Nowadays Muslim women are at the centre of debate in Europe, where the issue of religious symbols has become the emblematic political element of tension between Islam and the West, between Muslims and European cultural policies. These are old issues that have always influenced relations between these two worlds. However, the fear fomented in the past by long clashes and conflicts that saw them playing leading roles in history, have today – after 9/11 and the terrorist attacks on London and Madrid – become powerful echoes in our societies’ widespread social sentiments. Here in fact, the revival of the religious slant in stigmatising aspects – after the dramatic history of anti-Semitism in the course of the 20th century – has led to a redefining of religion in terms of “negative brands” and “stigma.”
After 9/11 Muslim communities in various European countries – often consisting in people born and bred in those same countries and only partly migrants – have become, as emerges from the international press and reports from human rights organisations, the object of protest demonstrations, contempt, and often unwarranted social and institutional controls. The attitude, involving a pathological aversion and fear of Islam and Muslims – known as Islamophobia – is expressed in different ways, ranging from expressions that are not specifically ideological and thus linked to words used to make the other feel inferior or locked into a unchanging identity, leaving no space for other forms of subjectivity, to attacks, violence and discrimination that tends to seriously restrict participation in political, social, economic and cultural life.
The frontiers of desire tattooed on the body
Half a century after the Shoah, cultural and religious diversity have become once again the symbol of radical ‘otherness’ that cannot be assimilated and for which, in spite of themselves, women have become the main targets. This is exactly because Muslim women, described by the Moroccan sociologist Fatema Mernissi as those wearing the frontiers of desire tattooed on their bodies, reveal with their physical and symbolic visibility, and their corporeity, an excessiveness they would like to deny and delete. The issue of the visibility of religious belonging is in fact a crucial element. The visible marks of being Muslim – in particular using the hijab and traditional clothes – are often at the origin of branding another as the enemy by the host society.
Although based on the cultural aspects of an assumed diversity, the stereotypes and prejudices that concur in fomenting the more or less explicit forms of racism addressed at Muslims do not, however, also scorn resorting to exterior characteristics, the physical appearance, and support the fact that “nature” and “culture” are jointly used to foment an idea of superiority. Women, in particular, are one of the main targets of verbal and psychological attacks, both because their appearance instantly contributes to providing them with specific connotations – as “Muslims” – and because by appearing in public places (such as markets, shops, schools, etc.) far more frequently than men, they interact more with others.
On this subject it is interesting to observe how not only Muslim women who wear the hijab may be the victims of attacks and insults, but that those who do not wear it are also attacked, in this case by traditionalist Muslims who strongly oppose lifestyles considered as excessively “western.” In recent years, cases such as these have been reported by the press in various European countries, bringing to our attention how once again women are very often sacrificial victims appointed by men attempting to reaffirm their own power using forms of extreme social control over the female body.
In a review of episodes of this kind collected by observers who work on reporting various forms of racism and discrimination in various European countries, there are cases involving Muslim women, in Austria for example, repeatedly insulted in the streets, or women wearing a headscarf thrown out of taxis, busses or the metro due to their assumed responsibility for extremist terrorist attacks. There are also cases involving Muslim girls beaten up, spat on and whose hijab was removed while they walked through small and large European cities. These events, which are not considered sporadic but rather more or less significantly widespread, depending on the context and specific historical moments in nearly all European countries, have often resulted in Muslim organisations advising their members to opt for low-profile behaviour, and for women to avoid wearing a veil in public places. This confirms the impact these visual identification symbols might foment.
The assimilation and the similarity of the exterior appearance, in fact, appear to be very significant factors in establishing to what extent other cultures can be accepted or tolerated within a given social environment. As far as the hijab is concerned, one sees clearly how stereotypes associated with a climate of suspicion that has spread after 9/11 and the attacks on London and Madrid, are combined with deeply rooted prejudices linked to conditions involving subordination, submission and a lack of emancipation one is used to attributing to Muslim women. There is no attention paid to the manners in which these women continuously negotiate their multiple belonging and recreate the social link between subjectivity and public space in a context such as the European one.
The issue of Islam’s visibility
In many case the origin of such attacks appears to involve the wish to deny Islam visibility. In fact, in heterogeneous ways and forms, with its presence, Islam has begun to “mark” a physical and a symbolic territory – Europe more specifically – that is still considered undividable and inalienable. There is more to this however. These feelings of hatred and disdain that radicalise religion and culture as elements of irreparable diversity, give rise to racism-related mechanisms and relations between people that are totally similar to those arising from racism in its various manifestations. Islamophobia is, in fact, a form of racism, (“new racism”) – and not simply religious intolerance – since in slightly different guises one finds here the same psychological mechanisms and the same social practices that lead to the discrimination of particular groups of people due to their assumed unchangeable characteristics.
In addition to being an ideology, an ensemble of ideas, opinions, stereotypes and prejudices, Islamophobia becomes a real social relationship that leads to discrimination, hatred, contempt and exclusion. Furthermore, it is fomented and in turn results in a tautological mechanism according to which the simple enunciation of alarm and fear of Muslims is needed to prove the reality denounced by Islamophobia. This means that every Muslim in some way hides an imminent threat. The role played by a number of political and social players, added to the function of echoer and repeater of the lowest possible level of degraded common sense provided by the media, all contribute to ensure that particularly alarmist definitions of reality then acquire a dimension of increasing objectivity. This appears to be directly confirmed also by the generalised tendency to normalise, institutionalise, if not even trivialise certain manners of speech and practices that, we believe, are the most dangerous result of the anti-Muslim attitude and ensure the affirmation of a perverse mechanism involving a social construction of reality.
Monica Massari is a sociologist. She is the author of the book "Islamophobia: Islam and Fear".
Translation by Francesca Simmons