Islamophobia research paper + annotated bibliography

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Ethnic and Racial Studies

ISSN: 0141-9870 (Print) 1466-4356 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rers20

Online Islamophobia and the politics of fear: manufacturing the green scare

Mattias Ekman

To cite this article: Mattias Ekman (2015) Online Islamophobia and the politics of fear: manufacturing the green scare, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38:11, 1986-2002, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2015.1021264

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1021264

Published online: 30 Mar 2015.

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Online Islamophobia and the politics of fear: manufacturing the green scare

Mattias Ekman

(Received 26 March 2014; accepted 9 February 2015)

Negative attitudes and explicit racism against Muslims are increasingly visible in public discourse throughout Europe. Right-wing populist parties have strengthened their positions by focusing on the ‘Islamic threat’ to the West. Concurrently, the Internet has facilitated a space where racist attitudes towards Muslims are easily disseminated into the public debate, fuelling animosity against European Muslims. This paper explores part of the online Islamophobic network and scrutinizes the discursive strategies deployed by three ‘prominent’ online actors. By combining social network analysis and critical discourse analysis, the study shows that Islamophobic web pages constitute a dynamic network with ties to different political and geographical milieus. They create a seemingly mainstream political position by framing racist standpoints as a defence of Western values and freedom of speech. The study also shows that Islamophobic discourse is strengthened by xenophobic currents within mass media, and by the legitimization of intellectuals and political actors.

Keywords: Islamophobia; counter-jihad; social media; racism; online networks; multiculturalism

Introduction

The idea that the Western world is ‘under attack’, ‘silently occupied’ by, or even at ‘civil war’ with Islam, is widespread among actors in the populist far right. The suggestion that an ongoing ‘jihad’ is being fought at the heart of ‘European civilization’ probably sounds like an implausible conspiracy to most people. However, the concept is just a click away as it has permeated into public discourse. Animosity, fear and explicit racism aimed towards Muslims are not new phenomena. On the contrary, anti-Muslim sentiments have been part of Western discourses and narratives for centuries (Gardell 2010; Said 1978). However, in recent years, anti-Muslim attitudes are increasingly visible in public discourse throughout Europe (Kundnani 2008, 2012a). In several European countries populist right-wing political parties focusing on the ‘Islamic problem’ have gained access to, or have strengthened their positions in, national parliaments (Rydgren 2008, 2011). Ethno-nationalist and populist right-wing parties have also been able to influence and transform political discourses and policies on immigration and Muslims in Europe (Yilmaz 2012). Prolific populist leaders like Wilders in the Netherlands and Kjaersgaard in Denmark have placed anti-Muslim rhetoric on the mainstream political agenda. In 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that multiculturalism had ‘failed

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Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2015 Vol. 38, No. 11, 1986–2002, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1021264

spectacularly’ in Germany (Lentin and Titley 2011, 1). Merkel’s declaration was followed by similar statements by several other European prime ministers such as Nicolas Sarkozy in France, José María Aznar in Spain and David Cameron in the UK (Kundnani 2012a). The declared failure of multiculturalism, along with the Mohammed cartoon crises, the French and Belgian niqab ban, the hijab debate (Gardell 2010), the halal debate, and the Swiss minarets ban (Lean and Esposito 2012), are examples of ‘culturalist interpretations of diversity’ that reduce people to ‘cultures, ethnicities or religions’ (Kundnani 2012a, 114). For example, by reducing complex social and economic relations to a matter of ‘culture’, it becomes possible to claim that Europe has a ‘Muslim problem’ (115). Those who stress the failure of multiculturalism often highlight Muslims as the foremost example of how integration policies around Europe have failed. Far-right actors have through ‘successive right- wing political interventions … established Muslims immigrants as an incompatible ontological category predicated on culture’, and moved issues on immigration ‘to the centre of political discourse’ (Yilmaz 2012, 368). So, Islamophobic currents affect the practices of the political mainstream, transforming legislations, political decision- making and policies on security and immigration specifically targeting European Muslims (Cesari 2010; Fekete 2009).

Simultaneously, the Internet has facilitated a space where xenophobic viewpoints and racist attitudes towards Muslims are easily disseminated into the public debate. By endorsing and normalizing extreme standpoints on immigration and immigrants, Islamophobic actors have pushed the boundaries of publicly accepted speech on Muslims and immigration. A large number of websites, blogs and communities form a network that disseminates theories of an ongoing Islamic colonization of the West. This network is sometimes labelled ‘counter-jihad’ (Feldman 2012). The discursive practices of deeming Islam and Muslims living in the West as the most prominent threat to ‘inner security’ and to ‘Western values’ have been referred to as the manufacturing of the ‘green scare’ (Kumar 2012), the ‘Islam scare’ (Fekete 2009) and the ‘green peril’ (Carr 2006).

