An institutional approach to framing Muslims in Europe

Abstract

Across Western Europe, public discourse has been suffused by claims about Muslims and Islam. These claims are mainly negative. Across a wide political spectrum, public figures denounce Islam for its retrograde values. Some claim that Islam is incompatible with the values of Europe and European states, that Muslims are irreducibly foreign because they will not or cannot abandon pre-Enlightenment ideas. Framing Islam as a set of values intrinsically incompatible with Europe implies that Muslims must choose between abandoning their religion and remaining outside the boundaries of the true European citizenry.This representation was at the heart, for instance, of the 2004 ban on wearing the Islamic veil in public schools in France. As Joan Scott (2007: 8) argues, “Outlawing the veil… was an attempt to enact a particular version of reality, one which insisted on assimilation as the only way for Muslims to become French.” The notion that Islamic moralities and “modern” Europeanness are mutually exclusive has also played a key role in Dutch debates. The highly influential late right-wing populist Pim Fortuyn argued that Islam was a backward religion. Unlike Islam, Fortuyn argued, Judaism and Christianity had been transformed by “the Enlightenment,” during which the essential “Western” values such as individual responsibility, the separation of church and state, and the equality of men and women – among others – had developed. Fortuyn described Islam as a backward culture and a threat to his personal way of life: “I refuse to start all over again with the emancipation of women and gays.”.