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Europe has entered its own era of McCarthyism – against Islam

By:   []

Date: 2021-12

After a spate of violent attacks throughout Europe in autumn 2020, including the beheading of French schoolteacher Samuel Paty, and the shooting of four people in Vienna, several European interior ministers issued a joint statement of solidarity against terrorism.

The first draft that was authored by Austria, France and Germany included several mentions of Islam, but was significantly watered down in the final version due to opposition from most other EU member states that did not embrace a ‘clash of civilisations’ rhetoric on EU values. The final version included only one explicit mention of Islam and removed a proposal to sanction migrants who refuse to integrate. It called on EU member states to take “systematic action to prevent radicalisation”.

However, countries supporting more hawkish policies regarding the surveillance of Muslims, such as Austria and France, did not give up. Instead they worked towards the inception of the “Vienna Forum on Countering Segregation and Extremism in the Context of Integration”, an annual conference established to intensify cooperation in the fight against “political Islam”, according to the Austrian Integration Minister Susanne Raab, of the conservative ÖVP (Austrian People’s Party), which was recently shaken by corruption allegations. The first iteration took place on 28 October, without much global media attention.

Raab invited the Integration Ministers of Denmark (Mattias Tesfaye), and Flanders (Bart Somers), as well as the Deputy Minister for Citizenship in the French Interior Ministry (Marlene Schiappa), to the event, along with 100 experts.

But what do countries such as Austria, France and Denmark mean, when they refer to the fight against so-called political Islam? One thing is sure: They do not mean militancy and violence.

French crackdown on Muslim groups

In the name of fighting what the French government calls “Islamist separatism”, French President Emmanuel Macron’s government has legitimised a crackdown on Muslim civil society organisations.

According to Macron and his government, “Islamist separatism” is protected by Islamo-Leftism, itself emanating from alien “social science theories entirely imported from the United States’’, such as post-colonial or anti-colonial discourse.

In France, many mosques suspected of “separatism” were systematically raided, as they were seen as “breeding grounds of terrorism”. Aid and anti-racist organisations monitoring Islamophobia were also closed. And although the reasons for closing them were revoked, the outlawing was upheld by France’s top administrative court, the Council of State.
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