The Other Malaysia (http://www.othermalaysia.org)
‘The Pathologisation of Muslims As Everything That is Wrong With Europe’, 3 December 2009
by Farish A. Noor
The recent ban on the construction of minarets for mosques in Switzerland - passed by a majority of Swiss citizens mind you - is symptomatic of something that is far more disturbing in Western Europe today. The first decade of this century has witnessed the rise of a new wave of extreme right-wing politicians and political parties across Western Europe, some with scant regard for ideological consistency and coherence, with the sole purpose of mobilising the masses against the perceived ‘threat’ of foreigners in general and Muslims in particular.
But historians will note that these developments are neither new nor unique. After all, Europe has continually been through such prolonged instances of moral panic and mass hysteria when it had to face the fact that it was and is part of a bigger world where other cultural and religious possibilities exist, and where alterity can one day arrive at your doorstep. Looking back to the 19th century we recall the bad old days when Western Europeans were panicking at the thought of the dreaded ‘yellow peril’, and where fear of the massive and sudden migration of Asians - notably Chinese - led to a backlash that expressed itself through the stereotypes and cliches of Asians as devious and perfidious Orientals who would stop at nothing to eat up your property and sell opium to your children. Then came the recurrent fear of Indian, Africans and of course Arabs.
The present climate of fear over and about Islam and Muslims is therefore something that comes in the train of a long history of Othering the Other, and casting the other as alien, strange, exotic and sometimes potentially malevolent and dangerous. Except in this case we are talking about a Western Europe where Muslims have become part of the social fabric and where Muslim settlement dates back to the post-war decades of the 1950s, with the migration of Indians, Africans, West Indians and North Africans to the continent.
For a host of reasons, the success and failure of the various immigrant communities in Europe has been uneven. While some communities have successfully climbed up the social-economic ladder, others have lagged behind. Compounding the difficulties are the prevailing stereotypes that make up the normative structure of racialised capitalism and post-colonial race-relations. Arabs in the West suffer particular abuse and racial stereotyping in this regard, for the media and popular culture continue to present them as ghetto-bound misfits and pathologically violent maladjusted figures who stand out in bold relief against the domesticated background of multicultural society. Until today, the perception remains that Arabs in particular are prone to violence, domestic abuse, misogyny and a host of social ills that seem to point to the primordial past of Europe that Europeans wish to forget. Cast in that light, Arabs seem to be framed as the figures of defeat and failure, as if the Enlightenment project itself could not go that far and could not ‘rescue’ these people who are beyond redemption, due to their culture and religion.
But hang on… Since when are individuals determined essentially and totally by culture, history or religion? And why is it that in the case of Arab-Muslims in particular there is no latitude given to free will, agency and the potential for self-transformation?
A vicious cycle seems to have been created by this dialectic between stereotypes and limited opportunity structures: Arabs are seen as incompatible with the West and whatever the latter stands for, and as such are less likely to be given the chance to succeed and reinvent themselves. I sadly note that in all the years that I taught in Europe, I did not have a single Arab-Muslim student to supervise at Masters or Phd level. The stereotype has become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
It is against this context that the ban on minarets and mosques in Switzerland has to be understood. Coming at a time when Dutch politicians like Geert Wilders are calling for a re-think over the place and belonging of Muslims in Holland; all of this bodes ill for Europe’s own perception of itself and its place in the world. If Arab Muslims in Switzerland (as in Holland, France, Germany and elsewhere) fit in less today, perhaps these politicians ought to ask themselves what they have done - or not done - to give these people the same opportunity structures they expect and demand for themselves?
Europe’s multicultural project seems to be failing, but that is not because European Muslims cannot fit in or refuse to do so. The one thing that none of these right-wing European politicians want to admit or address is the institutionalised modes of racism and discrimination that have led to the marginalisation of communities that yearned to belong but were told that they did not. Until that is addressed, banning mosques and minarets will do little or nothing to solve Europe’s own troubled conscience as it seeks to define its multicultural project anew.
(End)
