Nazila Isgandarova
(Wilfrid Laurier Univeristy, Waterloo, Canada)
INTRODUCTION
Islamaphobia is not a new phenomenon, but it has become an integral part of Muslim identity in Europe. Islamophobia is a response to a perceived sociotropic threat, especially in terms of social and political identity and economic insecurity, rather than a personal threat or fear from Islam. Many authors in the West who write about Islam and Muslims in Europe cannot hide the intensity of their own prejudices against Muslims and Islam in general as a threat. This attitude does not ezisr in the case of other religions. In this regard, the scholarly work and media contributes to the right-wing extremism in Europe by using emotive language which creates a negative impression against Muslims and Islam.
Such attitude towards Muslims in Europe reveals the real nature of the political problems such as identity crisis in EU, but on the other hand, encourages antagonism toward a large and diverse group of people. In this paper, we did not discuss the historical roots of Islamophobia but focused on its social and political roots which started with the increasing number of guest workers in Europe after the WWII. Using the constructivist approach to the problem, we tried to answer to questions what causes right-wing extremism in Europe and how to solve the causes which are manipulated by them? Why Islam is accepted more threatening to the West than the fundamentalist attitudes of right-wing parties in EU? What is right-wing extremism and how does it emerge? Who represent them and how?
Most analysis of the current situation is based on traditional ideas of extremism an identity. Within the literature, there has been a shift away from these traditional ideas to a constructivist approach. The latter is an idea, which is based on Western Christianity and sees the problem of integration from the context of the clash between the civilizations. The constructivists support the idea that it is mistake to see culture entirely in terms of conflict and cultural differences should not be exaggerated in terms of integration.
The paper discussed the Islamophobia in Europe, which is foremost problem of Muslim community. My hypothesis is that islamophobia as a form of xenophobia feeds the right-wing extremism in Europe which is one of the problems of identity crisis in EU, which marginalized Muslims. Second, the historical Islamic civilization challenges the extremism and encourages Muslims to accelerate the process of integration to the Western society. Testing of these hypotheses was based on comparison of actual cases, the extremism in EU as an independent variable, and right-wing parties as dependent variable, and tested the relationship between the independent and dependent variables and compared the two sets of information.
MUSLIMS AS PERMANENT RESIDENTS OF EUROPE
Like several millions of Europeans, many Muslims did not grow up in Europe, get educated there or form their basic worldview there. Most of them arrived to European countries after the World War II, at the height of the post-war migration programmes. Their childhood and young adulthood experiences were different from Europeans of the same age. However, it does not mean that the Muslims were and are unfamiliar with Europe. History of Islam proves that Muslims established themselves in Spain, Sicily and southern Italy right after the birth of Islam. Although, the Norman conquest and the Reconquista led by Isabella and Ferdinand put an end to its presence in these regions, Muslims continued to live in Europe, for instance, the Tatars in Russia, around the borders of Poland and Ukraine, and even in Finland; the populations of Turkish origin, and those that were converted to Islam following the Ottoman invasion in the Balkans (Fitzgerald, 2000).
The first arrival of Muslims to Europe goes back to 711 which opened a way to establishment of a great Islamic civilization in most of the Iberian Peninsula that lasted for eight centuries. In 831 when Muslim forces entered Sicily, they ruled there for over 260 years (Scarfiotti, 1978). The early presence of Muslims in Britain was raised predictions after the discoveries of Islamic coins on which the printed name of British King Aufa (757 and 796 A.D). Then the Ottomans ruled the Balkans from the 14th to the 19th century and, at the height of their power in the 17th century, reached as far west as the gates of Vienna. According to Baxter (2006), small numbers of Muslims of Yemeni and Bengali backgrounds have lived in the United Kingdom since the late 1880s. However, the official Islamic presence goes back to the early forties of the twentieth century when the first Muslim emigrants from the Indian sub-continent, which was under British colonization, reached the industrial city of Glasgow. In this regard, the Islamic presence in Europe was especially connected to the former colonial relations and many arriving immigrants had served as colonial soldiers (Baxter, 2006, p. 164). Many of these immigrants enjoyed the status of British subject which was granted under the 1914 British Nationality and Aliens Act (p. 165).
