Half of Luxembourg’s Muslims said they experienced racism in the last year, and 60% in the past five years, according to a report by the European Agency for Fundamental Rights.

The report, released Thursday and based on data collected in 2021 and 2022, points out that all respondents to the survey in the Grand Duchy came from countries south of the Sahara, noting that discrimination based on skin color is also the key driver of racism in Luxembourg, the report said.

Almost four in ten Muslims in France and 53% in Belgium said they had experienced racism in the last five years. Muslims living in Austria and Germany claim to be particularly affected by discrimination, with 71% and 68% respectively saying they had experienced at least one act of discrimination in the last five years.

“It is increasingly difficult to be a Muslim in Europe,” the report based on a survey of 9,600 people in 13 EU member states said.

Half of European Muslims questioned said they confronted racism in their daily lives, compared with 39% in 2016, the year of the previous study.

Multiple difficulties

A quarter of the Muslims living in Luxembourg claim to have been discriminated against when renting or buying property. When it comes to healthcare, 28% of Muslims in Luxembourg reported discrimination over the last five years, putting the Grand Duchy behind only Austria (45%) and Germany (31%) in this category.

More than a third of Muslims in Luxembourg say they experienced harassment – 35% said they had been insulted, while 5% experienced physical violence. Half of Luxembourg Muslims believe their last police stop was due to racial profiling.

Confidence in the police is significantly lower among those who say they have been victims of racism (6.1/10) compared to those who have never been discriminated against (8.6/10).

These figures appear to be consistent with those of the Observatoire de l’Islamophobie au Luxembourg (OIL). In 2023, 23% of the 299 Muslims surveyed by the OIL said they had been direct victims of Islamophobic incidents, while 1% said they had been victims of violence because of their faith.

Measures for action

The EU should focus on racism against Muslims, which is “exacerbated by dehumanizing rhetoric across the continent”, rights agency president Sirpa Rautio said. Muslims are the EU’s second-largest religious group at 26 million, or 5% of the total population.

To improve the situation in Luxembourg, but more broadly at European level, the rights agency recommended strengthening anti-discrimination laws.

The agency also advised EU member states to introduce national action plans to combat racism. Luxembourg has already implemented this recommendation.

The agency also recommends targeted aid to improve the living conditions of Muslims, as well as their improved access to education and employment. Such measures also would improve access to affordable housing and reduce the school drop-out rate.

Source: Luxembourg Times

Nearly half of Muslims living in Europe face racism and discrimination in their daily lives, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) has said in a report.

The report Being Muslim in the EU, based on 2022 data, highlighted a sharp increase in anti-Muslim sentiment, with 47 percent of Muslim respondents reporting racial discrimination, up from 39 percent in 2016.

The survey shed light on the increasing challenges faced by Muslims across the EU, particularly in employment and housing.

“Muslims most often face discrimination when looking for work (39 percent) or in the workplace (35 percent),” it said.

It underscored that these issues have ripple effects in other areas, such as housing, education, and health care.

The report added that women who wear religious attire experience higher levels of racial discrimination than those who do not, particularly when looking for employment, and the rate has risen to 45 percent in 2022 from 31 percent in 2016, with young women aged 16-24 experiencing the highest incidence at 58 percent.

‘A worrying surge in racism’

Discrimination in the housing market has also surged, with 35 percent of respondents saying they were unable to rent or buy a house due to discrimination, a significant increase from 22 percent in 2016.

The report also highlights issues with law enforcement, with nearly half (49 percent) of those stopped by police believing they were subjected to racial profiling.

FRA Director Sirpa Rautio called the situation alarming, saying, “We are witnessing a worrying surge in racism and discrimination against Muslims in Europe.”

She attributed this to conflicts in the Middle East and “dehumanizing anti-Muslim rhetoric across the continent.”

“We need to ensure that everyone in the EU feels safe, included, and respected, regardless of their skin color, background, or religion,” Rautio added.

Source: TRT World

An additional intensified wave of Islamophobic disinformation – or the deliberate spread of false information – comes amid a rising tide of Islamophobia across Europe.

