On Oct.26, representatives of Europe’s six most populous nations—Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Poland—met for a two-day summit. Among the items on the agenda were terrorism, human trafficking and tax fraud. One of the major discussion topics was “Muslim integration” and “curtailing alienation among the continent’s Muslims.”
Europe’s Muslim population is alienated—because of xenophobia and racism promoted by the capitalist ruling class.
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The European conference implied that alienated Muslims increase the danger of terrorism. Thousands of additional statements and actions by European ruling class politicians over the last five years have reached the same conclusion.
The capitalists, their government managers and media outlets in Europe have been carrying out a concentrated, racist anti-Muslim campaign.
A Nov. 8 AP article, entitled “Concerns rise in Europe that freedom of expression is being eroded,” exemplifies the anti-Muslim propaganda campaign underway. The article’s racist premise is that fear of the violent tendencies of Muslim people has led cultural institutions to censure themselves—to cancel operas, remove artwork from museums and so on.
One example of the so-called erosion of free expression is the scaling down of traditional Spanish festivals celebrating the expulsion of the Moors in the late 1400s. In one of the canceled festivals, each year people gathered to blow up the head of a dummy depicting Islam’s founder Muhammad with firecrackers.
The AP story also claimed that Muslims silence “free expression” by reacting violently to cultural presentations. The point of reference used is the mass demonstrations against the racist cartoons published in the Danish press in Sept. 2005.
The article essentially concludes that oppressed people have no right to demonstrate their anger at being attacked in a racist way. The media is afraid that such demonstrations might endanger the “freedom of expression” for Europe’s capitalists, while saying nothing about the racist content of the cartoons.
Racist attacks
The European anti-Muslim campaign has included attacks on workers, both Muslim and not. In France, 72 airport employees, mostly Muslims, have had their security clearances revoked in recent months simply based on their religion or nationality.
The employees were accused of being “linked to fundamentalist movements with potentially terrorist aims,” according to Jacques Lebrot, the deputy prefect of the airport. Lebrot cited vacations to Pakistan as evidence of the terrorist connection.
According to the targeted employees, most of the questions directed at them concerned their religion. Similar attacks on Muslim workers have occurred at airports in Germany and Britain.
The racist campaign, however, does not have its roots in a religious conflict between Islam and Christianity or Islam and so-called Western values, as it is often framed. It is a tactic utilized by the ruling classes to silence a highly oppressed sector of society, much of which is vigorously opposed to imperialist foreign policy in the Middle East.
Europe has a sizeable Muslim population. Islam is the continent’s fastest growing religion. Five million Muslims live in France, 1.8 million live in Britain and 3 million live in Germany.
The majority of Muslims in Europe are immigrants from North Africa, Southeast Asia and Turkey. The anti-Muslim campaign has been openly connected to overall anti-immigrant propaganda.
Muslims have been vocal in their opposition to the policies of the different European ruling classes at home and abroad. A recent poll carried out by 1990 Trust in Britain revealed that 90 percent of Muslims in the country disagree with Prime Minister Tony Blair’s foreign policy.
The poll contradicted reports of a high degree of support for violence among Muslims. What it did show was a high degree of anti-war sentiment.
The anti-Muslim campaign in Europe is clearly also directed at silencing this large religious community that opposes the policies of war and racism pushed by the capitalists.