After the World War II immigration waves started especially from the British and other European colonies due to a sharp increase in the need for labor in booming economy. According to Randall Hansen (2003), the search for foreign workers followed by Germany and the majority of Europe: looking first to Southern Europe, and then to Turkey and North Africa. Baxter (2006) writes that approximately 10,000 immigrants per year arrived through the 1950’s as guest workers which meant the assumed temporary nature of these workers and as soon as the needs fulfilled, they supposed to leave the host country.
The economic boom of the 1960’s increased the number of Muslims in Europe but the slowing economy of the early 1970’s and a growing population within Europe halted immigration. However, many guest workers preferred to stay in the host country and they were then joined by their families during the 1970s and 1980s. In this regard, as Coleman (1995) writes, the migration flows were unorganized and in some cases unexpected. According to Hansen (2003), in the early 1970’s, it is estimated that approximately 1 million migrants had already moved to the UK (Hansen 2003). Later on, in 1990s, the asylum seekers settled in Europe. The former colonial ties played an important role in preference of countries by the Muslims.
According to Eurostat (August 2006 report), the immigrant population estimates 25 million non-nationals which are defined as persons who are not citizens of the country in which they reside living in the EU-25 in 2004, approximately 5.5% of the population. France, Spain, Germany, the UK, and Italy are the countries which are more immigrant concentrated countries in EU. According to Kupchan (2004), the proportion of Muslims residing in these EU countries estimates between 15 and 20 million and is expected to double by the year 2015. This prediction is supported by the National Intelligence Council which expects the Muslim population in Europe to double by 2025 (Leiken, 2005).
Disregarding the countries who are new members of the EU and Muslim countries of Eastern Europe like Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina, I tried to pull out the census of different countries to establish the number of Muslims in major European countries. According to statistics of major EU countries, Muslim population of Austria constitutes 4.1% of general population (339,000), in Belgium 4% (0.4 million), in Denmark 5% (270,000), in France 8-9,6% (five to six million), in Germany 3,6% (3 million), (Muslim population – US State Department), in the Netherlands 5.8% (945,000) (Muslim population – Statistics Netherlands, 2004 figures), in the UK 2.8% (1.6 million) (Muslim population – Office for National Statistics, 2001 figures), etc. According to the 2007 Report of Zentral-Institut Islam-Archive-Deutschland, published in the German Soest, there are 53.7 million Muslims in Europe today, of which 15.9 million live in the European Union. Of the about 680 million European, 7.9% are Muslim, according to the institute, and in the EU, about 3.2% are Muslims. A report issued by the ‘Islam in Europe’ committee puts the figure around 20 to 24 million for the whole of Europe including Russia and 12 million in the EU. The Table 1 below indicates the estimated number of Muslims in different EU countries. According to the table, France among the EU countries, is number one country where Muslims constitutes 8-9.9% of total population. The increase of Muslim population in many EU countries was a result of immigration influx from North Africa and the Middle East and due to the high birth rates among Muslims.
The on-going immigration and high birth rates among Muslims contribute to a rapid increase in the Muslim population. In the UK, for example, in 2001, one third of the Muslim population was under the age of 16 compared to one fifth of the UK population as whole and the average age of Muslims in the UK is 28, 13 years below the national level (UK Office of National Statistics, 2004, p.5). According to the Netherlands Statistics, 38 per cent of Muslim population were not migrants, but of migrant descent (Statistics Netherlands, 2004).
The first generation of Muslims who came from the rural areas of the Muslim countries were not well educated. They worked in the labour market of EU as cheap, unskilled or semi-skilled workers. In 1970s, the economic recession forced the governments bring restrictions to the admission of the cheap labour forces from the Muslim countries. It acted as stimulation for the process of family unification and community building. In 1980 and 1990s, the refugees from Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Somalia, former Republic of Yugoslavia and Iraq arrived the northern Europe. In 1990s, Spain, Italy and Greece were the main European countries to receive refugees from the Muslim countries. Thus, the history and pattern of Muslim immigration into Europe is diverse and reflect a wide range of cultures and countries of origin (EUMC Report, 2007, p. 25).
