Islamic rhetoric -- as an existential threat to Western secular norms," Joceylne Cesari, director of the Islam in the West Program at Harvard, wrote Tuesday at CNN.com.

As if to cement our embrace of such seemingly imported notions, Geert Wilders, the rabidly anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim politician from the far-right "Freedom" Party of the Netherlands, has been invited to speak at a memorial rally at Ground Zero on Sept. 11. This is a man who has declared war on immigration from Muslim nations, who was once banned from the U.K. for his positions, who has called Islam "fascist" and who told the Guardian in 2008 that Islam was "the ideology of a retarded culture." He has, according to his website, agreed to appear at the New York rally next month.

Even Newt Gingrich has balked at appearing alongside Wilders, though Gingrich has done his best to stir the national pot about the planned Lower Manhattan Islamic center -- which had been a local issue, primarily of concern to New Yorkers.

Wilders is a symptom -- and possibly also a cause -- of a larger trend. Polled in early spring, 54 percent of Austrians say they consider Islam a "threat to the West" and 74 percent believe Muslims have an inability to adapt to their host countries. In Belgium and France, the push for a full ban on burqas has progressed in recent months, and Spain has also considered banning them. In Switzerland, minarets were banned last November. And in Warsaw, anti-mosque protests were held this past spring. Echoing the campaign in Switzerland, protest posters showed minarets in the form of missiles.

This is not new. The European far right (and even the center right) has expressed what has ranged from distrust to downright disgust at Muslim presence in Europe for some time.

Farhad Khosrokhavar, an Iranian who has lived in Paris for 30 years and is a professor at l'École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, says the embedded presence of Islamic culture is creating tension within Western nations because they must grapple with such "classical questions" as whether Islam is compatible with democracy, "secularizable," and able to adapt to human rights.

The reason for this discomfort and questioning, he says, is because "Islam is from now on part of the 'internal' landscape of the West, not only an outsider, and this is a hard pill to swallow for a 'Judeo-Christian' or 'secular' West."

For years Americans could look at Europe and cluck their collective tongues at such rabid, ragged behavior fueled by far-right political parties with ties extending back to mid-20th-century fascism (think: Nazi apologist Jörg Haider ). In Antwerp, Felip Dewinter, the head of the right-wing Flemish secessionist party Vlaams Belang, summed up the perspective of Europe's right wing when I met him in the fall of 2006. "Islam is not only a religion," he said, echoing what we now hear in Manhattan and Alaska. "[It is] a way of life. They have their own values." We were in his offices to discuss how the Vlaams Belang was, counter-intuitively, reaching out to Jews as a campaign tactic. "The Islamic laws . . . are opposed to our Western European, Western laws and way of thinking and way of life. . . . We had to struggle for centuries and centuries to achieve the way of life we have now. . . . We shouldn't be naïve about Islam. Because Islam as a religion wants to conquer. . . . They tried for more than 1,000 years to conquer Europe with a sword. Now they are doing it with the demographical weapon."

What he referred to was this: Vienna came under siege by Turks (i.e. Muslims) in the 16th and 17th centuries. Those Turkish invasions are often conjured by the far right in Europe to fuel anxiety over immigrants in Europe now. That anxiety was earlier stirred by Muslims who came to European shores in the postwar period, first from colonial nations such as Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, to work in the suddenly booming factories. But when the economies of Europe took a turn for the worse in the late 1960s and early 1970s, these immigrant populations, never wealthy, grew poorer. Immigration was cut off but the immigrants stayed, even if their host countries weren't entirely sure they were welcome. In France, entire populations of immigrants were housed in high-rises called cites, an experiment in urban planning (and urban segregation) that would turn sour by the latter part of the 20th century. The children born to those original workers found themselves betwixt and between, neither Algerian (or Moroccan or Tunisian) nor French, neither European nor North African. And so some found their identity by turning to Islam, starting in the 1980s. (In Eastern Europe, some of that anxiety comes from newer immigrants, from places like Kosovo and Chechnya, but the language used against them is often the same.)

In the United States, Muslim immigrants had a better time of it economically, geographically, and professionally. We don't think of the children of immigrants here as "second generation;" we think of them as "Americans."

But try telling that to the Ground Zero mosque protesters, who co-opted Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" to voice their concerns -- as though any Muslim could not be American-born.
Filed Under: Field Notes, Ground Zero Mosque
Tagged: cordoba house, europe, felip dewinter, fpo, front national, ground zero mosque, islam, islamophobia, jorg haider, marine le pen, national front, vlaams belang, vlaams belange
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ldyqtee6

Wilder should be denied an entry visa on the grounds that he is a bigot and will only fuel the flames of hatred even more. If he is allowed to enter the US and speaks at the event, he and all of the organizers should be held personally liable (and charged with hate crimes) in the event that any acts of violence occur anywhere in the country. I fear for this nation if it continues permitting this level of hatred to continue. Learn from history; bigotry and hatred repeated turned this nation into an ugly place and it's happening again.

August 31 2010 at 9:57 PM Report abuse -2 rate up rate down Reply
script

"The European far right (and even the center right) has expressed what has ranged from distrust to downright disgust at Muslim presence in Europe for some time." Gee, I wonder why. How about you come live in Europe for some time and experience the decline.

August 31 2010 at 10:34 AM Report abuse +2 rate up rate down Reply
rsticks18

see the movie independence say? remember the folks on the roofs of the skyscrapers welcoming the aliens to earth? what happened to them? those folks are the same folks in here appeasing and making excuses for islam worldwide-----listen to them and we all get blown up

August 30 2010 at 2:12 PM Report abuse +2 rate up rate down Reply
Gina

Bruce is probably going to be very angry that they are using his song like that.

