How Do Muslims Respond to Far Right Political Mobilization in Their European State?

• Author: Jackson, Pamela Irving
• Position: ARTICLE - Essay

Introduction (1)

Far right rhetoric and jihadi-inspired terrorist incidents have derailed progress on the minority protection initiatives begun in earnest with the European Year against Racism declared by the European Council of Ministers and representatives of the member states' governments in 1997. These efforts were intended to reduce disparities and polarizations in Europe by removing barriers to the full participation of minorities in European States. (2) The Council of Europe targeted eight key areas of life in its effort to monitor and improve parity between minorities, including Muslims, and those who call themselves "natives" of Europe. (3) The key areas are "employment, housing, healthcare, nutrition, education, information, culture and basic public functions (which include equality, anti-discrimination and self-organization)." (4) Reducing discrimination remains an elusive goal in this effort, though critical to minimizing minority/majority disparities and utilizing the talents of minorities in Europe. Discrimination predominately targets Muslims, whose conservative lifestyle and overt practice of religion draw unwanted attention in secular Europe, and far right parties have mobilized to deny Muslims a place in European culture. (5) The diversity protection initiatives that began twenty years ago are viewed with suspicion by those attracted to the nativism promoted by right wing populist parties. Regardless of Europe's need for labor and the demographic trough many member-states face, experts' recommendations for addressing these problems are not persuasive to some in the ethnic majority. Demographers, like the economist-technocrats guiding the European Parliament's policymaking or advising center-left political parties, face a skeptical audience for their analyses. (6) Weakened trust in the state and in European policymakers also instigates a turning away from experts on the part of voters.

Yet quantitative research on Muslims in Europe consistently demonstrates their support for democracy as it is practiced in their European state and their greater approval than non-Muslims of political, judicial and criminal justice institutions. (7) Where exceptions to this trend occur, as, for example, in the weaker support for police on the part of Muslims in France, the reasons are clear. Both the French high court and minority protection agencies have criticized the French police practice of routine identity checks of men of color (who are likely to be Muslims) in France. (8) Despite their unfair police scrutiny, Muslims in France are as likely as non-Muslims to trust the legal system, as data from the European Social Survey show. (9)

We can expect then that Muslims will make demands of the democratic agencies in Europe: that they will use electoral and legislative political processes to attain protections and that they will adapt the organization of Islam and its teaching to their circumstances in Europe. It may be that their guest worker or refugee family backgrounds have heightened the appreciation Muslims have for the democratic institutions of their European states, but their expectations of Europe grow with each generation born there. Previously, data from the European Social Survey in 2008 have shown that Muslims born in France or the Netherlands, for example, are at least 15 percent more likely to feel that they are members of a group that is discriminated than other Muslims living in these states but born abroad. (10) In this paper, we examine more recent data on Muslims' attitudes in Europe and consider state-level indicators of their political and policy environments relating to multiculturalism.

Country Selection and Data Sources

Using data from the European Social Survey up through 2014 we look below at evidence of Muslims' European identification in France, Austria and the Netherlands, including their trust in the political process in the current era of hate speech directed toward them. We also evaluate measures of their perception of the discrimination they experience. We examine these states because, in all three, far right political mobilization stoked anti-Muslim sentiment during the run-up to 2016-2017 national elections for president or prime minister. The Muslim minority was the most salient target of the far right's anti-immigration rhetoric in each state. The center prevailed in all three nations, but these electoral campaigns further legitimized hostility toward the religious minority and denial of Muslims' place in European culture. (11) Norbert Hofer's right wing Freedom Party (FPO) platform, for example, rallied Austrians against '"the invasion of Muslims.'" (12) Marine Le Pen's National Front promised France "fewer mosques and less halal meat." (13) Geert Wilders led the Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands, declaring that "Islam and freedom are not compatible." (14)