THE EUROPEAN RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM
The presence of Muslim population in EU increases fear of radicals who are represented by the right-wing parties and conservative governments. The fear is based on an assumption that Islamic values are against the Western values. For instance, Flew (2002) argues that Islam not a religion in the Western sense because it is engaged as a faith, way of life, a social order, a doctrine and a code of conduct; suggesting that such predispositions create an inability among Muslims to come to terms with secularism, religious pluralism, and universal adult suffrage. Gellner supports this view that Islam/ Muslims are incompatible with secular nation-state and with civil society since they identify with divinely ordained Law, rather than with the nation-state and its rule of law (cited in Turam, 2004). John Esposito argues that it “is often equated with political activism, extremism, fanaticism, terrorism, and anti-Americanism” when used in conjunction with Islam. (Esposito, 1992, pp. 7-8.) Lewis suggests that in Islam, the notion of a secular authority is viewed as an impiety and ultimate betrayal of Islam, therefore revolutionaries attempt to rid their societies of the “corrosive influence of Western secular institutions” (1990).
Despite of the unwanted attitude toward Muslims, Islam is considered Europe’s fastest growing religion, but it is still the most misunderstood religion in Europe today (Qutb, 1986, pp. 3-8). This is much evident in increasing factors of xenophobia in EU. The roots of Islamophobia started since the expansion of Ottoman empire to Europe. However, when immigration started to halt in the years of 1971 and 1973, European states found themselves ‘trapped’ with an immigrant population (Hansen, 2003). The rise of Muslim population in Europe especially became a special target of discourse. Hansen claimed that the immigrant workers and their families were always victims of a degree of discrimination, but their temporary status protected them from becoming a ‘national problem.’ In this regard, xenophobia grounded in economic fears such as slowing economy and high rates of unemployment. Manipulating the public concerns in this context, the right wing parties developed an anti-immigrant sentiment in the society, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Empire which turned attention from communism to Islam. The events after 9/11 also brought the extremism problem forward and posed questions such as why Islam is accepted more threatening to the West than the fundamentalist attitudes of right-wing parties in EU? What is right-wing extremism and how does it emerge? Who represent them and how?
First of all, extremism is the affirmation of any kind of “authority as holistic and absolute, admitting of neither criticism nor reduction; it is expressed through the collective demand that specific creedal and ethical dictates derived from scripture be publicly recognized and legally enforced” (Lawrence, 1989). Extremism is a specific kind of ideology which is antimodern, but not antimodernist. It rejects the philosophical rationalism and individualism that accompany modernity, but it takes full advantage of certain technological advances that also characterize the modern age. The most consistent denominator is opposition to Enlightenment values. It is a worldwide phenomena and that it must be compared in various contexts before it can be understood or explained with any clarity.
Extremists are advocates of a minority viewpoint. They see themselves as a righteous remnant. Even when they are numerically a majority, they perceive themselves as a minority. Secondly, they are oppositional and confrontational towards both secularists and “wayward” religious followers. Thirdly, they are secondary level male elites led invariably by charismatic males.
In this regard, right-wing extremism in EU advocates only minority viewpoint and oppose to the basic European values such as the protection of human dignity, human rights and free choice. Right-wing parties in Europe use biological roots of ethnicity and nation to emphasize exclusion. Pierre van den Berghe (1981) suggests that these parties focus on ethnic group affiliation in order to promote cooperation within close family groups. Although, ethnic groups within nations are also much larger and have much lower degrees of genetic relatedness than family groups, but right-ring party leaders are able to manipulate this system so that their followers perceive nation or ethnicity as a family of closely related individuals. These leaders either manipulate the feelings of followers for selfish gain or they are acting in the interests of the group as a whole. However, the danger is that as their suggested system designed to promote cooperation among ethnic group members would be so indiscriminate that it would be able to be easily manipulated to apply to non-family members (Goetze, 1998). Therefore, migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees are now accepted in terms of security threats to economy, culture, and society (Gibney, 2002). Minority and immigrant communities are a target of heightened tension and come under constant scrutiny and majority of population use ethnic or national power as an ethnic discrimination in employment and access to higher education. For instance, Muslim immigrants especially in France feel increasingly denied access to the society, which is why they risked their lives to escape the economic and political hardship of their countries in search of a better life for themselves and their children. Instead of improving the social and political climate for immigrants in order to reduce the tension, national governments are tightening security and the closing of borders or shrink the access to better jobs and education to immigrants and refugees. Or the US uses the recent use of anti-terrorist acts to detain foreign residents for an unlimited time without charging them with a crime. Right-wing parties very often use anti-immigration language in order to mobilize opinion in favor of their own policies. However, as Teitelbaum and Winter show that the right-wing party leaders are also aware that the society often benefits economically from immigration as a source of low-cost labor (Borjas, 1999). These leaders who come to power leave behind participating in anti-immigration movements with a high level of ingroup ethnic identification.
