Islamophobia

The EUI professor examines Europe’s ongoing struggle over social values in times of rising Islamophobia and growing nostalgia for a Christian Europe.

France’s long and troubled relationship with Islam, and its connexion to a sense of insecurity, is unpacked by Olivier Roy and Esther Benbassa, who also explore the current role of religion in politics in general.

Is our response to the threat of Islamic State merely aiding their rise by unwittingly contributing to their strategy?

What has transpired in Britain since the Leave campaign won the Brexit has only shown how easily the veneer of civility and conviviality can be peeled back to reveal the virulence of racism and xenophobia seething under the skin of British social life.

In a rational world, security threats might boost European integration, given their cross-border nature. Today’s Europe, however, is different.

Following the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, the international spotlight has been on Belgium as an alleged breeding ground for radical Islam.

The Front National secured the largest share of the vote in the first round of the French regional elections on 6 December, but failed to win any regions in the second round. While the Front National is often regarded simply as a far-right party, Marine Le Pen has increasingly focused on the Front National’s role in defending liberal and republican values. This apparent liberalism reflects a wider trend across Europe for parties to cite liberal values as the basis for critiques of Islam.

After the end of the Cold War and the renaissance of nationalism and of the concomitant abuses of human rights of the worst kind, the pacifism that had been one of the German Greens’ founding principles came into increasing conflict with its active defence of human rights.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, the French and European responses have focused on security and how to reinforce it. At the same time, far-right movements are making gains across Europe, attacks on mosques have increased and a distorted secularist discourse is leading to further marginalisation of religious groups.

An old friend once told me that being a decent person means having a guilty conscience. And there is enough to feel guilty about as 2015 unfolds. Ethical uncertainty over how a liberal society should deal with the intolerant has become strikingly evident following the murders of four French Jews in a kosher grocery and twelve editors and staff members of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine located in Paris, by partisans of al-Qaeda and, its rival, ISIS.