Islamophobia remains unacknowledged by all European governments: report
The European Islamophobia Report 2023 (EIR 2023) published on Saturday reveals a "pervasive denial and under-recognition of Islamophobia across Europe," despite formal acknowledgement of the problem in the EU's anti-racism plan for 2020-2025.
It found that Islamophobia remains unacknowledged by all European governments and the overwhelming majority of political parties, as the silence on the International Day to Combat Islamophobia (IDCI), established by the UN in 2022, reveals.
The report states that the war on Gaza has functioned as a geopolitical catalyst for anti-Muslim racism. It also found hate crimes against Muslims increased significantly, especially in Norway, Spain, and Greece.
Countries like Germany, France, and Denmark enforced restrictive measures, such as banning demonstrations and imposing fines on pro-Palestinian symbols.
When far-right parties across Europe exploit Islamophobia for political gains, political and institutional responses by various European governments remain largely absent the condemnation of rising anti-Muslim hatred by international institutions like the UN and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has had little effect on member states’ commitments.
According to the report, one of the most important revelations in 2023 was the coverage by investigative reporters of the “Abu Dhabi Secrets,” an investigation that exposed how private intelligence firms facilitated smear campaigns against thousands of Muslims and people in favour of open societies, influencing public discourse and policy across Europe.
"The revelations showed how far-reaching and well-funded this global Islamophobia network is," the report stated.
In her report on France in this volume, Kawtar Najib has highlighted the killing of Nahel Merzouk, a young man, in the context of a simple traffic stop that could have had a completely different outcome, stating that there was no violence on the part of Nahel or his two friends aged 17 and 14 years old who were passengers.
She understands his murder at the hands of French police as the murder of “a racialized Muslim body, … a killable body that a police agent representing the French state could target.” Najib shows that the police union Alliance came to the defence of the murderers, stating they were at war with “nuisibles et hordes sauvages” (pests and wild hordes), a dehumanizing reference to racialized Black, Arab, and Muslim bodies in the French banlieues. Revolts and protests followed the killing for several days in June and July 2023. During these protests, other racialized men were also killed by the police and others suffered physical deformations following shots.
Some lost an eye and a man lost a part of his skull which had to be removed for his survival. This episode, which became the cover page of this year’s report, is characteristic of the extent of dehumanization and criminalization of postcolonial populations in a metropole of a major European country. The episode was sparked by state violence and led to the arrest of 3,200 individuals (including children), 1,056 of whom were sentenced to prison.
This is the ninth edition of the European Islamophobia Report (EIR 2023). The report, authored by 33 scholars and experts, offers a comprehensive analysis of Islamophobia’s state and development across 28 European countries in 2023. Academic Enes Bayraklı and Farid Hafez are editors of the European Islamophobia Report.