Official data show that Islamophobic crimes in Germany more than doubled in 2023, with nearly one in 10 incidents involving violence, according to the German Alliance against Islamophobia and discrimination against Muslims (CLAIM).

Austria and other EU countries have also reported similar trends while racism and intolerance are rising in France, fuelled by the war in Gaza and far-right ideas in public debate, according to France’s human rights commission, the CNCDH.

It says reports of antisemitic and anti-Muslim acts have increased by 284% and 29% respectively, while other types of racist acts increased by 21%.

Anti-Muslim hate in the UK has more than tripled in the four months since Hamas’s attacks, says the charity Tell Mama which documented 2,010 Islamophobic incidents between 7 October and 7 February – a steep rise from the 600 it recorded for the same period the year previously.
It is the largest number over four months since the charity began in 2011.

Generally, anti-Muslim and anti-semitic attacks have surged in the UK following the Israel-Gaza conflict while in the U.S the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, received a staggering 3,578 complaints about discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or religion in the last three months of 2023.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe is also concerned, saying that, “amidst an increase in prejudice and violence against Muslims in a growing number of countries, greater efforts are needed to build dialogue and counter anti-Muslim hatred.”

It hails the fact that all 57 OSCE states, including Uzbekistan, “have committed to fighting prejudice, intolerance and discrimination against Muslims and members of other religions. But it also called on all participating states “to intensify commitments and actions towards this crucial endeavor, striving to nurture an environment where every person can live free from hate and discrimination.”

The OSCE said, “There has been an upsurge in hatred against Muslims especially since the renewed outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East in October last year, with online and offline hate speech, threats and violence having a negative impact on Muslim communities, particularly women and girls.

The organization says all OSCE participating States have committed to combating discrimination and hate crime, adding: “Supporting countries across the OSCE region in combating anti-Muslim hate crime is a key area of our work, but victims across the OSCE area are reluctant to report their experiences to the authorities.”

This worrying trend is not confined to Europe or the U.S and was one of the issues of discussion by international scientists and scholars who got together recently in Uzbekistan to find ways to combat the problem.

Participants from 35 countries were attending the eighth annual Congress of the World Society for the Study, Preservation and Popularization of the Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan (WOSCU) in Uzbekistan, with representatives of the International Organization of Turkic Culture, Muslim World Islamic League, the Al-Furqan Foundation, the International Turkic Academy, the Arab World Institute and others.

The event heard that there is a growing global concern related to islamophobia and how the international community, both in the West and beyond, should deal with it.

The conference focused on efforts by Uzbekistan – a Muslim country- to address the issue.

The event heard that the Uzbek focus is on education and “enlightenment”, an approach and policy which the country’s president outlined during his landmark speech in the 78th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations in September last year in which he reaffirmed his commitment to freedom of speech.

He also spoke of the “need to strengthen our joint efforts in preventing the spread of the scourge of extremism.”

A declaration was issued at the end of the annual WOSCU congress by the 300 participants from 35 countries, including 15 academicians, 40 professors, 103 doctors of science, 54 directors of museums and libraries and others.

It said: “We are firmly convinced that the work on studying and preserving cultural legacy is of paramount importance for the sustainable development and prosperity of not only Uzbekistan, but also the entire world community.”

A resolution supporting Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s call for “enlightenment against ignorance” and for an end to Islamophobia was adopted.

Those attending agreed that education on Islam should be the main objective and agreed that improved understanding is vital for addressing the “irrational fear or hostility towards the religion of Islam and Muslims in general.”

In a letter to President Mirziyoyev, conference participants noted his broad support for the idea of a “humane Islam” that he expressed in his UN address and his emphasis on the importance of “spiritual enrichment”.

The letter said the congress “fully” supported his initiatives, including in large-scale projects to “preserve the cultural legacy of Uzbekistan for world civilization.”

The congress, held both in Uzbekistan’s capital Tashkent and ancient Samarkand, approved some 150 projects, including a forthcoming heritage project, developed around the world by the World Scientific Society on Preservation and Popularization of the Uzbek Heritage (WOSCU).

