Muslims
in Europe feel vulnerable to rising hostility over Israel-Gaza
By Layli
Foroudi, Thomas Escritt, Andrew Macaskill and Sarah Marsh
November 29,
2023 8:04 AM
GMT+1Updated a year ago
PARIS/BERLIN/LONDON,
Nov 29 (Reuters) - Jian Omar, a Berlin lawmaker of Kurdish-Syrian background,
feels unprotected by police after suffering hate-filled flyers mixed with glass
and faeces, a broken window and a hammer-wielding assailant since the deadly
Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel.
The three
incidents at Omar’s constituency office form part of increased hostility to
Muslims in Europe fanned at times by politicians since the Hamas assault, more
than 30 community leaders and advocates consulted by Reuters said, adding that
incidents were under-reported because of low trust in police.
"I feel
really alone and if somebody with the status of an elected official can’t be
protected then how must others feel?” said Omar. He said police were
investigating but had told him they could not offer extra security at his
premises.
"Imagine
if a white German politician was attacked by a migrant or a refugee,” he said,
suggesting security forces would do more in such cases. Berlin police did not
reply to a request for comment.
Hate crime
has risen dramatically in Europe since the Oct. 7 assault killed around 1,200
Israelis and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza which has killed around
14,800 Palestinians, with registered antisemitic incidents up 1,240% in London
and steep rises also seen in France and Germany.
Official
data shows a significant, smaller increase in anti-Muslim incidents in Britain
and is patchy for the other two countries. It does not fully capture the extent
of attacks and hostility against individuals and mosques, including children
targeted at school, according to the people Reuters consulted, some of whom
asked not to be named citing fear of retaliation.
Under-reporting
is also prevalent among victims of antisemitism, Jewish groups and leaders in
the three countries said.
Zara
Mohammed, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said government
language, such as calling pro-Palestinian protests "hate marches,"
had made the fight against antisemitism and for the rights of Muslims or
Palestinians a zero-sum game in many people’s minds.
"Ministers
have been really reckless, this peddling of the culture wars and pitting
communities off one another is really unhelpful and it is very divisive and
dangerous as well," she said. The British government did not respond to a
question about official use of such language.
European
Muslims' sense of vulnerability was further heightened with the electoral
victory last week of Dutch far-right populist Geert Wilders, who previously
called for mosques and the Koran to be banned in the Netherlands. In the United
States, there has been deadly anti-Palestinian violence since Oct. 7.
At the Ibn
Ben Badis Mosque in Nanterre, Paris, elderly worshippers fear attending the
dawn prayer in the dark, two worshippers there said, after a written arson
threat against the mosque in late October apparently from a far-right
sympathiser.
Rachid
Abdouni, the mosque president, said a request for extra police protection was
not met. Local police said they were patrolling the area but were low on
resources, he said. The police did not immediately respond to a comment
request.
"Do I
want my daughter to grow up in this climate?" said Khalil Raboun, 42, a
French-Moroccan taxi driver, speaking after Friday prayers outside the mosque.
UNDER-REPORTING
Attempted
arson, verbal abuse, vandalism and a pig's head left at a mosque site were
among more than 700 reports of Islamophobic incidents in Britain the month
after the Hamas attack, campaign group Tell Mama said, a sevenfold increase
over the previous month. Tell Mama only reports some incidents to the police,
with the consent of the complainant.
The French
Muslim Council received 42 letters containing threats or insults between
October 7 and November 1 but has not reported any of them, said council vice
president Abdallah Zekri, among a wave of hate mail and racist graffiti on
mosques.
"The
vast majority of Muslims do not file a complaint when they are victims of such
acts. Even the heads of mosques don't want to. They don't want to spend two
hours or more in a police station to file a complaint that in the end is often
going to be dismissed," Zekri said.
In Germany
also, police often do not register Islamophobic crime as such due to a lack of
awareness, for example attacks on mosques are sometimes registered simply as
damage to property, said Rima Hanano of Claim, an NGO.
"People
affected by racism like Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim often fear to
go to authorities because they are afraid of secondary victimization, that they
will not be believed or made out to be the perpetrators," she said.
A British
government spokesperson said "there must be zero tolerance for
antisemitism, anti-Muslim hatred, or any other forms of hatred," adding
that police were expected to fully investigate such attacks.
Germany's
interior ministry said it "confronts all kinds of hate, including
Islamophobia explicitly" and noted it conducted a survey this year it said
gave greater understanding of anti-Muslim racism.
In France,
interior minister Gerald Darmanin acknowledged additional anti-Muslim acts
since Oct. 7, however French official figures for 2023 appeared on track for a
drop, with 130 incidents through Nov. 14, compared to 188 incidents recorded
all last year. The ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
A
spokesperson for France's national police acknowledged data on anti-Muslim
incidents was "incomplete", and relied on victims filing a complaint.
Security services are actively monitoring for antisemitic incidents, the
spokesperson said.
HISTORY
Both France
and Germany developed institutional mechanisms to respond to antisemitic acts
in the aftermath of the Holocaust of World War Two and in response to continued
prejudice against Jews.
Western
Europe's colonial and religious past has also cast Islam as regressive and
foreign, contributing to entrenched prejudice among parts of the population and
in institutions, said Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, historian at Kings College London and
author of 'Antisemitism and Islamophobia: an entangled history'.
Attacks by
Islamist militants in Europe or abroad often bring repercussions for the
general Muslim population.
After
mosques were defaced and the spread of anti-Muslim commentary by pundits on TV,
French President Emmanuel Macron said last week that "to protect French
people of Jewish faith should not be to pillory French people of Muslim
faith."
However,
historian Zia-Ebrahimi said, the decision by France's interior ministry to ban
pro-Palestinian protests as a risk to public order in the aftermath of the
Hamas attacks fomented a view that Arabs are aggressors and that supporters of
Palestinians are motivated by antisemitism.
Amnesty
International called the blanket ban disproportionate.
Aiman Mazyek
of the German Muslim Council said a federal government commissioner on
Islamophobia was needed to complement existing commissioners for antisemitism
and anti-Roma racism.
"The
fact that we have so many commissioners in Germany and no commissioner for
Islam in particular is discrimination in itself," he said.
Germany's
newly appointed commissioner on racism, Reem Alabali-Radovan, acknowledged a
need for better monitoring after the interior ministry survey showed one in two
Germans hold Islamophobic views.
For some
Muslims in Germany, which has welcomed about a million Syrians and just under
400,000 Afghans in recent years, rising hostility came as a surprise.
Ghalia
Zaghal came to Germany from Syria in 2015 and said she never had major issues
with discrimination. But shortly after Oct. 7, she was shoved twice in one day,
with one man shouting at her: "This is my street, not yours."
"I was
too shocked to go to the police,” said Zaghal, who owns a Berlin beauty salon.
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Reporting by
Layli Foroudi in Paris, Thomas Escritt and Sarah Marsh in Berlin and Andrew
MacAskill in London; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel
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