August 30 2010 at 10:01 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
gaspartx

The reality is that about ten percent of Islamists are radical. Enough to turn our airports into prisons and exacerbate our problems in Iraq. Pakistan and Afghanistan. Don't say that is not a problem.

August 29 2010 at 10:26 PM Report abuse +7 rate up rate down Reply
HOW MAY WE SERVE

Is just a quirk of fate that the Mosque is named for the victory in Spain that placed muslims in control of tha area of Spain. Now they want to build it near their victory of the twin towers. Allow Christians or any religion to build a church near Mecca. Not much religious freedom returned to others is there? Where is all this money coming form? 100 million dollars Wake up to the fact that we are in a war of cultures. Bin Laden himself said no peace without converting to Islam.

August 29 2010 at 9:19 PM Report abuse +7 rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to HOW MAY WE SERVE's comment
drakecennedig9

Bin Laden, of course, is against the idea of cultures working together. In my opinion, the best way to frustrate the 'man' would be to refuse to sink to his level of intolerance, and to rally his own religion to fight against his intolerance. After all, 1 out of every 5 people who died on September 11th was a Muslim. Syed Abbas is prbably a name you would distrust, if you knew that the man was a prominent Islamic leader in Northern Pakistan. Would you still distrust him if you knew that he twice won legal battles in an Islamic Sharia court, winning them for a Christian aid worker working in his homeland? Would you still distrust him if you knew that he gave a speech against terrorism following those same September 11th attacks? Would you still distrust him if you knew that he continues to support the Central Asia Initiative, an organization working in Pakistan and Afghanistan, building schools for both genders, as well as community centers for both men and women? Read the book "Three Cups of Tea," about Greg Mortenson's time in Pakistan. I guarantee, you'll have your eyes opened. Finally, I think I should quote Ann Coulter about something. "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war." Who does this sound like? Syed Abbas, or osama bin laden?

August 30 2010 at 10:48 AM Report abuse -2 rate up rate down Reply
hzeus777

This is so true I am just angry at this mess. They should not build this mosque and it they wanted to fit in so bad they wouldn't. They just keep crying their freedoms. Well have some respect for your fellow man who was killed for no reason by some of your political religion you practice but nooo they can't do that and then you have all these left loonies speaking out for their beloved freedoms while my child born and raised in the US is sent home for wearing a cross.. You freaking hypocrites some of us are just not going to take anymore whether you like it or not.

September 15 2010 at 11:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
KMA

No, terrorism fostered by radicals of the Muslim faith have caused Muslimaphobia. Until that religion becomes stable and gets their sects in order, human nature will caution us to be weary.

August 29 2010 at 3:19 PM Report abuse +13 rate up rate down Reply
mdusher1

Where the hell was the author on 9/11? We didn't need to import it from Europe, it was brought to us firsthand by Islam itself.

August 29 2010 at 2:47 PM Report abuse +26 rate up rate down Reply
zorcof

ISLAM IS NOT A RELIGION, it is a form of government. Muslim countries are governed by Islam. America is tolerant of religious freedom but not of another form of government here.

August 29 2010 at 1:44 PM Report abuse +30 rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to zorcof's comment
howwil

zorcof, you are absolutely correct that America should not be tolerant of another form of government here. Muslims who do move here understand that. Many of them who want to improve things where they come from are absolutely delighted that this is a country that separates church and state. I know this, because I have heard it from their own mouths. In Iran today, a solid majority (I believe) of educated young people would love to see the current "Islamic state" disappear, never to return. They see how destructive it is. For those Muslim immigrants who do hope for a religious state to develop here, they will eventually have to realize that it's not going to happen. We've had lots of immigrants in the past who have taken time to understand that religion and state are supposed to be separate here in order to prevent minority faiths from being persecuted. Religion is supposed to be a personal thing, not the basis of law. It is absolutely not true that all Muslim countries are governed by Islamic law, either. The entire tradition in the Middle East since WWI was toward secular states until recently, so they do have experience with this. Turkey has been an adamantly secular state since then. But there has been so much political corruption in the Middle East that the religious parties look appealing to many people, some of whom turn to "Islamism" as a solution. We all know it's not a good solution. And most of them do, too.

August 29 2010 at 2:21 PM Report abuse +10 rate up rate down Reply
howwil

A good article. It's a terrible shame that this is happening. During the mid- 19th century, there were riots against the Irish, who were said to be the Pope's advance men in the U.S. People really believed the Pope had a master plan to take over America. It happened during a period of economic disruption, just like you have today. Politicians make hay with this sort of thing, appealing to people's fears as many Republican politicos are doing right now. And people are falling for it like patsies once again. We need to talke a longer view. There is absolutely no danger of an "Islamic takeover", and most of the Muslims in this country would laugh at the idea. One of the problems is that so few Americans have ever met a Muslim unless they live in big cities, so it's impossible to grasp that Muslim immigrants are ordinary people like you and me and don't have the kind of political commitment to a religious state that the high-profile extremists do. Very few hold to the extreme views on women that you see in rural Afghanistan, either. This is like a foreigner viewing all Americans as Timothy McVeighs or Charles Mansons - it is just a stereotype that comes from media exposure of real villains. You can choose not to believe all of this, but once you meet people and see how they are just like yourself, this shrill rhetoric from the talking heads looks absolutely pathetic. In 100 years, our history books will not look kindly on Newt Gingrich for stumping on this issue.

August 29 2010 at 1:33 PM Report abuse -15 rate up rate down Reply

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