Considering the fear and resenment factors, right-wing extremism is a form of identity crisis, which needs to be treated. The fear of European right-wing parties and the society is that as Paul Kennedy said “there is a resentment against other peoples who reproduce at a much faster pace — the assumption being that, as in a Darwinian struggle, the faster-growing species will encroach upon, and eventually overwhelm, a population with static or declining numbers” (cited in Bookman, p. 82). It means that European peoples increasingly see themselves losing demographic and political influence. The right-wing parties, therefore, encourage resource and reproductive competition and greater levels of social control by increasing media pressures, police controls, anti-terrorist laws, etc.
An analysis of the 1995 Belgian General Election Survey indicates there is a strong relationship between the variables of social representation of nation and attitude toward foreigners. The “citizens at either extreme of the scale will be more hostile toward the relevant outgroups of the national ingroup (i.e., for- eigners): the more a citizen identifies with the nation, the more he or she will tend to contra-identify with foreigners” (Billiet, et al. 2003). According to Sumner (cited in Billiet, pp. 27-30), outgroup aggression and ingroup identification are basically correlative. However, this view is now generally considered too extreme, as social-psychological research has shown that social identification (i.e., the sense of belonging to an ingroup) does not require a contra- identification with a salient outgroup (e.g., Brewer & Miller, 1996, pp. 47-48). It means that citizens may have a strong identification with the nation without adopting a hostile attitude toward foreigners. It also depends if the foreigners have similarities with the majority of population through shared images and beliefs (Van Dijk, 1993, p. 39) and what kind of vision a nation harbors. If the nation is represented in the community of citizens and foreigners share a common cultural heritage, then a negative attitude toward foreigners exist because they are being perceived as a threat to the national culture. This is an ethnic nationalism. However, in the case of a civic or republican representation which sees nation as a “dynamic community of equal citizens who are bound by and committed to a basic contract, irrespective of their culture or descent-an intense national identity would be expected to coincide with a positive attitude toward foreigners” (Billiet, et al., 2003).
Most European countries are civic nations that celebrate the value of cultural diversity and allow citizens with different cultures to live together in harmony. However, small nations in Europe, like Flemish, on the other hand, appear to be associated with the protection of their cultural heritage and language and hence with a more defensive attitude toward other cultures. Conversely, the nations who are primarily associated with the social-economic emancipation of their country display openness toward other cultures and anti-racism (Van Dam, 1996). For instance, if in Flanders, there is a strong extreme right party that is rooted in the Flemish nationalist movement and favors Flemish independence, in Wallonia, on the other hand, the extreme right is more marginal and fragmented (Billiet, 2003). Thus, the citizens who intensely identify with their ethnic-cultural identity tend to have a negative attitude toward foreigners, whereas those citizens who intensely identify with civic image of state tend to be more positive toward foreigners. In the former case, the right-wing parties use immigration to increase their votes in elections and the issue of immigration offers an opportunity for policy makers to utilize current conditions and their own preferences to define and draw attention to a problem (Zimelis, 2005).
