Twenty-five years after the September 11 assaults, the political order constructed of their aftermath continues to form Europe. The World Battle on Terror (GWOT) helped far proper events in Europe achieve political prominence they’d lengthy been denied. Islamophobic narratives that formed international coverage after 2001 legitimised an anti-Muslim racism that had already been constructing inside Europe’s far proper for years.
Earlier than September 11, far proper events in Europe had been largely marginalised throughout the continent’s multi-party methods. Even the place some gained vital electoral assist, many remained politically stigmatised or excluded from energy, and have been higher recognized for anti-Semitism and open nostalgia for his or her fascist origins than as credible contenders for presidency.
However the floor was already shifting earlier than the towers fell. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the far proper’s long-standing racism started to sharpen its concentrate on Islam particularly. Events such because the French Entrance Nationwide (now the Rassemblement Nationwide) and the Austrian Freedom Celebration found Islam as their new “enemy inside”: Arabs and Black communities in France turned, in far-right rhetoric, merely “Muslims.” So did Turks in Austria. The Folks’s Celebration for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) was arguing as early as 1991 that Islam posed a menace to liberal democracy and stood in the way in which of immigrant “integration.” By the late Nineties, Pim Fortuyn had written a e-book titled Towards the Islamisation of Our Tradition, introducing a cruder, extra overt pressure of Islamophobia to Dutch politics.
Then got here September 11, which handed the far proper a gap it hadn’t needed to construct for itself.
When 19 al-Qaeda hijackers crashed 4 planes into the World Commerce Middle, the Pentagon and a area in Pennsylvania, killing 2,977 individuals, President George W. Bush declared a ‘World Battle on Terror’. The far proper now not wanted to fabricate anti-Muslim sentiment by itself; political speeches, media protection and wars waged throughout Muslim-majority international locations did a lot of that work for them.
Bush insisted the battle focused “terrorists” who had perverted the message of Islam, not Islam itself. However the rhetoric and coverage that adopted routinely handled all Muslims as suspects, casting the faith itself as inherently violent — a framing that helped mainstream and globalise Islamophobia over the course of the ‘Battle on Terror’.
Bush’s declaration that “both you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists” left European governments with little room to manoeuvre. Greater than 13 European international locations joined the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, with British forces most instantly engaged in fight. Twelve joined the invasion and occupation of Iraq; the UK and Poland took on main fight roles, whereas France and Germany, this time, opposed the conflict.
Blatantly Islamophobic media protection throughout the continent accompanied these campaigns, reinforcing a picture of the violent, threatening Muslim. Assaults by al-Qaeda associates in Madrid and London deepened the sense that the enemy was already “inside,” casting suspicion on any Muslim as a possible menace. In the meantime, European governments — with the far proper nonetheless largely excluded from energy — enacted their very own Islamophobic insurance policies: countering violent extremism and deradicalisation programmes, together with the UK’s Stop technique. Additionally they cooperated in internet hosting secret CIA ‘black websites’ and facilitating rendition flights to Guantanamo Bay and different torture websites. These programmes rested on the premise that Muslim non secular perception was itself a sort of dormant menace, at all times able to being “activated” into violence towards the West. Guantanamo Bay turned the period’s most notorious image of this logic — a lawless web site the place harmless Muslims have been shipped and held on unfounded suspicion, with out authorized grounds.
Self-styled consultants on “extremism” and “terrorism” — Pamela Geller, Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer — constructed careers legitimising this framework for American audiences and shortly cast connections with Europe’s strengthening far-right actions. Collectively they fashioned the self-described “Counter-Jihad Motion”, a transatlantic community of anti-Muslim organisations, political events, writers, bloggers and activists united by the declare that “Western civilisation” is underneath assault by Islam. Starting in 2007, the motion used the OSCE’s annual Human Dimension Implementation Assembly to unfold its ideology inside European and North American coverage circles. Far-right leaders from Austria, Belgium, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway convened at annual counter-jihad conferences held in cities throughout the continent.
Years earlier than Pamela Geller mobilised towards the falsely named “Floor Zero Mosque” in New York in 2010, her European counterparts have been already organising transnationally towards mosque building. In 2008, the Cities Towards Islamisation initiative introduced collectively far-right leaders from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria, France and Italy, marching alongside anti-Muslim activists from the USA.
Slowly, anti-Muslim mobilisation proved electorally profitable. As opposition events, far-right actions gained floor — first by pressuring mainstream rivals into adopting their rhetoric, then by changing into coalition companions in nationwide governments from Austria to Bulgaria, Hungary, the Netherlands, Italy, Norway, Poland, and Finland. In Denmark and Sweden, they turned kingmakers as a substitute, shaping coverage from outdoors the cupboard.
Anti-Muslim coverage has solely expanded since. Far-right events, and mainstream governments pressured by them, have handed a rising checklist of restrictions on Muslims’ non secular freedom: bans on the full-face veil in a number of international locations, bans on the hijab for lecturers, college students, or public workers in others, and extreme restrictions — in some locations outright bans — on mosque building. Muslims, who make up a disproportionate share of Europe’s working poor, have been pushed additional to the margins in consequence.
Whilst extra Muslims pursue schooling {and professional} development, a securitised discourse — constructed on the logic of the GWOT and fused with far-right “nice alternative” conspiracy theories — has tailored to fulfill them. The previous accusation that Muslims refuse to combine has given option to a more recent one: that Muslims who succeed pose an excellent larger danger, secretly working to subvert Western societies. It’s the similar position traditionally assigned to Jews — the “enemy inside” who can by no means be trusted.
A number of governments have institutionalised this suspicion by focusing on Muslim-led civil society organisations. Strict surveillance of mosques and NGOs, paired with curtailed civil liberties, has grow to be commonplace apply throughout many European states — framed variously as combating “political Islam” (Austria), “Islamist separatism” (France), or “legalistic Islamism” (Germany). In every case, the tolerated Muslim is the invisible one: the person who doesn’t declare a seat on the desk or protest injustice.
The language and infrastructure constructed by the ‘World Battle on Terror’ allowed all of this to take root and develop largely unchallenged. With a lot of Europe nonetheless unwilling to reckon with its personal histories of colonialism, racism and fascism, Islamophobia has grow to be a broadly accepted political place — one the far proper didn’t merely exploit, however actively cultivated into its personal success.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