The aim of this article is twofold. First, it provides an introductory overview of the character and structure of the counter-jihadist online network. By doing so the paper pinpoints some of the central actors in the network. Second, the article taps into the discursive construction of Islam and Muslims disseminated on three key online platforms in the network. The article discusses the concept of Islamophobia in relation to theories of racism. Furthermore, it relates online Islamophobia to anti-Muslim discourses in the news media. The paper combines elements of social network analysis (SNA) and critical discourse analysis (CDA). It provides a summary of a social network analysis of the online Islamophobic milieu. This summary is based on a computer-generated network analysis that discloses linking structures, and a more content-based social network analysis (Kozinets 2010). This approach enables both quantitative aspects of network ties and qualitative knowledge about inter-discursive and intertextual relationships. In order to understand the discursive strategies, the study deploys elements of CDA (Fairclough 1995). Discourse is understood as ‘constructions or significations of some domain of social practice from a particular perspective’ (Fairclough 1995, 94), but also as ‘the production of language that has a will to power’ (Poole 2012, 165). Thus, by analysing discourse, the paper examines

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the production and reproduction of social power and the relation between language and material practices (Fairclough 1995). The CDA consists of a thematic analysis (van Dijk 2000) of blog posts, highlighting the central framing (Fairclough 1995) of Muslims and Islam (cf. Poole 2006).

Islamophobia and racism

When the term Islamophobia emerged into academic writing some fifteen years ago, it sparked great controversy (Klug 2012). However, over time, Islamophobia has advanced into an accepted concept that implies hatred or animosity aimed at Islam and Muslims (Kayaoglu 2012; Klug 2012). The task here is to discuss it in relation to theories on racism and xenophobia (cf. Fekete 2009; Gardell 2010; Miles and Brown 2003), and thus provide an analytical definition.

Some scholars view Islamophobia as a form of cultural racism (Schiffer and Wagner 2011). The idea of cultural differences has gradually replaced the ideas of biological differences ‘as a basis for excluding or inferiorization, both in discourse and practice’ (Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1992, 14). In cultural racism, cultural signifiers are used to manifest essentially fixed characterizations among different groups in society, and these differences are essentially ‘insurmountable’ (Balibar 1992, 21). By using cultural elements to distinguish groups from each other, cultural racism also denies the very notion of race and racism. However, as Balibar (1992, 23) points out, ‘a racism without race’ is not particularly new – its prototype is anti- Semitism. This suggests that elements of biological inferiority and bio-essentialism have merely migrated into the discursive order of ‘culture’. For example, statements that deem Muslims to be ‘this and that’ (Gardell 2010, 12) constitute elements in a larger order of discourse that define what Muslims are. Richardson (2004, 232) reveals that British media are stereotyping Muslims, representing them as ‘cultural[ly] devian[t] … and as cultural threat’, thereby fuelling anti-Muslim sentiment in society. Poole (2006, 101f) shows that British news media frame Muslims as a threat to the security in the UK and as a threat to British mainstream values. Furthermore, the news media often claim that there are fundamental differences between Muslims and non- Muslims that creates tensions in inter-personal relations, and that Muslims are ‘increasingly making their presence felt in the public sphere’.

Other scholars such as Miles and Brown (2003, 164ff) argue that Islamophobia is not ‘an instance of racism’, but ‘primarily … a hostility towards Islam’ – however ‘it manifests itself as hostility towards Muslims’, and hence Islamophobia interacts with racism in the sense that racism creates an object (body). The hatred of Islam (Islamophobia), is therefore also somatic in character, it entails the enemy body ‘Muslim’ or ‘Arab’ (29). However, in Western racist discourse, the specific representation of the object ‘Muslim’ is contingent – depending on historical shifts, the somatic ‘Muslim’ can be an object of desire, distrust, curiosity, violence, and so on (cf. 167). So, historical forms of racism directed at Muslims do not always entail Islamophobia. Instead, Islamophobia can be understood as a distinct discourse that continuously interacts with racism, but that, simultaneously, is irreducible to racism. Following the concept of Islamophobia as a separate discourse that interact with racism, Gardell’s (2010, 17) definition of Islamophobia as ‘socially reproduced

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prejudices about, and aversions against, Islam and Muslims, and actions and practices that attack, exclude or discriminate people on the basis that they are, or perceived to be, Muslims and associated with Islam’ (author’s translation), is analytically useful here.