The projects, it was said, seek to foster recognition of “the great contribution of Oriental scholars who have made a significant contribution to world civilization.”

Participants went on to praise Uzbekistan’s investment in Tashkent’s Centre of Islamic Civilization and the Imam al Bukhari Spiritual Centre near Samarkand, both currently under construction, saying, “We consider it our most important task not only to join the activities of the Centre of Islamic Civilization, but also to create a powerful and rapidly developing scientific and cultural platform that will become a bright beacon of enlightenment and knowledge in the East.”

The declaration, adopted at the congress’s plenary session, recognizes the “importance” of the Centre, a “cultural and humanistic mega-project which will give a powerful impetus to fundamental research dedicated to the worthy contribution of great scholars and thinkers of the East to the development of world science and civilization.”

However, the declaration cautioned, “We are concerned about the situation in the world and believe that the ideas of the Uzbekistan president on the truly humanistic and educational essence of the religion of Islam are worthy of the closest attention.”

Established in 2017, the Tashkent-based WOSCU, sponsored by leading Uzbek businessman Bakhtiyor Fazilov, works to highlight the country’s cultural heritage around the world.

A conference in Baku, Azerbaijan in March heard similar concerns to those voiced at the WOSCU event, with Ilham Aliyev, the Azer president, saying, “Regrettably, Islamophobia trends across the world are on the rise.

“We are witnessing the portrayal of Islam as a potential threat, with doubt, discrimination and open hatred against the Muslims becoming increasingly widespread with each passing day.”

He said that Azerbaijan’s determination to combat Islamophobia was “one of the challenges of the modern era” and called for “concerted efforts” to combat Islamophobia and to “generate fresh initiatives aimed at promoting the culture of tolerance and peace found d on respect for religious and faith diversity”.

Source: EU Reporter

The European Commission has promised a €30m (£26m) fund to increase security at mosques and synagogues across the continent as it condemned a recent rise in levels of antisemitism and Islamophobia as “un-European”.

Saying that tensions surrounding the Israel-Hamas war had provoked hostility “reminiscent of the darkest days of Europe’s history”, the commission called on social media companies to do more to remove hateful content.

Announcing the new fund, which will mostly be used to step up security around public spaces, community centers and places of worship such as synagogues and mosques, Margaritis Schinas, the vice-president of the commission, said no European should tolerate fellow citizens feeling unsafe.

He said: “If you visit a mosque or a synagogue in any European city, most likely you will see that there is a security perimeter. And this is the most un-European state, this is not part of our Europe. Europe should not look like this.

“I will personally never accept that Europe is a place where any religious community feels unsafe. And nor should any European accept that,” he added, as he launched the Europe against Hate campaign alongside Vera Jourová, the commission vice-president for values and transparency.

The commissioners said there had been a “spectacular” rise in antisemitic incidents in Europe, with an 800% increase reported in the Netherlands. In France the number of incidents recorded between 7 October and 15 November was 1,518, compared with 436 for the whole of 2023.

There had also been a sharp rise in Islamophobia, which Jourová said was similar to a “spike of hatred” towards Muslim communities after the 2015 refugee crisis. Last month the French Muslim Council said it had received 42 letters containing threats or insults in October alone. Mosques had also been targeted, with 17 receiving threatening letters and 14 vandalized, it said.

Jourová said: “We have to combat anti-Muslim bigotry and all forms of hatred and racism.”

She demanded that social media companies face up to their obligations under the new Digital Services Act, which requires them, for the first time, to be the ones to enforce hate speech and counterterror legislation across the EU.

Jourová singled out Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, and TikTok as companies that must do more to remove hate speech from their platforms.

She said: “Much has to be done in the case of X and in the case of TikTok because this is what the Jewish communities are telling me they are really worried about, about these two platforms, and especially TikTok, as a problem because they are having an enormous influence on [how] the young generation thinks.”

The commission said it would push for stronger rules to counter illegal hate speech online under a code of conduct signed with online platforms, to be finalized in the next three months, in addition to the stricter regulation for large online platforms that has been introduced earlier this year in the Digital Services Act.

It is also supporting training for journalists on upholding media standards and recognizing hate speech, while increasing support for factcheckers within the EU and the Arab-speaking world.