Although they represent less than 10 percent of the population in each of these European states, Muslims are perceived to be a greater demographic presence. The 2016 Ipsos MORI Perils of Perception Survey found, for example, that French respondents overestimated the size of the Muslim population there by 24 percent. Muslims composed 7.5 percent of the French population in 2016 but French respondents overestimated their size at 31 percent. (15) The gap between perceptions of the size of the Muslim population and its reality reflects a general lack of accurate information about Muslims in Europe. Speculation abounds regarding Muslims' reactions to being targeted by hate speech. Will they radicalize or use the political system as Europeans to counter the hostility toward them? Muslims have not fully mobilized to vote. Will they do so now? Which parties will court their vote? Will they form new political parties, or join with other Europeans of similar socio-economic backgrounds in established parties?

With data from the Chapel Hill Experts Survey and Banting and Kymlicka's Multiculturalism Policy Index, we examine the degree to which multiculturalism has been institutionalized in these states, providing a pathway to minority inclusion. The START database on terrorism at the University of Maryland allows us to look directly at the level of jihadi inspired terrorism in Europe. Official reactions to these problems underscore the paradigm shift away from minority protections in Europe and represent a challenge to Muslims. We consider these difficulties and how Muslims in Europe are responding.

National and European Political, Policy and Terrorism Context

The extent of far right political mobilization in western Europe is reflected in Table 1. While we look specifically at Austria, France and the Netherlands in this paper, the growth of support for right wing agendas is a prominent feature of the political landscape in the other developed democracies of the region and has repercussions for policymaking at the supranational level of the European Council and Parliament. (16) Table 1 lists for the three nations on which we focus the stable, electorally successful far right populist parties with a realistic prospect of attaining national office. (17) Successful right wing parties are specified for each country in the second column of this table, next to the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) 2014 ratings of their policy positions on immigration and multiculturalism in columns 3 and 4. The number of seats each party has earned in national parliament is indicated in column 5 (taken from the 2016 Parliaments and Governments Data Base (ParlGov)). The percent of the actual vote obtained in national elections between 2010-2015 is provided in column 6. (18) In the last column of Table 1, we report the party's mean value in the left/right dimension (from 2016 (ParlGov)).

A summary look at the table shows that all three of these western European states have stable, electorally successful right wing parties that are fully in favor of restrictive immigration policy (column 3, IM), opposed to multiculturalism (MC, column 4), and scored as right wing by scholars on a left/right dimension scale (column 7, T-R). These figures reflect a fertile backdrop for growing support for far right candidates and their message throughout western Europe. (19) The most recent national elections in Austria, France and the Netherlands show that the far right message has taken root.

Austria's Freedom Party (FPO) for example, led by Norbert Hofer, earned 46 percent of the vote in his 2016 presidential run-off election loss to Alexander Van der Bellen. Then in 2017, Sebastian Kurz led the Austrian People's Party (OVP) to the right, winning the election and ultimately forming a coalition government with the Freedom Party in an outcome "feared" by some Muslim leaders. (20) Thirty-one-year-old Kurz took anti-immigration positions "ripped from the populist playbook." (21) Some describe such populist successes as votes "not simply against mainstream parties... but against meritocratic elites who have arguably lost touch with their roots" (emphasis ours). (22) But, also in 2017, Marine Le Pen lost to Emmanuel Macron in a run-off election for the presidency in France with 33.9 percent of the vote. In the Netherlands, the Party for Freedom (PVV), led by Geert Wilders, won 13 percent of the vote and gained 5 seats, coming in second to the liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). The PVV "won 5 seats and is the second largest party in the Netherlands with 20 seats," (23) but did not come close to beating the VVD, which remains "the largest party in the country with 33 seats (out of 150)." (24) In Austria, France and the Netherlands, electoral gains by the prominent right wing party, though insufficient to propel them to power, provide a basis of credibility from which to pull conservative party agendas toward the right with the threat of voter defections to the far right populist party.

Table 2 demonstrates a low level of...