Furthermore, Islamophobia is not dependent on the ‘sociological reality or the theological framework of Islam’ (Miles and Brown 2003, 166), but relies on specific (and historical contingent) signifiers, such as the ‘terrorist’ or the ‘suicide bomber’. Modern Islamophobia also borrows elements from the historical discourse of orientalism (Said 1978). The idea of a single ‘Orient’, essentially different from the West – a society that accommodates a conservative, savage, sensual and violent cultural system – is pivotal in orientalism. Arab Muslim societies are perceived to be static and authoritarian, and therefore numb to processes of social and cultural development (Richardson 2004, 11). Within the discourse of orientalism, Muslims (particularly Arab Muslims) are perceived to be incapable of the independent and rational reasoning that defines the quintessence of European enlightenment (Gardell 2010, 65). Contemporary orientalists like Bernard Lewis claim that the ‘Muslim mind’ is fettered by history and therefore remains totally ‘unregenerately’ (Said [1981] 1997, xxxii). These historical conceptions are reflected in contemporary Islamophobic discourses. Kumar (2012, 41ff) summarizes five ‘orientalist myths’ that still prevail in Western societies. Islam is monolithic. Islam is uniquely sexist. The ‘Muslim mind’ is incapable of reason and rationality. Islam is inherently violent. Muslims are incapable of democracy and self-rule.

However, unlike historical orientalism, contemporary Islamophobia predominantly situates the ‘other’ within a Western geographical context. Rather than fixating on the geographic orient, modern Islamophobia is preoccupied with the idea that Muslims pose an inner threat to the ‘West’. The idea that Muslims constitute a fifth column within Western societies reflects the historical prototype of the ‘enemy within’ in anti- Semitism. Contemporary practices that reflect the idea of an inner threat are visible in migration control, the surveillance of Muslim citizens and the overall practices of geopolitical empire (Kumar 2012). So, contemporary Islamophobia is connected to the historic lineage of orientalist narratives between ‘the West and the Muslim’ through a doctrine that defines essential differences between ‘us and them’ – a belief system that recognizes a homogeneous and static culture with specific and deleterious characterizations (Said 1978, [1981] 1997).

Counter-jihad as networked politics

Within Islamophobic currents there is particularly one cluster of actors that stands out in terms of how far the claims of ongoing ‘Islamization’, ‘colonization’ and ‘dhimmitude’1 are pushed. These actors often refer to themselves as ‘counter- jihadists’ and they prescribe to a position at the far right of the political spectrum (Fekete 2012b; Feldman 2012). However, they have also made a substantial impact on the public ‘talk’ on Muslims and Islam (Lean and Esposito 2012). In August 2011, the US progressive-liberal think tank Center for American Progress (CAP) published one of the first attempts to systematically investigate the actors involved in producing Islamophobic discourses in the USA (Ali 2011). CAP identifies four types of political

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actors that produce and disseminate Islamophobic discourses: the religious right, a handful of Republican politicians, right-wing new media outlets and grass-roots organizations. The report makes a distinction between scholars, validators (ex-Muslims) and activists in order to unfold how specific actors operate within a larger context of anti-Muslim politics. The report also outlines the financial funding of the network, identifying wealthy donors (pertaining to the far right-wing spectrum of domestic politics) in the USA (Ali 2011). Kumar (2012, 176) suggests a more contextual approach where Islamophobic actors are seen as engines in creating a political ‘climate of fear’. By viewing Islamophobes in the historical light of McCarthyism, their function is to extend the boundaries of acceptable political discourse. Kumar argues that these actors affect the overall political landscape in the USA, and by pushing the envelope, their mark on domestic politics goes far beyond their power in policymaking. Since Islamophobia is nourished in a collective McCarthyite environment, it cannot be reduced to the outcomes of single actors on the far right (cf. Fekete 2009, 102ff). Kumar (2012, 190) says that Islamophobia must be understood as the consequence of a collective effort of actors in ‘the academy, the think-tank milieu, the political sphere and the security establishment’. This mirrors Said’s ([1981] 1997) argument that American news media, academia and govern- mental ‘experts’ continually reproduce the idea of a single static (and inherently violent) Islam.

