With France taking over the presidency of the European Union

European Muslims are preparing for more pressure and polarization

• France is witnessing an intense debate about the "Islamic identity".

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• Emmanuel Macron adopted a hard line towards Muslims in his country.

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• Targeting Muslims has become a strong presence in the electoral campaigns.

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France has assumed the rotating presidency of the European Union, for the next six months, an opportunity that President Emmanuel Macron will undoubtedly take advantage of to push Europe towards his goal of the world's largest "strategic independence".

Some in Brussels worry that the disputed presidential election in April could interfere with France's presidency of the European Union, before the conference on Europe's future yields any results.

Nor is it reassuring that Macron's temporary decision to hoist the blue and gold EU flag over the Arc de Triomphe in Paris has already angered both right-wing and conservative candidates in the elections.

But many European Muslims are concerned about France's tenure in the EU presidency, for another reason: they fear that France's divisive and anti-Muslim political rhetoric will dangerously seep into EU policymaking.

The French election campaign basically means that the season is open to target Muslims in France.

Many French politicians have adopted "Islamophobia" as an electoral strategy.

Toxic debates about Islam and Muslims, mixed with cross-border blows on race and immigration, are becoming increasingly toxic.

Alarmingly, attacks on Muslims are no longer the preserve of the far-right anti-immigration candidate, Marine Le Pen.

Macron's hardline interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, accused Le Pen, during a recent televised debate, of being "tolerant" of Muslims.

Former television analyst Eric Zemmour has brought a fiercer anti-Muslim agenda into the presidential contest, while Gaullist Republic candidate Valerie Pecres is taking a hard line on immigration, having previously banned the burqa in open public places and recreational centers in the country. Paris region.

Macron himself, who is expected to seek re-election, is already implementing a series of anti-Muslim policies, including a bill supposedly aimed at preventing "separatism" and the emergence of a "counter-society" among France's six million Muslims.

Macron's government is also under fire for shutting down France's Anti-Islamophobia Rally, a leading anti-discrimination body that documents hate crimes against Muslims.

barbs

But the fear, now, is that France will use its EU presidency to push for tougher European measures.

It's a reasonable fear, as French ministers criticized the European Commissioner for Equality, Helena Daly, meeting members of the European Muslim Youth Forum and student organizations FEMISSO, a network that participated in the Council of Europe's anti-discrimination campaign and focused on the headscarf.

That campaign caused a political outcry in France as an assault on its "values".

Dali defended the meeting with representatives of "Femiso" to discuss the challenges facing young European Muslims, as "the result of stereotypes, discrimination and outright hatred."

In attacking Dali during the meeting, Macron's Minister of Citizenship, Marlene Schiappa, said that "Femso" is an "Islamic association" that attacks France and "infiltrates" the institutions of the European Union, allegations that Femeso categorically denies by its president, Hand Tanner. In a statement, he described the allegations as “laughable.”

Meanwhile, the French government's intervention with the European Commission led to a delay that eventually led to the cancellation - ostensibly for administrative reasons - of EU funding for another rights group, Alliance Situen, which defends the right of Muslim women to swim in public places and swimming pools. They wear the burkini for veiled women.

Reports and articles on France and Europe, in the past years, point to a persistent concern about Islam as an alien faith, Muslims as undesirable foreigners, and an irrational fear of hijab and halal food.

And vitriolic rhetoric that conflates Islam, extremism and terrorism is a boring recurring phenomenon in formal and informal gatherings.

The panic of Muslims in France has similarities elsewhere. In Austria, former chancellor Sebastian Kurz targeted the alleged emergence of so-called political Islam, after launching a website, and sharply criticized “Map of Islam,” which shows the locations of more than 600 mosques.

The map, according to human rights groups, led to violent incidents against Muslims.

disturbing questions

Denmark's former immigration minister, Inger Stojberg, was recently sentenced to prison for illegally ordering the separation of young asylum-seeking husbands from Syria and Iraq, where the wives were under 18. Stojberg said she wanted to protect the "little wives". It has caused controversy before, by saying that Danish Muslims are denied workplaces during Ramadan, because daytime fasting can create safety risks. While the minister has been isolated, and kept out of politics, it is hard not to see Denmark's hard-line approach to "integration" and refugees, including a June law that enables it to transfer asylum seekers outside the European Union while their cases are processed, in part out of fear of Muslims.

The Austrian academic, Farid Hafez, raises troubling questions about the motive behind the Vienna Forum to Combat Segregation and Extremism in the Context of Integration, an annual conference launched by Austria with the support of France and Denmark to combat “political Islam” and the so-called “nonviolent extremism and Islamism.”

If not "outright McCarthyism," as Hafez calls it, such initiatives are a dangerous step toward prejudging all Muslims as a potential threat to liberal societies.

Once confined to the European Union's far-right groups, France's focus on Muslims has extended across the European political scene.

Islam is seen as a threat to nationalist secular traditions or to the idea of ​​"Christian Europe".

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his European Union allies have long revolted against Muslims, but the rhetoric of anti-Muslim extremists has become the norm for many EU conservatives.

• Alarmingly, attacking Muslims in France is no longer the preserve of the far-right anti-immigration candidate, Marine Le Pen.

• France's focus on Muslims extended across the European political scene, after it was confined to the extreme right-wing groups in the European Union.

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