In general, populist right parties performed well in elections around 2002 because of mobilizing grievance over immigration (Elizabeth Ivarsflaten, 2006). Zimelis (2005) writes that anti-immigrant rhetoric and sentiment has increased before local elections in Germany in September of 2004, in Sweden before parliamentary elections in March 2003, and before presidential elections in Saxony, France in April of 2002. For instance, Germany’s Republikaner Party and France’s Front National’s used of the slogan, “Eliminate unemployment, Eliminate immigration,” and the popular right-wing French phrase, “France: love it or leave it” (Zimelis, 2005). Zimelis cites the case of France, where even after Chirac’s 2002 win, the interior ministry of France has promoted anti-immigrant policy to win Front National voters. In the Netherlands, the radical Pim Fortuyn immigration policies continued three years after his death. All these radicals of European politics have observed that “Islam strains the social fabric of European societies” and “driven by demographic, political and economic forces, the Muslim presence will continue to increase in Europe” (Esposito, 1994).
The significant and popular right-wing parties in EU include Austria’s Austrian Freedom Party (FPO), FPO, France’s Front National, Netherlands’s Pim Fortuyn List, Livable Netherlands, Belgium’s Frank Vanhecke, Flemish Block, Denmark’s Danish People’s Party, UK’s British National Party, Switzlerland’s Swiss People’s Party, Germany’s Republican Party, National Democratic Party, Union of German People, etc. After 9/11, France’s 2005 banlieue riots, immigrant rioting in Brussels, the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, and the Madrid and London bombings, these parties contributed to increasing xenophobia which brought security dimension of fear to the surface. The government reports such as a paper of the Center for Immigration Studies, the Dutch Intelligence Service AIVD reported that Islamism has become “an autonomous phenomenon” in the Netherlands and draws attention to Muslim youth across Europe (Leiken, 2005). The British M15 Security Service has also issued a public warning about ‘the radicalization of Muslim youth in Britain,’ and reported more than 2,000 British-based Islamic terrorists.
Due to degree of extremism of the right-wing parties, the level of xenophobia is alarming. The Pew Global Attitudes Project (the spring of 2006) revealed 42% agreement amongst the general population in Great Britain and 43% amongst the nation’s Muslim population to the question “Are you very concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism in your country?” The latter figure is twice in Spain, and nearly twice that in France and Germany. Moreover, these concerns amongst the general population increased by 8% between 2005 and 2006, while France experienced a 2% increase, Germany a 5% increase, and Spain a 7% decrease in that same period.
The right-wing extremism caused many riots of immigrants in EU countries. For instance, since the late 1950s, whites and African Caribbean’s fought in Nottingham and in Notting Hill, London (Fryer, 1984, pp. 376-81). In 2001 the British Muslims of Bangladeshi and Pakistani origin participated in the riots. In Britain these ‘riots’ were a direct response to the increasingly high profile of neo-fascist movements such as the British National Party (BNP) and the National Front (NF) and also the entrenched poverty and unemployment which existed within the cities (Ray and Smith, 2002). Unfortunately, the official reports of the Home Office did not project the reality but instead mentioned that these communities were in a ‘state of crisis’, segregated by their own choice from the wider white society which contributes to the undermining of ‘social cohesion’ (Denham, 2002). According to Clarke (2002), these communities are repeatedly represented as disintegrating from within, lacking community and religious leadership and riven by intergenerational conflict (p. 49). Muslims’ attachment to their religion first, then to citizenship was misunderstood and led to a prediction that Muslims are not good citizens and their cultural beliefs and practices are ‘dysfunctional’ or ‘incompatible’ (Ritchie, 2001, p. 9; Cantle, 2002, p. 44). The Ritchie report cited language, transnational kinship relations, and long holidays in Pakistani and Bangladeshi community as factors that single out these communities as ‘problematic’ (p. 9).
Taking the above mentioned facts, not only the right-wing parties but also liberal parties also demonize Muslims in some EU countries. For instance, Home Secretary of UK John Reid and ex-prime minister Tony Blair urged Muslims to root out extremism. Commons Leader Jack Straw also criticized the veil and called it a symbol of “separateness” (BBC, 2006). This resemblance was supported by Chancellor Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman, who run for the deputy leadership of the Liberal party. Beynon and Kushnick (2003 have argued: ‘… the BNP is the other side of the New Labour coin’ (p. 239). Even some religious leaders of Europe attempt to alienate Muslims. For instance, Pope Benedict used even an offensive medieval quotation when he attempted to set out a European identity that would be Christian by faith and Greek by philosophical reason. Islam, which has apparently had no such relationship with reason, would thus be foreign to the European identity that has been built atop this heritage. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, on his turn, strictly opposed to the integration of Turkey into Europe on a similar basis claiming that Muslim Turkey never was and never will be able to claim an authentically European culture. It is another thing; it is the Other.