Even though the counter-jihadist network has its roots in the post-9/11 American political soil, it also involves actors outside North America. When considering the European context, a slightly different picture emerges. In Europe, racism against Muslims and hostile attitudes towards Islam are intertwined with the historical development of far-right politics. In contrast to the USA, several European countries have a long history of Muslim citizens. This implies that Islam is part of both historical and modern Europe and the historical background gives European Islamophobia its specific character.

This paper will try to elucidate the nodes that take part in a more global milieu of Islamophobic activities and the European actors that connect to the US network. However, all actors do not necessarily recognize themselves as counter-jihadist, but they share common viewpoints on Islam and Muslims. The typology derives from several computer-generated SNA:s. The social network analysis scrutinized patterns of hyperlinks in the Islamophobic online milieu (for further details and network patterns, cf. Ekman 2012). The first step of the SNA identified web pages and the second step identified the actors within the various nodes. The typology provides a basic overview, but the SNA of online spaces could be further expanded.2

The Islamophobic actors emanate from: (1) far-right and right-wing populist parties, such as the Danish People’s Party, the Dutch Freedom Party, the Sweden Democrats and the Swiss People’s Party; (2) street fighting movements, the most obvious examples being the English Defence League (EDL) and its various offspring; (3) right-wing think tanks including various minor and explicitly Muslim-hostile constellations such as Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, International Civil Liberties Alliance and International Free Press Society; and (4) intellectuals such as scholars, writers, journalists and media figures who, to a varying extent, produce and distribute ‘knowledge’ about Muslims and Islam. It is important

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to note the difference between intellectuals who participate actively within the network and those used as ‘validators’ in the discourses disseminated by the online actors. The former could be described as counter-jihadist within a larger Islamophobic milieu that includes the latter.3

The counter-jihad is not an organization; it is better understood as a political strategy that is used and interpreted slightly differently by actors in various political and geographical contexts. Moreover, the character of the network is fluid and its structure depends on how actions, practices and discourses are situated in time and space, and how these relate to specific political events and processes. Actors within the network might share common ideological views on Islam and Muslims – but they also have different political goals.

The discursive strategies of the counter-jihad network

While there are numerous actors participating in the Islamophobic milieu, the latter part of this article will focus on the discursive strategies of three key nodes in the online network. The selection of the actors is based on a few distinctive criteria. First, all three sites are prolific platforms and they include actors with organizing abilities. Second, they receive a relatively high number of daily visitors. Third, they have different geographical outlooks. The Islamophobic websites/blogs analysed are the US-based Jihad Watch,4 the pan-European Gates of Vienna5 and the Swedish Avpixlat.6 The analysis is based on a sample of blog entries published in 2012. The selected sample was made in two steps. First, all blog entries that were unrelated to Muslims and/or Islam were excluded (which was a vast number of posts in Avpixlat, a few in Gates of Vienna and none in Jihad Watch). In the second step, 600 blog posts (200 from each site) were sampled randomly for the qualitative analysis. The total number of blog posts from the three web pages during 2012 exceeds 10,000.

Jihad Watch is a blog published by Robert Spencer, one of the key figures in the network (Fekete 2012a). It has been online since October 2003 and publishes between ten and fifteen posts daily. The blog is connected to David Horowitz, who is the director of Freedom Center and the publisher of FrontPage Magazine, another key player in the Islamophobic milieu. Jihad Watch received a financial contribution of $253,250 from the Fairbrook Foundation and the Freedom Center received $8,380,500 from six different donors (Ali 2011, 15). Spencer is also the co-founder of Stop the Islamization of America and Stop the Islamization of Nations, together with Pamela Geller.

Gates of Vienna is a blog with a more European outlook and has been online since late 2003. It publishes around five posts daily. Gates of Vienna features both named and anonymous contributors. The blog is run by Edward S. May, one of the organizers of the annual counter-jihadist conference that started up in 2007 (Lagerlöf, Lehman, and Bengtson 2011, 9). On Gates of Vienna there are also blog posts published by representatives of various political parties, organizations and think tanks.

The third actor is the Swedish website Avpixlat. It is a self-styled alternative news outlet and the successor of Politiskt Inkorrekt (Ekman 2011). It publishes in Swedish but generates more visits (data traffic) than both Jihad Watch and Gates of Vienna.7

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Avpixlat describes itself as an alternative media site. It publishes about fifteen posts daily, making it the most frequently updated website of the three selected sources. It has close connections to populist (far) right-wing party Swedish Democrats and receives funding from one of the party’s members of parliament (Hannus 2012).