Source: The Guardian

The Crisis of Muslim Religious Discourse:
The Necessary Shift from Plato to Kant

By Lahouari Addi

Publisher: Routledge

Publication Date: September 25, 2023

Showing that Muslim societies are facing a crisis that is more cultural than religious, this book focuses on cultural representations through which social life is experienced in the Muslim world. It brings a new theoretical framework to address the secularization process that is underway and the contradictions it entails.

This volume will arouse a new debate on secularization and the relations between religion, culture and philosophy. The crisis Muslim societies are undergoing pertains to the culture and not to the Qur’an to the extent that people do not have access to the sacred in itself but only for oneself, meaning a cultural interpretation of the sacred. The Qur’an in itself is not an obstacle to secularization and modernization since any sacred text is experienced through culture. If we consider the European experience where secularization has first emerged, we see that culture has been transformed from medieval metaphysics to modern philosophy upholding a civic culture.

Discussing secularization through cultural representation, this book launches new ideas that fill an important gap in the literature on secularization. It is a key resource for any readers interested in religious studies, philosophy and the anthropology of religion.

Table of Contents

1. Plato and Plotinus in Medieval Abrahamic Theology
2. Islam and the Platonic Dualism
3. From Sufism to Islamism
4. Muhammad Abduh or the Failure of the Epistemic Transition
5. A Positivism Without Human Agency
6. Transcendence, History and Ethics: Contemporary Stakes
7. Shari’a, Fiqh and Muslim Law
8. Europe, Islam and Secularization

About the Author

Lahouari Addi is Professor Emeritus at Sciences Po, University of Lyon, and a member of the research center Triangle CNRS. Former member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2002-2003). Professor Addi’s current research focuses on Muslim Law in the light of Moral Philosophy. Author of Radical Arab Nationalism and Political Islam (2017).

More information on: Routledge

Islamophobia as a Form of Radicalization: Perspectives on Media, Academia and Socio-political Scapes from Europe and Canada

Editors: Leen d’Haenens, and Abdelwahed Mekki-Berrada

Publisher: Leuven University Press

Publication Date: June 15, 2023

ISBN: 9462703698

ISBN-13: 978-9462703698

Islamophobia as a Form of Radicalization discusses the scope and fragmented boundaries of Islamophobia as a concept and a sociopolitical reality. The fifteen chapters of this collection cover and connect interdisciplinary research, media content analyses, media discourse analysis, ethnographic research, intersectoral advocacy work, and action research conducted in Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Poland, Portugal, and Spain. Confronted with an Islamophobia that is growing as a symptom of broader societal malaise in the West, a resistance against it is also arising. It is now a question of better understanding the foundations and mechanism of this metasolidarity and resistance. Islamophobia as a Form of Radicalization offers recommendations for urgent consideration by Muslim citizens of Canada and Europe, media professionals, civil society and academic stakeholders, policymakers at the municipal, provincial and federal levels, and academics.

About the Editors

Leen d’Haenens is full professor in communication science at the Institute for Media Studies at KU Leuven.

Abdelwahed Mekki-Berrada is full professor in anthropology of mental health and anthropology of Islam at Laval University in Quebec.

Read the full text HERE.

The wearing of the hijab has divided Europe for years and the issue came before the courts again in Belgium, after an employee of the eastern municipality of Ans was told she could not wear one while at work.

Lawyers for the woman, who performs her duties as head of office primarily without being in contact with users of the public service, argued that her right to freedom of religion had been infringed.

The Ans municipality changed its terms of employment to require its workers to observe strict neutrality by not wearing overt signs of religious or ideological belief after the woman was told not to wear a headscarf.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) said authorities in member states had a margin of discretion in designing the neutrality of public service they intended to promote.

However, this objective must be pursued in a “consistent and systematic manner” and measures must be limited to what is strictly necessary. It was for a national court to verify that these requirements are complied with.

The CJEU ruled for the first time on women’s wearing of the headscarf in 2017, when the Luxembourg court found that the garments could be banned, but only as part of a general policy barring all religious and political symbols.

