Europe’s dangerous art of anti-Muslim doublespeak

European authorities’ relations with their Muslim citizens are mired in dangerous doublespeak. The official message is at times reassuring. There’s recognition of an increase in anti-Muslim hatred across Europe and calls on law enforcement agencies to be alert about violence against Muslims. In Brussels, at the European Commission, there is an Anti-Muslim Hatred Coordinator, tasked with combating discrimination and ensuring Muslims can participate in EU initiatives as fully-fledged European citizens. But the reality of daily political life is different. Islamophobia – or in EU speak “Anti-Muslim hatred” – is no longer the preserve of the far right. Mainstream European politicians’ discussions on migration and security are also loaded with direct and indirect jabs at Muslims and Islam. Some of it is pretty open. The outrage over the Ceuta “migration crisis” continues to be framed in dehumanising, clash-of-civilisations rhetoric, in which the predominantly Muslim Moroccan and sub-Saharan migrants are systematically erased of their humanity and rights. Mostly, however, Europe’s anti-Muslim racism relies on dog whistles and codes, which have become normalised. Generalisations abound about Europe’s 25 million Muslims being inherently drawn to extremism and terrorism, favouring life in parallel societies, and refusing to accept “European values”, which – according to some – seem to include drinking beer and eating pork. In this imaginary European society, Muslim women who wear the hijab are either victims of fanatical patriarchal oppression, or foot soldiers in a drive to replace indigenous white Europeans. Such Orientalism is not new. Today, however, Europe’s mainstream politicians are trying to give old and debunked Islamophobic tropes a new and dangerous lease of life. Take the resolution on the “Interference of Political Islam in European Democratic Processes”, adopted at the end of June in Vienna by the European People's Party (EPP), the political home of both German European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Austria’s Magnus Brunner, the EU commissioner for migration. The resolution, which places Muslim political and civic activity inside an almost exclusively security framework, is eerily reminiscent of Austria’s discredited Operation Luxor in November 2020, when police raided dozens of Muslim homes and associations in an effort to “cut off the roots of political Islam”. There are similar warnings of “Islamist entryism” as a strategy of gradual infiltration of institutions, parties, associations, and administrations, identification of the Muslim Brotherhood as a “relevant example”, calls for mapping Islamist organisational networks, improved monitoring mechanisms, and greater intelligence cooperation. Forgotten in the toxic narrative, however, is the fact that Operation Luxor was a legal debacle. No arrests or convictions were made and Austrian courts ruled that the raids were unlawful. Yet, lo and behold, instead of viewing Operation Luxor as a cautionary tale, Europe’s largest political group in the European Parliament is seeking to resurrect some of the failed initiative’s most insidious features as the basis of an EU-wide policy framework to boost security and democracy. Of course, this isn’t against all Muslims, the EPP says reassuringly, only against those who practice "political Islam as an ideology.” And of course it is not intended to be a “discriminatory enterprise.” Forgive my scepticism. First, how is all this going to work out in practice? When does political participation become “entryism”? When does a Muslim association become an “Islamist network”? Who decides which organisation goes on the security map? Second, the proposed EU-wide “observatory on political Islam” is based on Austria’s ‘Documentation Centre of Political Islam’, itself a controversial institution that became entangled in the fall out from Operation Luxor. Third, the toxic “entryism” narrative allows the casting of all non-violent Muslim civil society, including associtions, student groups, charities as a single, suspicious network and potential vectors of a foreign-backed takeover. Fourth, yes, the EPP has found a convenient framing which requires no terrorism convictions or criminal cases, just neutral sounding administrative tools (mapping, monitoring, defunding) that are harder to challenge in court and easier to present as “prevention”. All this may seem very clever. But is it really? Multiple investigative reports show that Operation Luxor was part of a broader campaign by the United Arab Emirates against perceived “political Islam” targets in Europe through lobbying, disinformation, and “expert” reports that portrayed Austrian Muslims as enemies of the state. The EPP and Brunner – whose presence at the EPP assembly blurs an already uncomfortable line between party politics and the institutional responsibilities of the European Commission - should therefore be asking tough questions about the intelligence and “expertise”, which they endorsed at the meeting in Vienna. Islamophobia in Europe is often blamed on the far right. The truth is more dangerous. As academics Álvaro Oleart and Julian Roch argue in a recent paper, instead of being pulled rightwards, Europe’s mainstream parties are, in fact, actively mobilising and expanding reactionary discourses and policies. Europe must fight terrorism and foreign interference to undermine democracy. But the test must be evidence and conduct, not identity and belief. Policymakers must distinguish violent extremism from legitimate political and civic participation. And they must apply the same standards to Muslims that they apply to everyone else. Far from being a template for EU-wide action, Operation Luxor is a warning. European democracy is hollowed out rather than reinforced when an entire religious or ethnic minority and its civil society are regarded as permanently suspect.