The discursive strategies deployed by the blogs represent, in various ways, Islam and Muslims as the foremost threat to the Western world. The aim here is to exemplify and contextualize some of the key discursive themes in relation to the larger idea of a Muslim colonization of the West. From the selected sample of blog posts, eight themes are derived in the thematic CDA approach (cf. van Dijk 2000). These themes are interrelated, both in terms of how they are articulated in the online material and how they are coherent with a larger concept of an ongoing Muslim colonization of the West. All quotes used in the presentation originate from Jihad Watch (JW), Gates of Vienna (GoV) and Avpixlat.8

The demographic threat

One recurrent topic that emanates from the Islamophobic camp is the claim that Muslims are posing a demographic threat to Europe. The idea of a demographic threat also constitutes the focal point, or the very cause, for many of the other discursive elements. The idea of demographic change entails a twofold argument: (1) Muslims are immigrating in great numbers to the West; and (2) Muslims have a much higher birth rate compared to ‘us’. The former claim is the most common one used, especially in the Swedish website where articulations about a ‘mass immigration’ of Muslims are very frequent in blog posts. The idea of a radical demographic change is put forward in headlines like ‘Norwegians might be a minority in Norway by the Year 2100’ (Avpixlat). This particular blog post combines statistics of birth rates with estimations of non-Western immigration. The preoccupation of Muslims ‘flooding’ into Europe is not a new discursive element. It can be traced back to a more conventional xenophobic rhetoric on immigration within right-wing politics since the 1970s. The concept of immigrants ‘flooding in’ was made (in)famous in UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s major speech on immigration in January 1978 (van Dijk 2000). The new twist to this classical xenophobic rhetoric is the idea of a gradually demographic change with tremendous consequences for social, political and cultural society. The societal impact of Muslims ‘flooding in’ or increasing in ‘great numbers’ is, among many, that politicians need to adjust their polices to satisfy Muslim voters. The claims here are that demographic change will gradually transform the very nature of European civilization, and that the continent will eventually decline. Sometimes the argument is bent even further as blog posts indicate a forthcoming world war: ‘the huge demographic growth of Islam within the West and the 1.6 billion Muslims without the West … has the potential to cause World War III’ (GoV).

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Stealth Jihad: the silent infiltration of Islam

In his book Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs, Jihad Watch blogger Robert Spencer put forward the idea that Muslim organizations and groups are secretly infiltrating and changing mainstream American politics (Jihad Watch 2010). They do so by affecting national legislations and institutions, but also by enforcing Islamic law and customs at all levels in society. For example, Spencer claims that Muslims ‘want to force Disney to alter its fifty-year-old dress code to accommodate Islamic law’ (Jihad Watch 2012). The concept of ‘stealth’ or ‘soft’ jihad comes from the idea of a widespread Muslim infiltration of open institutions and bodies of government in Western society. Stealth jihad is ‘validated’ by highlighting the demands made by Muslim civil rights organizations, or by pointing out Muslims participating in mainstream political life. Ironically, Muslims who integrate into Western society are perceived to be a threat in the same way as those Muslims who do not. This discursive tactic of damned if you do, damned if you don’t has its roots in classical anti-Semitist rhetoric and the conception of the deceitful Jew. Groups such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation9 and the Muslim Brotherhood are often described as the secret orchestrators behind the ‘Islamization’ of the West. The organizations appear in blogposts such as ‘The OIC’s Legal Jihad’ (GoV), ‘Hamas-linked CAIR, other Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic supremacists frequently welcomed at Obama White House’ (JW), ‘Egyptian magazine boasts that Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated Obama Administration’ (JW) and ‘Europe and the Coming Caliphate: European Mufti-ism’ (GoV). The idea that Muslim representatives are turning Western politicians and government into dhimmitude is a widespread conspiracy in the Islamophobic milieu. Muslim organizations are generally depicted as planning a silent takeover, or partaking in shadow governments. The concept of a secret Islamic administration, or body of rule, that controls elected Western governments bears a striking resemblance to the historic anti-Semitic discourse in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and to the neo- fascist rhetoric of a ‘Zionist Occupation Government’ secretly ruling the world (Carr 2006, 9).