The judgment also stipulated that customers could simply not demand that workers remove headscarves if the company they were working for had no policy barring religious symbols.

The court has found in favor of banning headscarves on a number of occasions since then. In 2021 it threw out cases brought by two German Muslim women, a special needs childcare worker and a sales assistant in a chemist, both of whom were told to remove their headscarves after deciding to wear the garments on their return to work after parental leave.

The ban on religious and political symbols can be justified by the “employer’s desire to pursue a policy of political, philosophical and religious neutrality with regard to its customers or users, in order to take account of their legitimate wishes”, the court said in a statement at the time.

Critics have described the bans as attacks on religious freedoms that predominantly affect women. Human Rights Watch, the NGO, said bans on religious clothing and symbols for teachers and other civil servants in Germany led some Muslim women to give up teaching careers.

The ban on face coverings in France, meanwhile, led to fines for nearly 600 Muslim women in less than three years and France’s 2004 law banning the wearing of headscarves in schools kept some Muslim girls from finishing school.

In the UK there are no bans on headscarves or other religious symbols.

Continue reading at: The Independent

Muslim civil society groups from Europe warned of the growing level of Islamophobia spreading across the continent at a major security and human rights conference in Poland.

Seven Muslim groups from Austria, France, Sweden, Spain, and the Netherlands spoke out against the climate of “state-sponsored” Islamophobia facing them in their countries.

Their address to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Human Dimension Conference in Warsaw came days after Polish authorities banned Cage’s international director, Muhammad Rabbani, from entering Poland after his name appeared on the Schengen Information System, which lets any Schengen member-state place an individual on a no-entry list to the Schengen zone.

Adil El-Kanfoudi, spokesperson for Muslim Rights Watch in the Netherlands, told the OSCE conference that he was due to meet Rabbani alongside other European Muslim civil society groups.

“This incident, among many others, is a perfect example of a broader pattern, where key figures from the Muslim community are unjustly placed on blacklists,” said Adil El-Kanfoudi. “Muslims are systematically targeted, a blatant violation of their constitutional rights.”

Commenting on his own country’s situation, Kanfoudi spoke of the hundreds of Dutch Muslims who approached his organization and said they had been wrongly placed on the terror list by the Dutch authorities, leading some to lose their livelihoods, face banking and travel restrictions and being treated like “second class citizens.”

Nehal Abdalla, Cage’s researcher in Austria, condemned the Austrian government’s Operation Luxor, which led to Austrian police raiding the homes of 70 Muslim households and the arrest of 30 Muslim academics in 2020.

Campaigners from France also spoke at the OSCE session and said the ban on the abaya in schools and recent police killings of young North African men had further heightened tensions.

“Undressed, harassed, humiliated. The young girls in France suffer, yet no one reacts,” said Elias d’Imzalene, from Perspective Musulmanes. “All my respect goes to these young Muslim girls who continue to fight for their freedom to remain Muslim even though the French state does everything it can to prevent them from remaining Muslim.”

The OSCE describes itself as “the world’s largest regional security organization”, drawing together 57 member states from Europe, Central Asia, and North America.

Source: Middle East Eye

The project aims at producing an online Atlas of the religious minorities’ rights in the Council of Europe member States. The Atlas will provide a general overview of the religious minorities social and legal status in the CoE countries and, through its interactive format, the reader will also have access to data and information concerning a particular country, religious group, and area of rights. Each map will be complemented by a short text that places the map in its socio-historical context and, if necessary, provides further information. Maps and chapters will be updated every three years.

The Atlas is designed to offer an easy-to-read comparative description of the status of religious minorities in the CoE countries. It will consent to identify and compare the different levels of minorities rights protection granted by each State, the legal status enjoyed by each minority group both across the CoE countries and in each of them, and the specific areas of rights that are at stake (again both transversally across the CoE countries and in each of them).

Particular attention will be devoted to the rights implementation so that the gap between formal entitlement and real enjoyment of rights is reduced.

