LONDON (Middle East Eye) - Muslim civil society organizations have raised the alarm about a rising tide of state-sponsored Islamophobia in Europe at a major security and human rights conference in Poland.
France, Denmark and Austria were among countries singled out over policies which campaigners said were contributing towards a “systematic suppression of Muslim civil society” across the continent.
Addressing the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Human Dimension Conference in Warsaw on Thursday, Lamies Nassri, a project manager at the Centre for Muslim Rights (CEDA) in Denmark, said Islamophobia was spreading throughout Europe and called on governments to protect their Muslim citizens.
Nassri told delegates: “It is your responsibility as member states to see to it that citizens in these member states are protected from state racism, surveillance, stigmatization and violence both symbolically and physically.”
Highlighting the situation in Denmark, Nassri said Islamophobia was being “enabled directly through state policy and participation” and was “no longer a far-right issue but is shared across the political spectrum”.
Nassri said many Muslims in Denmark faced discrimination through the country’s categorization of people from non-western backgrounds which, she said, took precedence over their rights as Danish citizens.
She cited the impact on Muslim communities of the so-called “ghetto laws”, a package of measures targeted at deprived neighborhoods with large populations from migrant and ethnic minority backgrounds which the Danish government says are necessary to promote integration.
Nassri said the laws were discriminatory against Muslims and ethnic minorities, depriving them of their rights and portraying them as “enemies within the state, who live in parallel societies that must be fought”.
“We also see this targeting in the way Muslims families are portrayed as oppressive and controlling toward their children and, as such, need to be surveilled,” she added, citing a law requiring non-western residents in “ghetto” neighbourhoods to put their children into state nurseries from the age of one “to get instruction in Danish values and language”.
“We also see this targeting in the way Muslims families are portrayed as oppressive and controlling toward their children and, as such, need to be surveilled,” she added, citing a law that requires non-western residents in “ghetto” neighborhoods to put their children into state nurseries from the age of one “to get instruction in Danish values and language”.
Delegates from France underscored the impact on Muslim communities of the so-called “imams’ charter” which was adopted last year by the French Council of the Muslim Faith at the behest of French President Emmanuel Macron.
The survey found that 69 percent of Muslims currently employed in the UK experienced some sort of Islamophobic behavior during work-related engagements.