Labelling political identity to Islam fuels Islamophobia: Austrian scholar

A celebrated Austrian political scientist who was targeted in a controversial anti-terrorism raid on Muslims by his own government two years ago said on Thursday that the growing Islamophobia worldwide is being fuelled by European nations that label Islam as a political identity to justify their ban on mosques, hijab, halal or circumcision. 

Farid Hafez, a widely respected scholar who has written extensively on Islamophobia, was speaking through video conference at a conclave on human rights violations faced by Muslims worldwide, especially in Europe. Hafez, 41, teaches political science at the University of Salzburg, and is also associated with Georgetown University's The Bridge Initiative, a research project on Islamophobia.

Hazez  argued that one of the major problems that Muslims face today is “the weaponisation of political Islam” through which countries create terminalogies to target Muslims—Austria’s political Islam, France’s Islamist seperatism and Germany’s legalist Islamism.

“They are against Islam and nothing else,” the academic said.

Islamophobia is not only about having a bad image of Islam, said Fared, explaining that these European governments use anti-terrorism laws to clamp down on Muslims, jeopardising not only their freedom of speech but also freedom of association. 

The Muslim Austrian academic, whose house was raided on November 9, 2020 as part of the Austrian goverment’s anti-terrrorism “Operation Luxor”, said that nowadays even talking about islamophobia is criminalised and considered as instigating terrorism. 

“What is really at stake here? It is a question of power,” Hazez said, adding that the European governments do not know how to govern their own Muslim populations today.

Explaining that these governments have been used to handling poor working-class immigrants — people who could be subordinated for the past 40 years—Farid said now these European countries are faced with a new generation of Muslims who have full capacity to participate in the European political landscape as active citizens.

There is a growing Muslim population in Europe and the far-right’s “superficial solution” to this problem is to drive out the people so as to avoid committing outright genocide, Hafez added.

He added that the centrist political parties, which have been shaping policies within the last two decades in a lot of European countries, are taking a different approach: "We are going to change Muslims and we are going to crack down on their civil society that fights for equality and gives Muslims place as equal citizens in their countries".

“The important take for the Muslim countries, especially those who accommodate and foster this discourse in European countries on behalf of the Muslims is what role are they playing? This will be the defining relationship within the next few decades between those Muslim minorities in Europe and the Muslim majority who are outside of Europe,” Hafez concluded.

“This is the key  question every Muslim majority country has to ask itself regarding their future in a wider sense.”

[NOTE: The article came from TRT World’s Eyes on Discrimination (EOD) Centre, which monitors and reports on offences, hate crimes and discrimination on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, national origin and religion, or other related social categories. We promote and encourage respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.]