Germany’s leading human rights organization has warned of increasing anti-Muslim racism amid heightened Middle East tensions, urging politicians and media to avoid harmful generalizations.

The German Institute for Human Rights (DIMR) released on Monday a 32-page report examining the Gaza conflict’s impact on democracy and human rights, focusing primarily on rising antisemitism but also concerns over increased anti-Muslim incidents.

DIMR Director Beate Rudolf pointed out that overgeneralizations and negative stereotypes about Muslims in political discourse and media coverage following the Palestinian group Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack have had a negative impact on basic rights and freedoms.

“Anyone who criticizes the Israeli government is not automatically acting antisemitic. Anyone who advocates for a separate state for the Palestinians is not automatically a Hamas sympathizer. Generalizations only promote antisemitism, as well as racism against Palestinians and Muslims,” she told a press conference in Berlin.

The report showed that antisemitic incidents in Germany have surged since Oct. 7, 2023, with hate crimes doubling to 5,164 cases in 2023, compared with the previous year.

More than half of these offences occurred in the final quarter. The first half of 2024 saw 1,997 antisemitic crimes reported to police.

Preventive Measures

DIMR called for stronger civic engagement to counter antisemitism in Germany, expanding preventive measures such as awareness-raising programs in educational institutions and providing support for projects that combat misinformation and conspiracy theories.

The institute also cautioned authorities against making overgeneralizations and spreading negative stereotypes about Muslims, emphasizing that restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly should only be implemented in exceptional situations as permitted by law.

“The bans on demonstrations described as ‘pro-Palestinian’ in the months after October 7, 2023 made it difficult for people, especially people with a Palestinian family history, to publicly express their grief for the many civilian victims in Gaza and their solidarity with the civilian population there and to demand an end to the war, and an independent Palestinian state,” the report said.

DIMR experts pointed out that German media and politicians often overlooked the fact that Israeli Jews also attended some of these protests, advocating for the rights and concerns of both sides.

“The term ‘pro-Palestinian’ used in the bans and taken up by politicians and the media promoted a blanket equation of Palestinians with antisemitic, pro-violence Hamas supporters. This public perception and the focus of social debates on violent demonstrations strengthened existing racism against Palestinians and people who are perceived as Arab or Muslim,” the experts have noted.

Source: TRT World

Nine out of 10 Muslims subjected to Islamophobic attacks in Germany did not complain to the police, believing that the competent authorities would not pay attention, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher.

“Research on anti-Muslim discrimination shows that nine out 10 survey respondents have not reported the most recent anti-Muslim racism. Why is that? How can you trust authorities that don’t understand or acknowledge anti-Muslim racism to help you in a situation where you have been attacked based on your identity?,” Almaz Teffera told Anadolu.

Teffera added the authorities, including the police or the judiciary, need to be first equipped with the knowledge and tools to understand, recognize, and respond to anti-Muslim incidents of hate.

Pointing out that anti-Muslim sentiment, which has existed for many years in Germany, has increased in recent years, she said comprehensive research was conducted over three years by a group of independent experts appointed by the German government.

The research has shown that hostility towards Muslims and people perceived as Muslims is widespread throughout German society.

Attacks on “other” groups in Germany have increased with the rise of the far right, she said, adding the immigrants and ethnic communities in Germany have had their share of these hate crimes.

Germany, with a population of more than 84 million, is the second country with the largest Muslim population in Western Europe after France.

According to official figures, approximately five million Muslims live in Germany.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Human Rights Watch has called on German authorities to take stronger measures against anti-Muslim racism, amid an alarming increase in racist attacks and hate crimes.

“The German government is falling short in protecting Muslims and people perceived to be Muslims from racism amid rising incidents of hate and discrimination,” the group said in a statement on April 30, 2024.

Germany’s Muslim communities reported a surge in Islamophobic hate crimes since the escalation of Israel’s war on Gaza, triggered by biased media coverage of the recent developments, and propaganda by far-right politicians.

Human Rights Watch expert Almaz Teffera underlined that the German government needs to change its approach to address anti-Muslim racism, and it should ensure better reporting and tracking of hate crimes targeting Muslims.

‘Hate crimes on rise’

According to the official figures, German police registered 686 Islamophobic hate crimes and attacks between January and October last year, including threatening letters, verbal and physical assaults, vandalism and property damage.

The figures were well above the prior year when German authorities recorded 610 Islamophobic hate crimes and attacks for all of 2022. According to experts, the number of incidents is likely to be much higher, as Islamophobic and racist crimes are often not properly classified by authorities, and registered as incidents of insults or personal rows.

Many victims of anti-Muslim hate crimes also do not report such incidents to the law enforcement authorities due to a lack of trust in the police and judicial system, and the absence of an effective complaints mechanism.

Human Rights Watch said the German government should develop mechanisms for countrywide monitoring and data collection, based on clear indicators that would equip authorities with the necessary knowledge and tools to address the problem.

