Islamophobia and the Law: Unpacking Structural Islamophobia
بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ
Introduction
When we think of Islamophobia, most of us imagine physical harassment, verbal abuse, hate speech, or even to a lesser degree, dirty looks and insensitive passing comments. In reality, this is how we, or people we know, have experienced anti-Muslim racism and bias. It is real, tangible, and in your face. Often these forms of Islamophobia evoke an emotional response from us as they are experienced at a very individual level and are tantamount to attacks on our very being and essence as individuals. Such experiences can have the effect of caricaturing us to reductionist embodiments of a monolithic block of ‘Muslimness’ that in no way represents our faith, beliefs, or our intersectionality as complex multifaceted beings composed of multiple identities, affiliations, and viewpoints. However, there are more subtle and insidious forms of Islamophobia that exist, which may pose far greater challenges for Muslims living in the West. These forms of Islamophobia are institutional and structural in nature. In previous articles, I have written about the notions of ‘structural Islamophobia’ and ‘private Islamophobia’ as described by Beydoun.
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Private Islamophobia, as alluded to in the discussion above, is enacted by private actors. These could be informal and formal groups, like the English Defence League and other street protest movements, or individuals like neighbors or a random stranger in the street. Structural Islamophobia, on the other hand, consists of anti-Muslim racism and bias authorized by the state.
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With structural Islamophobia, state power is operationalized to legislate policy and programming to subordinate and oppress Muslim classes and to vilify Islam. The notion of a ‘clash of civilizations’ is embedded within structural Islamophobia; this notion legitimizes and sanitizes the securitization of the Muslim subject. The reason that structural Islamophobia is more problematic than other forms that may randomly appear in our day-to-day experiences is because structural Islamophobia, in essence, legalizes Islamophobia. In other words, through the law, state power is able to create regulations that target and marginalize Muslims simply because they are Muslim. This can have devastating effects on young Muslims and can possibly contribute to internalizing Islamophobia.
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This article explores the notion of structural Islamophobia and how it is increasingly becoming endemic in a number of European and North American nations.
Structural Islamophobia in the European context
Most forms of structural Islamophobia manifest through limiting and controlling visual signifiers of ‘Muslimness’ in the public sphere. Muslim women are often the targets of this type of Islamophobia. A number of European nations have passed legislation curtailing expressions of ‘Muslimness’ and Islam through laws that prohibit face and head veils. In some instances the laws are framed in general terms, banning clothing that covers one’s face for security reasons, while in other instances there is no pretense of neutrality and the law specifically targets Islamic face coverings. In 2011, one of the first European nations to implement a face-covering ban was Belgium. Belgium implemented a nationwide ban on full-face covering clothing including burqas and niqabs. This law was challenged on the basis that it violated basic rights of religious expression; however, in 2017 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the ban did not “violate the rights to private and family life and freedom of religion, or discrimination laws.”
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In 2016, a number of smaller European states followed suit and implemented similar face-covering bans. Both Bulgaria and Latvia implemented laws banning face veils. Individuals found wearing the face veil in Bulgaria could face fines up to £660, while in Latvia, this law was instituted despite there being only three known instances of people wearing such clothing in the nation.
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In 2017, The Austrian Parliament adopted a face-covering clothing ban in public spaces. This law was implemented under the guise of preserving national security. Individuals wearing face veils such as the niqab were fined 150€. Similarly, in 2018 Denmark passed a law banning face veils. People violating this ban would be fined £115, and repeat offenders could face fines ten times that amount.
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The Netherlands also passed a face veil ban in 2018. Under this law the face veil was banned in public spaces such as schools, hospitals, public transport, and government buildings; however, it was still permitted in public streets.
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Face veils were not the only visual signifiers of ‘Muslimness’ that were banned. Restrictions were even placed on Islamic looking structures in some European nations. For example, in 2009, Switzerland held a referendum to ban the construction of minarets on mosques. Media coverage of this issue included inflammatory rhetoric from the political Right arguing that minarets were a symbol of the impending Islamization of Switzerland, despite the fact that there were only four minarets in the country at the time of the referendum.
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In all of the above-mentioned examples, these laws and bans were implemented through support from right-wing and far-right political parties that came to power in these nations. However, not all instances of Structural Islamophobia have been at the hands of right-wing and far-right political parties. In the case of France, the notion of French secularism was used to advance structural Islamophobic discourse and legislation.
