A total mishmash of disingenuous blatherings highlighted by obfuscations and outright lies.

In other words, their (SETA) misinformation and propaganda is meant to feed the media, academia and politicians in presenting themselves as victims while they seek to undermine society on all levels possible.

EUROPEAN ISLAMOPHOBIA REPORT 2015

What is Islamophobia?

Although the term ‘Islamophobia’ has become widely recognised in the Anglo-Saxonworld and has become established in academia as can be seen by the numerous con-ferences, journals, and research projects dedicated to it, in many European countries,there is still a great amount of opposition to the term. One can understand the opposition expressed by the public not merely as an academic debate, but, in fact, as a sign of the hegemonic power of Islamophobic prejudices. Acknowledging this situation, at the heart of this project lies the following working deﬁnition of Islamophobia:

“When talking about Islamophobia, we mean anti-Muslim racism. As Anti-Semitism studies have shown, the etymological components of a word do not necessarily point to its complete meaning, nor to how it is used. Such is also the case with Islamophobia studies. Islamophobia has become a well-known term used in academia as much as in the public sphere. Criticism of Muslims or of the Islamic religion is not necessarily Islamophobic. Islamophobia is about a dominant group of people aiming at seizing, stabilising and widening their power by means of deﬁning a scapegoat – real or invented – and excluding this scapegoat from the resources/rights/deﬁnition of a constructed ‘we’. Islamophobia operates by constructing a static ‘Muslim’ identity,which is attributed in negative terms and generalised for all Muslims. At the same time, Islamophobic images are ﬂuid and vary in diﬀerent contexts as Islamophobia tells us more about the Islamophobe than it tells us about the Muslims/Islam”.

Central ﬁndings

That Islamophobia works without Muslims and tells us more about the anti-Muslim racists than it tells us about Islam and Muslims, can best be seen in the eastern region of Europe. In countries like Hungary, Finland, Lithuania, or Latvia, where only as mall number of Muslims live, Islamophobia functions as a successful means to mobilise people. People not only greatly overestimate the country’s Muslim population but, although Muslims have not committed any violent acts in most countries in the name of Islam, they are still often deemed violent and are considered to be terrorists.

It could be observed that both attacks in Paris, which happened in 2015, became a discursive event that shaped the debates on Islam and Muslims throughout Europe. Above that, the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ was a central topic, which many actors linked to the issue of Muslims invading Europe. For example, the leader of the Hungarian Fidesz’ parliamentary club Antal Rogán warned of a future ‘United European Caliph-ate’,
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while former Secretary of State László L. Simon urged Hungarians to return to their Christian spirituality and make more babies in order to counter the negative cultural eﬀects of mass migration such as the envisioned ‘impending victory of Islamic parties imposing polygamy and destroying the remainder of European culture’.
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This strong Islamophobic rhetoric is not restricted to the extreme right. In fact, the refugee-migration-Islam-terrorism nexus became the standard argument justifying a num-ber of domestic and international measures. Te social democrat Czech President Mi-los Zeman claimed the inﬂux of refugees into Europe was masterminded by Egypt’sMuslim Brotherhood as “an organised invasion” to “gradually control Europe”.

Academia.edu