According to the Alliance Against Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate (CLAIM), a German network of nongovernmental organizations, 2023 marked “a frighteningly new high” for anti-Muslim incidents.

In November, the group documented an average of three anti-Muslim incidents a day. In one case, a man perceived to be Muslim was called a “terrorist” when exiting a public bus, assaulted, and hospitalised for his injuries.

A country of over 84 million people, Germany has the second-largest Muslim population in Western Europe after France. It is home to nearly 5 million Muslims, according to official figures.

Source: Anadolu Agency

There has been a rise in anti-Muslim incidents at German schools because of the far-right’s narratives, and the recent developments in the Middle East, a Berlin-based rights group has reported.

The ADAS anti-discrimination center has received more and more complaints in recent months from students, as well as their parents over anti-Muslim acts, insults, and verbal harassment.

“More than half of the complaints we have received are about incidents of anti-Muslim racism. Considering that Muslims constitute 6 to 8 percent of the population in Germany, this is a rather high rate,” said ADAS’s director, Aliyeh Yegane Arani.

The Berlin-based ADAS is providing counseling and support to pupils, parents, teachers, and school staff who have experienced or witnessed discrimination.

The vast majority of complaints received by ADAS are incidents of racism towards Black people, and anti-Muslim hate crimes and discrimination, Anti-Muslim sentiment is impacting not only Muslim students but anyone perceived to be Muslim.

“About 20% of cases are explicitly about anti-Muslim racism. These incidents involve some teachers using Islamophobic expressions, or girls, women being discriminated against because of their headscarves, mobbing against Muslim students” Arani said.

She pointed out that there are also other forms of anti-Muslim racism that affect people who are perceived to be Muslim because of their name, appearance or origin, but who are not religious at all, perhaps not even Muslim. Arani said these account for around 40% of the complaints they have received.

According to the estimates of the ADAS, the actual figures on the anti-Muslim incidents at schools could be much higher, as many students and parents do not report these to authorities or anti-discrimination centers.

“There are many cases that go unreported. Only very few people apply and report such incidents, many of the cases at schools are not reported or addressed,” Arani said.

She pointed out that anti-Muslim hate propaganda of the far-right groups, racist narratives about immigrants were among the reasons for the sharp rise in Islamophobic cases in recent years. She also noted that there has been a rise in reported incidents after the Israel–Hamas war began on Oct. 7, 2023.

With a population of over 84 million people, Germany has the second-largest Muslim population in Western Europe after France. It is home to more than 5 million Muslims, according to official figures.

The country faced growing racism and xenophobia in recent years, fueled by the propaganda of far-right, and anti-Muslim groups, including the opposition party Alternative for Germany, or the AfD.

Last year, German authorities recorded at least 686 Islamophobic crimes, including verbal and physical assaults against Muslims on the streets, threatening letters sent to Islamic institutions, and arson attacks that targeted mosques.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Racism in Contemporary Germany: Islamophobia in East and West

Edited By Ivan Kalmar, and Nitzan Shoshan

Publisher: Routledge

Publication Date: January 29, 2024

ISBN: 9781032260617

This book presents a critical and empirically informed examination of Islamophobia and related issues of racism and nationalism in Germany today, with particular attention to the East/West distinction. The authors, representing several disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, and media and literary studies, situate the topic in the global and German context of the 2015-16 “migration crisis” and its aftermath, and of the ongoing transformations seen in the post-socialist regions of the European Union.

Since the 2015-16 “refugee crisis,” illiberal leaders and parties within Europe have instrumentalized Islamophobia in an attempt to dislodge the traditional political elites. Strikingly, such illiberal movements have been most successful in the formerly socialist areas of the EU. This is mirrored within Germany itself, where political formations with an Islamophobic agenda remain more popular in the East than in the West. This volume examines the reasons for this difference, including not only the ideological heritage of Soviet-dominated socialism but also the effects of western interventions in the formerly socialist areas in and beyond Germany since the end of the Cold War. Some Islamophobic and other hateful tendencies were in fact introduced from, and continue to prosper also, in the West.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary European Studies.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: Islamophobia in Germany, East/West
1. The east is just like the west, only more so: Islamophobia and populism in Eastern Germany and the East of the European Union
2. Building a new nation: anti-Muslim racism in post-unification Germany
3. Islamophobia East-West and the politics of hospitality in contemporary Germany
4. Gendered identities and German Islamophobias
5. ‘The burqa is not us (wir sind nicht burka)’: strategic Islamophobia and the mainstreaming of nativist appeals
6. Islamophobia and anti-Muslim feeling in Saxony – theoretical approaches and empirical findings based on population surveys