France was the first European nation to implement formal restrictions of Muslim women’s dress in the public sphere. As early as 2004, under the guise of advocating state neutrality and secularist ideals, France implemented a ban on religious clothing in state schools. Though this ban affected a number of religious minority groups, Muslim women were overwhelmingly targeted through this law, as it was regularly referred to both in public and political discourse as the ‘veil law.’
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The state went on to ban Islamic face veils through a niqab ban in 2010, and even attempted to ban the burkini, a full-body swimsuit worn by some Muslim women, in a number of French municipalities in 2016. The lines between public and private policing of Muslim women’s dress became blurred in France through a recent controversy over the selling of sports hijabs by sports retailers. In February 2019, Decathlon, Europe’s largest sports accessories vendor, decided against selling sports hijabs because of growing criticism and scrutiny from French politicians over such clothing.
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This distaste for visual signifiers of ‘Muslimness’ within French culture and society is not a recent phenomenon. Rather, it has an enduring legacy that can trace its roots back to the colonial era.
In his critical essay ‘Algeria Unveiled,’ Frantz Fanon
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discusses the French colonizers’ project of removing the Muslim headscarf from Algeria in the 1930s. According to Fanon, the colonizers perceived the headscarf as a cultural identifier. They believed that by eliminating the headscarf they would be taking steps towards destroying Algerian culture in the colony. Dismantling Algerian culture was essential, as the colonizers viewed themselves in stark contrast to the colonized. According to Al-Saji “[t]he representational apparatus of colonialism not only constitutes the image of the ‘native’ but posits this image in opposition to a certain self-perception of colonial society and against an implicit normalization of gender within that society.”
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It is through this dichotomizing gaze that a civilized self emerged in contrast to a barbaric ‘Other.’ This perception of the ‘Other’ constructed the Muslim head veil as a deviation from French society and was therefore deemed unacceptable. This historic legacy of racism and limiting religious and cultural expression in the public sphere has fostered an atmosphere in France where political parties can legislate laws that target minority communities, claiming they are threatening French culture and identity. In addition to policing Muslim women’s dress, structural Islamophobia has manifested through legislation that has disproportionately targeted Muslim men. The most virulent example of this can be seen in anti-terrorism laws and programming aimed at curtailing and preventing individuals from violent extremist activities.
One of the most widely criticized aspects of the United Kingdom’s response to countering violent extremism programming has been the Prevent strategy. The Prevent strategy forms a branch of the UK’s overall countering violent extremism policy referred to as Channel. Prevent came about in the mid-2000s and was aimed at identifying individuals who may be on a trajectory towards violent extremist activity and to prevent such individuals before they engaged in these activities. In 2015 the program was instituted on a statutory basis. This required people working in the public sector, such as teachers, nurses, and other healthcare professionals, to report individuals they suspected were vulnerable to radicalization. Not doing so could involve institutional repercussions.
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The Prevent strategy did not claim to target any specific ethnic or religious group; however, in practice, the Prevent strategy has unfairly and overwhelmingly targeted Muslim communities in the UK. According to data collected by UK government in 2018, ‘Islamist extremists’ are 17 times more likely to be referred to Prevent than individuals engaging in ‘far-right’ extremist activities.
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Despite only representing 5% of the UK population and accounting for roughly 5% of the terrorist-related activities in the nation, Muslims represent 65% of the referrals to Prevent. Furthermore, 95% of the Muslim referrals to Prevent require no further Channel intervention.
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In other words, 95% of the Muslims referred to Prevent are falsely identified and pose no threat to UK society. Muslims are 40-50 times more likely than non-Muslims to be referred to the Prevent strategy, a quarter of these referrals are youth under the age of 15.
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Clearly, the Prevent strategy has disproportionately targeted Muslim communities in the UK and consequently has had far-reaching effects in these communities. Many Muslims in the UK feel stigmatized because of the wide net cast by this program. Muslim parents have to think twice about how they educate their children about Islam and may even encourage them to engage in self-censorship out of fear that they may be flagged through this program. These concerns are very real and legitimate, as Muslim children as young as four-years-old have been misidentified by this program.
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A similar process of structural Islamophobia can be observed in North America through legislation policing visual signifiers of ‘Muslimness’ and through state surveillance and securitization programming.
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