In one of the BBC’s Sunday programme, the Labour peer, Lord Nazir Ahmed, has criticized the way the government, politicians and journalists treat Muslims in the UK because “it is fashionable these days to have a go at the Muslims” (BBC, 2006). According to Lord Ahmed, the society should not demonize the entire Muslim community just because some unfortunate people who call themselves Muslims have been threatening national security. A study in 1997 by the Ranimid British Institute under the title of “Islamophobia” which shows how Muslims became targets in the general life and how the media in a negative discriminatory manner accuses all of them in terrorism. In early March 2001, the Interior Ministry admitted this truth in an extensive study under the title “Religious Discrimination in England and Wales” which was carried out by Derby University in cooperation with Cambridge University.
However, discrimination against the Muslims did not stop instead covered all aspects of life. For instance, as an important element of Islamic identity, the mosques do not enjoy the accommodation. The situation get worse after 9/11. Today the local officials are more skeptical about the construction projects of mosques or other Islamic institutions. Some parties reject these “signs of Islamisation” as potential security threats (Upi, 2007). Deputy mayor Jörg Uckerman of the conservative Christian Democratic Party (CDU) in Cologne, a city in Germany, home to three and a half million Muslims, led protests against the construction of mosque. In October of 2007 Germany’s Edmund Stoiber (of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives), who once came within 6,000 votes of becoming the country’s chancellor, said in his farewell speech that a mosque should never be higher than a church (Upi, 2007). In Switzerland, Dr. Ulrich Schlüer from the Swiss People’s Party (SVP – which also opposes EU membership) spread a statement with headlines such as “We must stop the spread of Islam so that our Switzerland will remain our home”(Upi, 2007). SVP launched a campaign in August of 2007 for a referendum against the construction of minarets even attempted to gain support to bring about a referendum to write a new clause into the Swiss Constitution that would forbid the building of minarets in the country and collected more than 40,000 signatures to launch a referendum in 2008 (Upi, 2007). In Austria, far-right leader Joerg Haider targets to make his province Carinthia a “pioneer in the battle against radical Islam” by banning mosques, though not a single one is planned for the predominantly rural region in the Austrian Alps (Nicola, 2007). In London, proposals for a mega-mosque for 12,000 worshipers near the main park for the 2012 Olympic Games has sparked massive resistance (Moore, 2007, p. A01). The far-right National Republican Movement (MNR) of France won two court cases against subsidies for mosques in the Paris suburb of Montreuil and in Marseille, a quarter of whose population is Muslim. In his interview to United Press International, Ralph Ghadban, a Lebanese-born Islam expert at Berlin’s Protestant University of Applied Sciences, told that the large projects are Islamic centers that also do social work and child education on the basis of the Sharia (Islamic law) but these centers don’t help to integrate people instead they foster parallel societies (Upi, 2007).
Some politicians and governments blame Muslims for disintegrating themselves from the main society. These accusations against Muslims avoid analyzing the social, economic and political factors which marginalize Muslims. Poverty and unemployment in insular communities lock the young Muslims in an oppositional stance to the mainstream of European society.
RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM IS NOT A TRUE CHOICE
Extremism is a disease caused by the concept of “the clash of civilizations” (Huntington, 1997, p. 217). The “clash of civilizations” means conflicts between the Western (Christian) civilization and other civilizations such as the Islamic culture. According to Huntington (1993), there are seven or eight major civilizations which represent several nation states or only one (p. 25). Huntington writes that although, Islamic civilization was once superior, today the Western civilization is the most superior among the seven civilizations which promotes “individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets, the separation of church and state” (p. 40). The emergence of globalization enhanced the spread of the Western culture which supported the Western rule over the nations. This process creates rising tension in the world, especially in the Muslim world (p. 33), however, this tension is stagnant and confrontational between the other civilizations and weakens the superior civilization. In this regard, Huntington claims that the Western civilization is at the end of its life cycle and has reached its historical pinnacle. Therefore, the new cultures such as Islam and the Chinese (Confucianism) are on the rise but in more aggressive stance against the Western culture through the current pattern of immigration which is eroding American and European national identity (Huntington, 1997). Therefore, the West has to defend its culture of ”industrialization, urbanization, increasing levels of literacy, education, wealth, and social mobilization, and more complex and diversified occupational structures “and politics of military measures against so-called “rogue states” are important (p. 68).
