They have injected fear in a multicultural society, mixing old prejudices with real problems of integration and, above all, the post 9/11 hysteria that portrays each Muslim as a potential terrorist. On the other hand, I strongly oppose the inclination in many Muslim-majority countries like Turkey to explain each and every incident that involves Muslims by referring to rising Islamophobia in Westerns societies. Not every conflict is related to bad feelings about Islam. Sometimes problems are purely private; at times they are caused by bad habits by the police or other state institutions from which non-Muslims also suffer. Maybe even more important, with all the attention for the growing visibility of Islamophobes, one should never forget that approximately 75 percent of Europeans do not agree with their obsessive behavior.
Let me take this last point one step further. I have the strong impression that using Islamophobia as an instrument to gain support for extremist policies has reached its limits. In the Netherlands, one could see it coming already last year. Asked why they had voted for the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, one of the leading global Islamophobes, most people responded by listing other reasons than fear of Muslims or their religion. Wilders got 15 percent of the votes in the last national elections because his electorate hates the mainstream politicians, is afraid of losing their job and their identity as a result of globalization and migration and is sick and tired of the many petty crimes by young Moroccans. It is true, they distrust Muslims but most of them do not share the deep hatred espoused by Wilders himself. Some even blamed him for overdoing his criticism of Islam. That was a first sign that fear mongering was not the catch-all mechanism that Wilders and his close circle hoped it could be.
Things have moved on since. The Arab Spring showed that Arabs, the quintessential Muslims, have the same dreams as Europeans. They want less corruption, more democracy and better living conditions. In Tunis and Cairo protesters did not go into the streets to ask for more shariah or an Islamic state. Their clear message and courageous behavior subtly undermined the populist argument that depicts Muslims as confirmed anti-democrats.
On top of the changing paradigm at the neighbors' came the real problems Europe is facing. They are economic and institutional and in no way related to Islam. Uncertain and anxious Europeans want their politicians to come up with credible answers to the euro crisis and are not interested in their opinions on issues that do not top the list of priorities of most citizens, like Islam. Clever populists got the message and have changed tactics.
In the Dutch debate on where the country is heading, Islam is almost absent. But, according to the extremists, there is a new enemy. Its name: Europe. Both right-wing and leftist populists are targeting the European Union and blaming Brussels for the problems the eurozone is facing. It's the bureaucrats and the complicated rules they have forced on the EU member states that are held responsible. And why, the radicals argue, should the Dutch pay for the reckless behavior of other Europeans? That brings into the spotlight the other culprits: the Greeks.
Listening to Wilders these days, you would think that for the rightwing populists the Greeks have become the new Muslims. They can be blamed for everything. No mention of the European banks that gave all these cheap credits to the Greek governments, creating a national debt that is almost insurmountable. No reference to the European leaders that rejected tougher rules in the past because they did not want to give up their own sovereignty. That is all far too complicated for populists. The new game in town is bashing Greece and the Greeks. They are lazy, wasted our money and can't be trusted. Better kick them out of the eurozone.
It is the same mechanism of exclusion that we have seen before in which all Greeks are held responsible for the mistakes of some. I wonder how long it will take this time before the old scapegoats have to be replaced by new ones.