Muslims are imposing sharia law on Western societies

A common verification of how Muslims and Islam are infiltrating mainstream society is by pointing out how sharia (Islamic law) is gradually being imposed on Western countries. The counter-jihadists advocate the idea that sharia is being forced upon the West by small, but rapid, visible changes in societal practices. The claim is validated by numerous examples of the enthusiasm of mainstream politicians and institutions to cave in to the demands of Muslims. Headlines suggest that sharia is gradually being imposed all over the Western world: ‘Sharia in action in Australia: Muslims give new convert to Islam 40 lashes for drinking alcohol’ (JW), ‘New Jersey: Muslim judge accused of imposing Sharia in Family Court’ (JW) and ‘Sharia Comes to Spain’ (GoV). The websites are congested with stories about Muslims demanding separate treatment in public spaces, in semi-public areas such as swimming halls, in the workplace, in schools, and elsewhere. One

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repeated example is dhabihah, the halal method of slaughtering animals for food, used by practising Muslims. In Avpixlat the political debate on whether to allow or prohibit halal and kosher slaughter (the latter being the Jewish equivalent) is presented as an example of how Western lawmakers are giving in to Muslim demands. In several blog posts, stories of how schools and community homes for the elderly are compelled to serve halal food are used as evidence of sharia being ‘forced’ upon non-Muslim citizens. Blog posts commenting on news events are framed to deal with ‘exclusive’ rights given solely to Muslim citizens. They provide crucial elements in the narrative of the Western world’s gradual surrender to complete Islamic rule. The idea that sharia law is imposed on Western societies, or that Muslims are given ‘exclusive rights’, are claimed to be the result of misguided or duped left-wing and liberal governments and politicians in the West.

Islam is a totalitarian political ideology

The notion of Islam as a political ideology is another prevailing topic in the Islamophobic milieu. Islam is believed to be a totalitarian political ideology in the same line as fascism and communism. The recurrent equating of Islam with Islamism (the latter being the common term used for denoting political Islam) is important here. By suggesting that Islam (as an entity) has a political agenda, and that it operates as a single political actor, suggest that all Muslims, explicitly or implicitly, advocate a unified totalitarian ideology. The idea of Islam as a political ideology is sometimes juxtaposed to the separation of State and Church in the Western world. Occasionally the idea is validated by mentioning actions of jihadists, or by refereeing to Salafism or Wahhabism. But more often it is simply stated as fact. In Avpixlat, the counter-jihadist Pamela Geller spells out the argument:

Islamic Jew-hatred is in the quran. We are speaking out against oppression, subjugation, genocide and humiliation. I speak out against no religion. My work is dedicated to individual rights, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience. I oppose the most radical and extreme ideology on the face of the earth. (Avpixlat 2012)

The idea that Islam is different from other world religions – that it essentially is a political ideology rather than a religion – derives from ignoring any distinctions between Islam and Islamism, culture and faith, ethnicity and religion, and between violent and non-violent forms of Islamism (Carr 2006, 14). Islam is framed as the absolute opposite to ‘Western values’ and individuals who practise Islam as incapable of becoming ‘enlightened’. This reductive view on Islam ignores any historical change and the development of Islam in relation to modernity. However, it also rejects any comparisons to the progress of other world religions, and their relation to state, society and the political-juridical system. So when constructing Islam as a unified political ideology, the Islamophobes do not only oversee the specific developments and contradictions within Islam, but also the historical developments within Christianity and Judaism.

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Muslims are inherently violent

As a consequence of the totalitarian nature of Islam, Muslim culture and Muslim individuals are also depicted as inherently violent, and since there is no distinction between Islam and Islamism, between non-violent and violent Islamism, and so forth, ‘moderate Islam’ is only presented as violent Islamism. The discursive element of ‘violent Islam’ and ‘violent Muslims’ entails several arguments. First, the most obvious one is articulated in topics on terror or violent acts connected to Muslims. Here, the explanatory framework is the nature of Islam, and the argument is often accompanied by selected quotes from the Koran. This is by far the most common way to substantiate claims about Islam’s violent nature. When ‘moderate Muslims’ advocate non-violence, or when they condemn acts of terror committed in the name of Islam, they deliberately conceal ‘the true meaning’ of Islam. The second argument is quite different: here, individual acts of violence, with no necessary connection to religion other than that the perpetrator is interpreted as a ‘Muslim’, are used to ‘reveal’ that Islamic culture also breeds violent behaviour (cf. Said [1981] 1997). The latter is commonly used in framing and re-contextualizing online (mainstream) crime news involving Muslims or individuals that are perceived to be Muslims. Typical crime topics that explicitly frame Muslims as violent include news about rape, sexual abuse against children, violent acts caused by a culture of honour, violence within arranged marriages, threats against public individuals and physical violence against non-Muslims. A third argument, closely related to the former, deals with the sexist (and often violent sexist) nature of Islam. The overall oppression and the supposed sexual abuse of women within ‘Muslim marriages’ are used to prove that ‘hatred of women’ is at the core of Islam. The subordination of women in society is framed as a ‘Muslim problem’, hence reducing questions of historical patriarchal structures and social gender systems to matters of culture. This reductive strategy, in which violence against women solely becomes a ‘Muslim problem’, is recurrent in the blogs. The discourse has deep historical roots, embedded in historical ‘European representations of the Islamic world [that] extensively utilized images of barbarism and sexuality in the context of a Christian/heathen dichotomy’ (Miles and Brown 2003, 52). By re- contextualizing isolated events and individual deeds, they appear to be the outcome of conventional cultural practices within Islam, but never the result of social structures or of individual acts. In conclusion, by reframing crime news, traditional racist stereotypes about Muslims and the East are linked to events in a contemporary Western context. The blog posts come to fore in a ‘we tell the truth like it is’ manner, whereas conventional mass media is accused of concealing the truth about Islam.

