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

The report is the result of two task forces charged with looking into the perceptions and feelings of Jewish, Israeli, Arab, and Palestinian students.

“The differences in perceptions of comfort and safety are rather stark depending on one’s own identities,” the report states in its findings. “Members of all affected communities perceived less openness to diversity of opinions compared to members of the broader campus community and expressed greater perceptions of discomfort and unsafety for those who share their identities compared to those who do not.”

The report states that students reported both Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia on campus, including anti-Israel bias and a “perceived alienation and lack of support for Palestinian and Muslim communities.” Insults, intimidation, and a desire to hide their identities were reported all around.

“The intent of this joint submission is not to equate antisemitism and Islamophobia, but to acknowledge that this particular moment puts into sharp relief the need to examine both in a shared context, as the present conflicts shine light on issues that impact members of our campus community who have experienced pain, isolation, fear, and discrimination,” the report states.

According to UW’s report, during the 2023-24 academic year:

• About two-thirds of Palestinian students said they had experienced insults and intimidation over the previous year. About half to one-third of Muslim and Arab/Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) students reported the same.
• One-third of Jewish students and 70% of Israeli students said they experienced insults and intimidation.
• 72% of Arab or MENA, 80% of Muslim students, and 78% of Palestinian students in the focus groups said they were unwelcome because of their identities.
• 60% of Jewish students and 92% of Israeli students in the focus groups said they were unwelcome because of their identities.
• 69% of Arab/MENA students, 74% of Muslim students, and 77% of Palestinian students reported a desire to hide their identity at least once (38% of Arab/MENA students, 40% of Muslim students, and 50% of Palestinian students said this happened frequently).
• 65% of Jewish students and 95% is Israeli students said they needed to hide their identities at least once (42% of Jewish students, 81% of Israeli students said this happened frequently).

Read the full 143-page report here.

In March 2024, UW President Ana Mari Cauce ordered the formation of the two task forces — one for gauging Islamophobia on campus, and the other for Anti-Semitism. Those task forces conducted a series of surveys with focus groups in May 2024 to develop the report released Tuesday. During that time, there were multiple protests and a pro-Palestine encampment on the UW campus.

“We recognize the importance of preserving public free speech; however, the encampment and campus protests, at times, were perceived to go beyond these lines of argument and advocacy to call, implicitly or even explicitly, for violence,” the report states.

“Many survey or focus group participants were distressed by the perceived alienation and lack of support provided for Palestinian and Muslim members of our community. In voicing concerns related to the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, they sought visibility for their cause and for the UW to provide a place where these local and global concerns could be focused on, feeling at times that their message and concerns were not adequately heard nor addressed.”

No information from these focus groups was looked into or confirmed for accuracy. UW says that the purpose of the task forces was more for “gathering feedback and gaining an understanding of the campus climate.”

Source: KUOW 

Souad is preparing to move to Algiers in a few months. The 45-year-old French-Algerian woman, a legal assistant living in Lyon, has chosen her parents’ country to start a new life with her 12-year-old son.

“The bad atmosphere in France is pushing me towards the exit a little,” she told Middle East Eye.

“Like all children of immigrants, I have always experienced racism and discrimination, but it was not on the same scale as today. It’s becoming relentless,” she added.

Souad said she no longer wanted to live “in a society that rejects” her.

“I’ve reached a point where I don’t find it normal anymore. I’m fed up.”

On social media, other Algerians born or raised in France, mostly young but sometimes elderly, both women and men, married or single, with children or not, are showing the same desire to cross the Mediterranean for a one-way trip.

They exchange ideas in Facebook groups such as “Make a successful hijra [migration, exile] to Algeria” or “Return to live in Algeria”, where, like Souad, they criticize the rise in racism and Islamophobia in France.

In February, the Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin indicated that anti-Muslim acts had increased by 30 percent in 2023 compared to the previous year.

Out of the 242 acts recorded, more than half were committed in the last three months of 2023, the minister specified, seeing a link with the start of the Israeli war on Gaza following the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October.