Source: ISA Research Committee 22

Edited by Leni Franken and Bill Gent

Publisher: Routledge

Publication Date: January 9, 2023

Against the backdrop of labor migration and the ongoing refugee crisis, the ways in which Islam is taught and engaged with in educational settings has become a major topic of contention in Europe. Recognizing the need for academic engagement around the challenges and benefits of effective Islamic Religious Education (IRE), this volume offers a comparative study of curricula, teaching materials, and teacher education in fourteen European countries, and in doing so, explores local, national, and international complexities of contemporary IRE.

Considering the ways in which Islam is taught and represented in state schools, public Islamic schools, and non-confessional classes, Part One of this volume includes chapters which survey the varying degrees to which fourteen European States have adopted IRE into curricula, and considers the impacts of varied teaching models on Muslim populations. Moving beyond individual countries’ approaches to IRE, chapters in Part Two offer multi-disciplinary perspectives – from the hermeneutical-critical to the postcolonial – to address challenges posed by religious teachings on issues such as feminism, human rights, and citizenship, and the ways these are approached in European settings.

Given its multi-faceted approach, this book will be an indispensable resource for postgraduate students, scholars, stakeholders and policymakers working at the intersections of religion, education and policy on religious education.

Table of Contents

• Islamic Religious Education in Europe: Introduction
Bill Gent & Leni Franken

• Part I. Islamic Religious Education in Europe: Country Reports

1. Islamic Religious Education in Austria
Michael Kramer

2. Islamic Religious Education in Belgium
Leni Franken & Caroline Sägesser

3. Teaching ‘Religion – Islam’ in Bulgarian Public Schools
Nonka Bogomilova

4. Islamic Religious Education in Cypriot State Schools
Dilek Latif

5. Education About Islam in Danish State Schools
Mette Buchardt & Nanna Ramsing Enemark

6. Islamic Religious Education in England
Bill Gent, Mike Diboll & Farid Panjwani

7. Islamic Religious Education in Finland
Tuula Sakaranaho & Inkeri Rissanen

8. Islamic Religious Education in France
Diane-Sophie Girin

9. Islamic Religious Education in German State Schools
Eva-Maria Euchner & Kathrin Hackner

10. Islamic Religious Education and Teaching about Islam in Greece
Angeliki Ziaka & Marios Koukounaras Liagkis

11. Islamic Education in the Netherlands
Ina ter Avest, Cok Bakker & Leni Franken

12. Education About Islam in Norwegian Religious Education
Bengt-Ove Andreassen

13. Islamic Religious Education and Education About Islam in Sweden
Jenny Berglund

14. Islamic Religious Education in Switzerland
Hansjörg Schmid, Andreas Tunger-Zanetti & Monika Winter-Pfändler

• Part II: Interdisciplinary Exploratory Essays on Islamic Religious Education in Europe

15. Comparative Perspectives on IRE in Europe
Oddrun M. H. Bråten

16. Islamic Religious Education in Europe and European Recommendations as Mutual Challenges
Martin Rothgangel

17. Teaching and Learning About Islam in Educational Terms
Geir Skeie

18. Varieties of Islamic Religious Education and the Link with Citizenship Education
Siebren Miedema

19. Democratic Education on Religion and Ethics in Islamic Religious Education Contexts
Olof Franck

20. Teaching About Islam: Insights from Hermeneutics
Farid Panjwani

21. Postcolonial and Feminist Perspectives in Islamic Religious Education
Marianne Bøe

22. Islamic Education within the Muslim Minority-Context of Europe: Pedagogy, Politics and Future Directions
Abdullah Sahin

23. Religious Education and Social Cohesion – A Normative Stance
François Levrau

24. Compulsory, Objective, Critical and Pluralistic Teaching about Religions? Incentives and Disincentives under International Human Rights Law
Jeroen Temperman

• In Conclusion: Post-Secular ‘Islamic Religious Education’ in Europe – Challenges, Opportunities and Prospects
Leni Franken

About Editors

Leni Franken is a Senior Researcher and Teaching Assistant at the University of Antwerp, Belgium.

Bill Gent moved into academic research on aspects of Islamic education at the University of Warwick, UK, following a career as a schoolteacher, adviser and inspector.

Source: Routledge