Political correctness

One discursive strategy in which the well-known populist approach of ‘taboo break[ing]’ is exercised is by speaking out against a culture of ‘political correctness’ (e.g. Mudde 2004, 554). This is a persistent topic in the online material that highlights mainstream society’s attitudes towards Muslims and Islam. Islamophobic actors use political correctness as a derogatory term for everything that they believe to be censured and concealed truth about Muslims and Islam. Mainstream politicians and

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news media are particularly targeted and accused of concealing the ‘facts’ and thereby upholding a societal climate of political correctness. One common pattern in framing mainstream politics, journalists and public debate is by defining and ridiculing public discourses and statements as politically correct. The strategy of speaking out against a culture of ‘political correctness’ connects to a bigger conspiracy theory. Political correctness is considered to be the outcome of a ‘cultural Marxist system’ that ‘appears to predominate in the public sector’ (GoV). In Avpixlat, the strategy of revealing a culture of political correctness comes to the fore in blog posts highlighting the ‘inherent problems’ with Muslim culture. Politicians and journalists are accused of covering up the fact that immigrants from Muslim countries ‘rape, murder’ and commit other crimes of violence to a ‘much higher degree’ than ‘ethnical Swedes’. The articulation against a societal ‘climate of political correctness’ interlinks Islamophobia with a larger populist radical right and therefore conveys xenophobia and racism at the centre of populist discourse. One way of validating the claim of a prevailing political correctness is by linking to mainstream news editorials or to statements from actors in the political centre right that involve criticism or plain xenophobic standpoints on Islam and Muslims. By referring to certain mainstream actors that are considered to be ‘truth tellers’ and that ‘takes a stand against political correctness’, Islamophobic actors argue that most journalists and politicians are ‘self-censoring’.

Left-wing and liberal politicians are aiding Islamism

The idea of a continuing colonization by, or a ruling shadow government of, Muslims in Europe is accompanied by claims of an internal political betrayal. The scapegoats here are left-wing or liberal politicians. This is one of the most fundamental assertions within the Islamophobic camp and a key element of the Eurabia theory (Carr 2006). Since the gradual decline of Western societies are perceived as a process orchestrated from the inside, Muslim colonizers are dependent on internal allies. The sardonic element here is that the undertakings of the ‘traitors’ are often perceived as much more elaborate than the activities of Muslims. Since Islam is understood as a brute and primitive culture and political system, Western politicians appear in a more devious manner. In a blog post headlined ‘Muslim Rape, Liberal/Left Complicity’ published in Gates of Vienna, the chairman of the far-right British Freedom Party Paul Weston appears in a videotaped speech saying:

The liberal/left need to take a long hard look themselves in the wake of the appalling Muslim gang rape revelations. I don’t blame the Muslims particularly, they are simply living by the 7th century rules of a desert warrior, but I do blame the liberal/left for quite literally enabling the brutal rape and violation of our children. All you liberal/leftists are complicit in these crimes against humanity. You could have stopped it years ago, but you deliberately chose not to. (Gates of Vienna 2012)

The left-wing/liberal betrayal of Western civilization is either framed as the naive outcome of liberal immigration policies, multiculturalism and ‘soft’ politics, or as a more deliberate plan of ‘multicultural Marxists’ whose desire is to terminate the very

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essence of European and Western civilization. In the latter, the idea of a conspiracy between ‘cultural Marxists’ and Muslims is rooted in the idea that both parties are essentially ‘anti-European’ or ‘anti-Western’. In the Islamophobic discourse, the cultural of ‘political correctness’ and the betrayal of the political ‘liberal/left’ are both framed as the product of, and the engine within, a larger ideology of multiculturalism.