These ideas feed the right-wing extremism instead of healing it. The antidote to xenophobia, racism, and the marginalization of others is to recognize the foreigner within ourselves: “He is the hidden face of our identity, the space that wrecks our abode, the time in which understanding and affinity founder. By recognizing him within ourselves, we are spared detesting him in himself” (Kristeva, 1991). The fundamentalists always maintained the other in their minds through imagination even when he or she is not physically present. For instance, the existence of anti-Semitism in Poland despite its relative lack of Jews is suggestive of this power of imagination (Murer, 1999), and so is the fact that anti-immigrant feelings are sometimes stronger in places with few or no immigrants than in places that have experienced large immigration (Kinnvall, 2004, p. 752). Kinnvall, therefore suggests that the enemy-other is not only created by the self, but has been a previous part of the self and this unconscious self is neither an object nor a subject; it is an abject (p. 752). Abject is something “rejected from which one does not part, from which one does not protect oneself as from an object” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 4). Traumatic changes cause abject, disturb identity, system, or order, and recognize “stranger” as a threat. (Kristeva, 1982, p. 15). Thus, individual and collective identities are created not simply in the difference between self and other but in those moments of ambiguity where one is other to oneself, and in the recognition of the other as like (Norton, 1988, p. 7). Dangerous and unpleasant aspects of self are projected onto the other (Volkan, 1997).
This is what the right-wing parties project the negative aspects of themselves on each other and differentiate the self from the other so that the other is systematically debased because without such debasement of the other in the memory of experiences the self identifies itself, otherwise, the self feels “lost,” “indistinct,” “hazy” (Kristeva, 1991, p. 187). The debasement of the other captures the essential connection between fear and desire. As Kinnvall (2004) suggested, by demonizing the other, the self becomes sufficiently sacralized (p. 752).
The extremists see the other as being dirty with contempt, so that, “one group insists that the other has a darker color, smells bad, or does dirty deeds, they are rejecting the other as if they were faces” (Volkan, 1997, p. 113). According to Murer (1999), this is important in order the extremist maintains the boundaries of self and other can be justified, therefore, the stranger is turned into an enemy, somebody who creates the possibility of chaos within the existing order (Huysmans, 1998, p. 241).
The right-wing parties structurally and psychologically order the other as enemy, e.g. (e.g., immigrants as “bogus” asylum seekers) and turn the stranger into an enemy. They construct a discourse of exclusion because they believe that those who challenge a common belief system should be excluded: “Like a besieged city, the movement must strengthen its walls against the enemy without and search for enemies within. True belief does not permit question and doubt” (Robins & Post, 1997, pp. 94-95).
Whatever the reason is that extremism has become an issue affecting negatively Western societies. Todd (2002) acknowledges that in this process, Islam has been demonized based on current crisis as it is going through a crisis of modernization (pp. 52–53) and the West demonized in the Muslim world. Extremism’s discourse of exclusion increases separateness, limits access to each other and strict boundedness (Jabri, 1996, p. 130).
