French president Emmanuel Macron greets the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris Chems-Eddine Hafiz in October 2022. Ludovic Marin/AFP
The means we understand and discuss Islam varies drastically from one European nation to the subsequent. While this can be simple sufficient to intuit by glancing over totally different nationwide headlines, I backed this up with onerous information in my PhD analysis on public discourses on Islam in Germany, France and the United Kingdom.
The pursuit of German identification
In Germany, the way you strategy Islam hinges onto which facet of the political debate you stand. On the one hand, the vast majority of the political elite defends a German identification that’s now not based mostly on conventional tradition however on assist towards the structure (Verfassungspatriotismus). On the opposite hand, a media and political minority defends the return of a monocultural imaginative and prescient of German identification (Leitkultur).
In this narrative battle, elites see the nation’s far proper, led by the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) social gathering, as enemy primary, way over they do radical Islam. Security considerations over Muslims are subsequently restricted to the previous gamers and to a handful of figures within the media equivalent to Alice Schwarzer or Birgit Kelle.
Shades of liberalism
Meanwhile, within the United Kingdom it’s liberalism that calls the pictures, with two strands of thought. On the one hand, ideological liberalism goals to guard the British lifestyle within the face of terrorism and “preachers of hatred”. In 2011, then–Prime Minister David Cameron put ahead his model of “muscular liberalism” that “actively promoted… sure values… [such as] freedom of speech, freedom of worship, democracy, the rule of regulation, equal rights no matter race, intercourse or sexuality”. But that present of thought can also be claimed by onerous Brexiteers equivalent to Nigel Farage, who’s ardently against what he portrays as a pro-immigration EU led by Germany.
Inherited from the British empire, the opposite liberal present, multiculturalism, seeks to handle variations and face off each populist and nationalist threats. Advocates of “muscular liberalism” view this strategy as passive and impartial, merely contenting itself with demanding residents obey the regulation. Here once more, champions of multicultural liberalism in Westminster and the media are inclined to focus their energies on the European Union – albeit this time to defend it – somewhat than on Islam.
Muslims pray on the central mosque in Cologne-Ehrenfeld, western Germany.
Rainer Jensen/AFP
Islam and laïcité
In France, narratives about Islam are articulated in relation to faith, opposing two conceptions of French secularism, or laïcité: on the one hand, what different teachers and I consult with as axiological laïcité, or values-based laïcité, frames secularism as a refuge towards an actual or perceived “Islamic risk”. Constitutional secularism, in contrast, goals to control all religions, the French Muslims of the Republic included.
Although it’s not based mostly on any authorized textual content, axiological secularism has managed to turn into the dominant drive in French secularism since considerations over headscarves in school first erupted in 1989. Paradoxically, constitutional secularism, which relies on the 1905 regulation on the separation of church and state and on the preamble of the 1946 structure, is struggling to make itself heard within the public debate.
In sum, the way in which Islam is represented throughout Germany, the UK and France reveals a battle between two interpretations of political liberalism. The proponents of Leitkultur, muscular liberalism, and axiological secularism perceive political liberalism as a set of “frequent values”, to which the newcomers need to assimilate.
By distinction, proponents of Verfassungspatriotismus, multiculturalism or constitutional secularism, insist on “frequent guidelines of the sport” for de facto multicultural societies.
These European narrative battlefields present what’s politically acceptable or expensive within the nationwide public debate.
Did you say “islamophobia”?
In Germany and the United Kingdom, mentioning (Muslim) tradition as a risk is extra acceptable than it’s in France, the place political gamers hardly ever enterprise to explicitly goal a tradition. On the opposite, denouncing (Muslim) faith as a risk is extra acceptable within the French context, the place faith is seen as an opinion. Doing so carries a excessive political value within the UK and Germany, the place faith is seen as a part of one’s identification.
For instance, there isn’t any consensus throughout international locations on the usage of the time period of Islamophobia, which isn’t formally recognised in France. This is partly as a result of Islam isn’t protected by the Constitution or the regulation as a faith. On the opposite, many would argue towards the idea of phobia on the grounds that it’s respectable to oppose Islam amid elevated fundamentalism.
In Germany, the phenomenon is effectively recognised, however there’s an ongoingdebate over whether or not the time period ought for use in official language. Since the German Islam Conference in 2011-2012, the state has favoured the phrase Muslimfeindligkeit (hostility towards Muslims), whereas teachers and journalists consult with Islamophobia and its Germanic model, Islamfeindligkeit.
However, UK residents have extensively referred to the idea ever for the reason that “Report on Islamophobia” by Runnymede Trust was revealed in 1997. And, since 2017, an All Party Parliamentary Group has been working towards the adoption of a authorized definition of Islamophobia.
These narrative and conceptual variations from one European context to a different reveal country-specific historic traumas.
The weight of nationwide historical past in modern discourses
In the United Kingdom, continental Europe is extra polarising than Islam for 2 historic causes. On the one hand, continental Europe, generally Catholic, generally absolutist, generally imperialist, has at all times been perceived as the primary risk to the nation’s elites. On the opposite hand, Islam has been a part of UK historical past for the reason that colonisation of India via its buying and selling posts in 1600, and all Muslim topics of the Empire turned full residents via the Nationality Act 1948. Designating Islam as a risk is subsequently of little worth, at the very least from an electoral perspective, even on the far proper of the political spectrum. This is evidenced by the defeat of the UKIP social gathering within the 2019 European parliamentary elections after Eurosceptic Nigel Farage was changed by the aggressively Islamophobic Gerard Batten as social gathering chief in 2018, triggering the departure of a few of its founding members.
The ambivalence of German public discourse towards Islam is linked to the traumatic legacy of Nazism and Germany’s division throughout the Cold War. This twin legacy formed the emergence of a unified, democratic and liberal state round constitutional patriotism. The former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s determination to welcome a couple of million refugees (“Wir Schaffen Das”) in 2015, nonetheless, has precipitated the return of an authoritarian and nationalist motion German Leitkultur, with cracks more and more showing throughout the consensus.
In France, the narrative victory of axiological secularism over constitutional secularism additionally expresses a double legacy. On the one hand, the secular custom, both via anticlericalism or attachment to a Catholic secular custom, expresses a reluctance to the visibility of Islam within the public area. On the opposite hand, the colonisation of North Africa, and with it the trauma of the decolonisation of Algeria, made the Muslim Other the determine that also constructions French identification to a big extent immediately.
French identification thus continues to be constructed in opposition to Islam, whereas British identification hangs in opposition to continental Europe, and German identification, towards Nazi Germany. If the way forward for the European Union rests, partly, on a larger convergence of curiosity and imaginative and prescient, acknowledging the burden of nationwide histories in modern discourses is a mandatory precondition for the development of a European imagined neighborhood.
Jeanne Prades works as Senior Consultant at Technopolis Group the place she evaluates public insurance policies.