About the Editors

• Ivan Kalmar is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Over his career, much of his work has focused on the image of Jews and Muslims in western cultural history. He is the author of Early Orientalism: Imagined Islam and the Notion of Sublime Power (Routledge) and co-editor of the volume, Orientalism and the Jews. More recently, Kalmar’s work has focused on illiberalism in the European Union, and especially in Central Europe. He has guest-edited a special issue of Patterns of Prejudice, dealing with Islamophobia in the East of the European Union, and a special issue on Islamophobia in Germany: East/West, for the Journal of Contemporary European Studies. His latest book is White But Not Quite: Central Europe’s Illiberal Revolt (2022). A special issue on Race and the East of the European Union, co-edited by Kalmar, is scheduled to be published by the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies in the spring of 2022.
• Nitzan Shoshan is Professor of Anthropology in the Centro de Estudios Sociológicos at El Colegio de México. His prize-winning book, The Management of Hate: Nation, Affect, and the Governance of Right-Wing Extremism in Germany (2016) is an ethnographic study of young right-wing extremist groups in East Berlin. He has guest-edited a special issue of Anthropological Quarterly on post-Fordist Affect and a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary European Studies on Islamophobia in Germany: East/West. His work has focused on nationalism and the far right in Germany and Europe. He has also written on urban marginality in Mexico and on the ethics of ethnographic fieldwork.

Source: Routledge

Author: Rhea Rahman, Brooklyn College, City University of  New York

Published in: Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 93, No. 2 (May 2023), pp. 256-272

Publication Date: May 13, 2023

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Abstract:

Muslim aid organizations are relatively new actors in the Western aid industry. Based on multi-sited ethnographic research with the UK-based NGO Islamic Relief, Rhea Rahman explores the organization’s engagement with a school in need of repair in southern rural Mali that is also the site of a sacred shrine of importance to locals. She examines the contextual global logics of racialization that undergird different interpretations and practices of what it means to ‘do well’. Situating an understanding of ‘development’ in an analysis of global racial capitalism, the author argues that, as an Islamic inspired aid organization based in the UK, Islamic Relief is both subject to anti-Muslim racism and complicit in a white-adjacent racialized project of ‘development’ in Africa. She foregrounds the whiteness of development to show how modernist development practice makes it impossible to see other ways of conceptualizing ‘doing well’ that are also deeply grounded in Islam.

Source: MUSE

The issue of anti-Muslim racism, however, exists all over Europe. Depending on the country, its manifestations are connected to the specific political, historical, and social relations in the society. However, similarities in patterns can be pinpointed in the ways how Muslims and people who are perceived as such face multiple forms of intolerance, hatred, and discrimination in all European countries. Academic research and reports from civil society organizations show that Muslims do not only experience violence and verbal harassment, but also structural forms of discrimination in terms of equal access to education, the labor market, and the housing market.

To support its member cities to tackle anti-Muslim racism, European Coalition of Cities Against Racism (ECCAR) established a permanent working group led by the City of Heidelberg in December 2020 that has received funding from the European Commission for the year 2021. In June 2021, ECCAR hired Ms. Linda Hyökki as the coordinator of the working group. Ms. Hyökki is writing her Ph.D. thesis on anti-Muslim racism in Finland with the Ibn Haldun University and has previously worked as an expert with academic and public institutions. Together with ECCAR’s member cities, researchers, and civil society actors, Ms. Hyökki will work to analyze how local governments can act against anti-Muslim racism in their capacities as democratic institutions, employers, service providers, and public contractors.

The project reflects the EU Anti-Racism Action Plan 2020-2025, which points out the important role played by cities and local governments in fighting racism and discrimination.

Source: European Coalition of Cities Against Racism (ECCAR)

Five years later on July 1, 2014, a Muslim student union launched the Day Against Anti-Muslim Racism. With this initiative, Muslims are able to raise awareness in their societies that Islamophobia is real and can have deadly effects.

Very recently in Canada, in early 2017, Black Lives Matter-Toronto alongside numerous other justice and civil liberties organizations, appointed Feb. 4 as National Day of Action against Islamophobia and White Supremacy following Trump’s “Muslim ban.” Their call was related to policy claims toward their own government to challenge their neighbor’s Islamophobic policies.

Also, in 2014, the No Hate Speech Movement, a youth campaign for human rights online, financed by the Council of Europe, launched seven days of awareness. In 2014, Sept. 21 was made an Action Day against Islamophobia and Religious Intolerance. Yet another day announced was Action Day Against Antisemitic Hate Speech on Nov. 9.

As for part of the No Hate Speech Movement, it was clear that there had to be a day against Islamophobia given, according to a survey conducted by the Council of Europe in 2012 that declared that Muslim people were the second most targeted group by hate speech online in Europe.

Since then, this day has informally become the European Day Against Islamophobia. Many different Muslim and civil liberties organizations throughout Europe use it to tackle Islamophobia on a supranational level in European institutions.

As a first step, EU institutions must publicly recognize and condemn Islamophobia as a specific form of racism. The symbolically very important European Day Against Islamophobia must be filled with life.

Source: The Bridge Initiative