“When we were little and my father took us to Algeria for the holidays in El Kseur, near Bejaia [in Kabilya, 220 km east of Algiers], he never stopped praising the beauty of the country,” Bachir, a 33-year-old French-Algerian truck driver from the northern city of Roubaix, told MEE.

His father secretly nurtured the dream of acquiring a pied-a-terre where the family could all live forever, Bachir said. But his project never became reality. As a warehouse worker, he barely earned enough to meet their needs.

Today, Bachir has decided to take the plunge himself with his own family.

“I am taking exactly the same path as my father 40 years ago, but in the opposite direction,” he said jokingly, before pointing to a climate of hatred against foreigners and Muslims that makes France “unlivable”.

“I want my two daughters to grow up in a society that does not push them to the margins because of their name, their skin color and their religion,” he said.

“My wish is that we can, as a family, practice our faith freely, without being accused of being separatists and Salafists,” he added, in reference to a 2021 law pushed forward by President Emmanuel Macron to fight “Islamist separatism” and accused of being discriminatory against Muslims.

Boussad, a mathematics teacher in a Paris high school says: “I no longer feel at home in France. Despite my studies and my long career in teaching, I am constantly brought back to my origins… Racism has become uninhibited. It is unleashed all day long on television screens.”

Officially, there are no statistics about the number of French-Algerians who have chosen Algeria as their country of residence.

These “returns” can also seem marginal compared to the scale of the phenomenon of Algerian migration towards Europe.

Source: The Middle East Eye

Against this backdrop, Pew Research Center asked people in 15 Western European countries a number of questions related to multiculturalism and pluralism, with a specific emphasis on their attitudes toward Muslims and Jews. These questions were part of a broader study on religion and identity in the region. Neha Sahgal, one of the lead authors of the study, discusses how the survey team constructed its questions and analyzed the results.

“The survey questions weren’t designed to measure anti-Semitism or Islamophobia in a comprehensive way, but rather to capture some expressed negative sentiment about these groups. We asked respondents about their willingness to accept Muslims and Jews as neighbors and relatives. We also asked questions about whether people think Islam is compatible with their country’s values and culture, and if they favor restrictions on Muslim women’s religious clothing. Another set of questions asked people if they agree or disagree with a number of strongly worded statements about Jews and Muslims.”

When looking at the results, readers should keep a few things in mind. Survey respondents may harbor negative feelings toward Muslims and Jews, but not express them to an interviewer. Others may express negative feelings, but not have the opportunity or inclination to act in a hostile way toward Muslims and Jews living in their midst. Nonetheless, the survey provides not only cross-national results on these questions, but also some sense of the factors associated with these views.

Education is also a factor: People with less education are more likely to take negative positions toward Muslims, Jews and immigrants. And familiarity does not seem to breed contempt. On the contrary, Europeans who say they personally know a Muslim are less likely to express negative views of Muslims.

Continue reading at: Pew Research Center

Muslim Diasporas in the West

Edited by Tahir Abbas

Series: Critical Concepts in Sociology

Publisher: Routledge

Publication Date:December 6, 2016

This major works collection surveys the nature of Muslim diasporas in the west from a sociological perspective, exploring the issues of migration, integration, identity, politics, Islamophobia, and radicalization.

This four-volume collected works is the state of the art on the research and scholarship on Muslim diasporas in the West carried out over the last four decades. From canonical works to the latest trends in study, these contributions have added to the understanding of ethnicity, equality and diversity in relation to Muslims in the west. These article explore the philosophies of multiculturalism, integration, and interculturalism. They also analyse issues of identity politics, Islamophobia, and radicalization. The research carried out on Muslims in the west has had a significant impact on the study of Muslim minorities in other parts of the world. This major works collection suitably captures the significance of past research and its importance for further scholarship in relation to Muslims and Islam across Europe, North America, and Australia.

Source: Routledge