The ceasefire between Hamas and Israel has brought a sigh of relief to the international community – not least because we love to avoid discussing, even thinking about this conflict. Why is that? In this Standard Time episode we talk about anti-muslim racism and how to understand what’s happened in Gaza.
In the Western European imagination, Muslims are often conceived as some foreign body from Europe. This couldn’t be further from the truth: Islam has been a part of European history for a thousand and three hundred years. Today, it’s the second-biggest world religion and the second-most populous religion in Europe as well. 44 million Muslims live in Europe – not counting Turkey.
The faith of 1.91 billion people with a history of seventeen hundred years is very diverse. What we can say for sure is that Islam is part of European history and our cultural heritage.
But alongside it has come another phenomenon: anti-Islam political movements, first as religious ideology and later in a racialized cloak. And today it’s gaining more traction in Europe, especially as conflicts tense up around immigrant populations.
You can also listen to the episode in a podcast format on the Cultural Broadcast Archive, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim racism form a double helix across European history. These ideologies have informed the politics of the Christian parts of Europe for over a thousand years, and have always been used to galvanize fragmented polities against a shared enemy or a scapegoat. Anti-Muslim racism is an expression of a politically constructed duality between Islam and Christianity, described by Edward Saïd in 1978: ‘The Orient and Islam have a kind of extrareal, phenomenologically reduced status that puts them out of reach of everyone except the Western expert. From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing the orient could not do was to represent itself. Evidence of the Orient was credible only after it had passed through and been made firm by the refining fire of the Orientalist’s work.’
Today, in the asecond of our twin episodes on these intertwined prejudices, we look into anti-Muslim racism and how it informs public discourse.
In the last episode, we talked about anti-Semitism, and today, we have three guests of varying Muslim backgrounds living in Europe and talking about their experience and perspective.
Amani Abuzahra holds a doctorate in philosophy, is an author, public speaker and one of the best-known speakers on the topic of Islam and anti-Muslim racism in Austria. Whether on TV, at conferences, in her publications or in community work, her approach is to deconstruct prejudices and empower people.
Priyanka Hutschenreiter is Eurozine’s very own project manager, and an anthropologist whose work engages with Muslim religious-secular experiences in South Asia and Europe through the lens of queer feminist theory. They hold a PhD in cultural anthropology from SOAS University of London.
Zeynep Demir is a cultural manager native to Istanbul, living and working in Hungary, and is one of the producers of this very talk show.
Amani Abuzahra, Ein Ort Namens Wut
Priyanka Hutschenreiter, Queering postsecularism
Hilda Dayan and Jolande Yansen on Antisemitism, anti-Palestinian racism and Europe
Do Muslim Women Need Saving? by Lila Abu-Lughod
Kenan Malik, The last crusade and Is there something about Islam?
Oliver Roy, Islam in Europe: Clash of religions or convergence of religiosities?
Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt, Culturalism: Culture as political ideology
Märta Bonde’s topical reads, Rephrase and erase
Réka Kinga Papp, editor-in-chief
Daniela Univazo Marquina, writer-editor
Merve Akyel, art director
Zeynep Feriha Demir, producer
Zsófia Gabriella Papp, digital producer
Priyanka Hutschenreiter, project manager
Judit Csikós, financial manager
Csilla Nagyné Kardos, office administration
Senad Hergić, producer
Leah Hochedlinger, video recording
Marlena Stolze, video recording
Clemens Schmiedbauer, video recording
Richard Brusek, sound recording
Milán Golovics, dialogue editor
Dániel Nagy, dialogue editor
Nóra Ruszkai, video editor
István Nagy, post production
Victor Maria Lima, animation
Music by Crypt-of-Insomnia
Julia Sobota closed captions, Polish and French subtitles; language versions management
Farah Ayyash Arabic subtitles
Mia Belén Soriano Spanish subtitles
Marta Ferdebar Croatian subtitles
Lídia Nádori German subtitles
Katalin Szlukovényi Hungarian subtitles
Olena Yermakova Ukrainian subtitles
Aida Yermekbayeva Russian subtitles
The Alte Schmiede Kunstverein, Vienna
This talk show is a Display Europe production: a ground-breaking media platform anchored in public values.
This programme is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and the European Cultural Foundation.
Importantly, the views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and speakers only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the EACEA can be held responsible for them.
Published 23 January 2025
Original in English
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