Majority of Muslims are in opposition of the extremist attitude toward the problem. Samuel Huntington’s essay, “The Clash of Civilizations?”and later book, Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man, and Felipe Fernandez Armesto’s Millennium are seen by Muslims as part of a global conspiracy against Islam within the contemporary political school of thought. The 2006 Pew Survey covering Germany, Spain, Great Britain and France found out that Muslims are less inclined to see a clash of civilizations and often associate positive attributes with Westerners – including tolerance, generosity, and respect for women. Muslim scholars criticize the religious bigotry in the form of religious extremism and favor modernism, nationalism, tolerance, and democracy without sacrificing religious precepts. Ibn Khaldun’s (1969) writings contributed to humans to understand civilizations and harmony of diversity. Arnold Toynbee (1969, pp. xiv) called Ibn Khaldun’s “undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mind in any time or place.” The world figures like Pope John Paul II, the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Prince Charles of Great Britain, and Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, on one level, and many others have joined them by preaching the dialogue for many years. The Pope’s statements, the Prince of Wales’ lecture at Oxford in 1993 on “Islam and the West”, etc. contributed to the mutual understanding between Muslims and the West.
The Qur’an and Sunnah inspires the dialogue and forbids extremism. The Prophet Muhammad specifically stated, “Do not go to the extreme in your religion.” Extreme ideas are not violent in themselves but they do on occasion lead to violent acts. The Qur’an also encourages humans to live in harmony and diversity because it is a part of His creation of the difference of languages and colors (Sura Al-Rum, verse 22).
Islamic civilization like today’s Europe, was culturally friendly and reflected indigenous forms of cultures and harmonized them. It did not force indigenous people to adopt Arabic as their language and the Arabic life style as the main life style. Instead, in China, Islam looked Chinese; in Mali, it looked African (Swayd, 2007). Islamic civilization was a global civilization with functional and familiar at the local level but at the same time, “dynamically engaging, fostering stable indigenous Muslim identities and allowing Muslims to put down deep roots and make lasting contributions wherever they went” (Swayd, 2007).
Muslims carry these features with themselves to Europe. They are protective in terms of their religious and ethnic identities, however, are engaging with the mainstream society by fostering the European identity. The Qur’an and the Sunnah, and Muslim scholars encourage Muslims in Europe to integrate into the society but holding on their religious identity. The political elite in Europe should also support the attempt of Muslims to eliminate differences and synthesize common grounds or potential similarities and allow Muslims to claim their own place in the identity construction of Europe as equal citizens.
CONCLUSION
The on-going immigration and high birth rates among Muslims makes Islam the fastest growing religion in Europe. This fact increases fear by radicals who are represented by the right-wing parties and conservative governments. Many of right-wing extremists believe that Islamic values are against the Western values. For them, the European values are only based on biological roots of ethnicity and exclusion. In recent elections, the right-wing parties won majority of seats and established conservative governments which took measures against Muslims. Due to degree of extremism of the right-wing parties, the level of xenophobia is alarming and covering all aspects of life. The situation got worse after 9/11. Some politicians and governments blame Muslims for disintegrating themselves from the main society; however, the social, economic and political factors cause marginalization of Muslims in Europe. Poverty and unemployment are main problems not only Muslims but also all other immigrants. However, the constructivist approach by many politicians and religious leaders promise hope. First of all, most European countries are civic nations that celebrate the value of cultural diversity and allow citizens with different cultures to live together in harmony. History provides a background for peaceful existence. Islamic civilization like today’s Europe, was culturally friendly and reflected indigenous forms of cultures and harmonized them. As a global civilization with functional and familiar at the local level, Islamic civilization fostered multiple and indigenous identities of nations. This is not forgotten by Muslims. Secondly, The Qur’an, the Sunnah, and Muslim scholars encourage Muslims in Europe to integrate into the society but holding on their religious identity. The European governments and political parties are expected to support the attempt of Muslims to eliminate xenophobia and differences and encourage Muslims to claim their own place in Europe.
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Summary
ENEMY OUTSIDE OR WITHIN US: CURE FOR RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM IN EUROPE
Nazila Isgandarova
(Wilfrid Laurier Univeristy, Waterloo, Canada)
The article discusses the political and social roots of Islamophobia in EU. Islamophobia is a form of xenophobia which is an attitude towards Muslims in Europe. It reveals the real nature of the political problems such as identity crisis in EU. Using the constructivist approach to the problem, the author tried to answer to questions what causes right-wing extremism in Europe and how to solve the problems which are manipulated by right-wing parties? Why Islam is accepted more threatening to the West than the fundamentalist attitudes of right-wing parties in EU? What is right-wing extremism and who represent them and how?