Islamic multiculturalism

The final element analysed is the perceived hegemony of multiculturalism. During the last decade, multiculturalism has become a veritable political football and ‘the beauty of multiculturalism, for its opponents, is that it can mean whatever you want so long as you don’t like it’ (Young 2011, ix). For the counter-jihadists, the outcome of multiculturalism is the ‘Western surrender to Islam’. The notion of multiculturalism as a process of ‘Islamization’ is put forward by the counter-jihadists in blog posts where Western countries are accused of ‘caving in to’ sharia, the political interests of ‘Islamists’ and absolute ‘cultural relativism’. Multiculturalism is repeatedly defined as the outcome of a dominant ‘cultural Marxist’ ideology (that ultimately seeks to destroy the West), but also the reason behind the ‘political correctness’ prevailing in Western public debate. Multiculturalism is used to explain a variety of factors in contemporary society, but its essence is the abandoning of Western values. The claims of the superiority of Western culture are compared to the shift to cultural politics in recent decades. Ironically, the multicultural tolerance advocated in state policies and discourses is simultaneously a product of a ‘politics of difference’. The emphasis of cultural diversity entails the process of racialization, in the end producing the cultural/ racial ‘other’ (cf. Lentin and Titley 2011). Societal focus, expressed in policies and practices, on cultural, ethnical and religious diversity is also reflected in the necessity to classify differences between groups based on these criteria. So, the societal turn to ‘culturalism’ and the politics of differences also tend to obfuscate social and economic power relations within society. When Islamophobic actors deem multi- culturalism as a state ideology, they rely on the same essentialism of cultural differences as the advocators of liberal multiculturalism. The difference is that Islamophobes ascribe utterly negative features to Muslims. Hence, any social, economic or individual factor is ultimately culturalized. Furthermore, the crises of multiculturalism and the declaration of a ‘failed multiculturalism that fosters extremism’ put forward by David Cameron, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, among others, is used to validate the argument of an ongoing ‘Islamization’. Therefore, Islamophobic actors feed from the societal shift to cultural politics in Western countries, and from mainstream politicians´ statements that multiculturalism has failed.

Conclusions

Contemporary Western society is saturated with discourses that emphasize culture and difference, suggesting that ‘the ontology of the social has become culturalized’ (Yilmaz 2012, 369). In this societal climate, utterances that define essential differences between ‘Westerners’ on the one hand and ‘Muslims’ on the other seem

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to flourish. At the same time, the liberal version of ‘culturalist politics’ – multiculturalism – is being ousted by leading European governmental leaders and ultimately declared a failure (Lentin and Titley 2011). In the light of these larger societal dynamics, politics that focus on the threat of Islam have moved to the centre of public debate, both as the result of successful populist right-wing actors, but also because of a general political (and media) focus on the ‘Islam scare’ (e.g. Fekete 2009). The discourses disseminated by counter-jihadists suggest that Islamophobia is a flexible political strategy. It is adopted by different actors for different reasons – it interacts with anti-immigrant sentiments in Europe (GoV and Avpixlat), blunt racist discourses (in all three sites) and support of US geopolitical hegemony (JW). Thus, Islamophobia is framed in relation to various national and transnational political actors and processes, and depending on the topic, events or circumstances, it intersects with various political rationales and processes.

So, rather than viewing counter-jihadists as an isolated political phenomenon pertaining only to the marginalized far right, we should see them as the more visible actors within a larger community of actors. Furthermore, the discursive strategies of the online network do not originate from a political and societal vacuum, but are nourished from already established media representations of Muslims and from mainstream political discourses. The counter-jihadists are situated at the far flank of politics and their objective is to push the limits of what is considered acceptable public speech about Muslims. By doing so, they facilitate more space, within political decision- and policymaking, for political actors that are hostile to Islam and Muslims. This also explains the connections between the counter-jihadist bloggers and populist right-wing parties around Europe. By connecting to the populist strategy of anti- ‘political correct’ rhetoric, and by attacking left-wing and liberal politics, anti-Muslim actors frame themselves as speaking on behalf of the vox populi (e.g. Eatwell 2004). So, Islamophobic discourses interact with more general anti-immigration sentiments in contemporary politics, fuelling xenophobia and racism aimed towards people associated with Islam. Concurrently, this leads us to the second important aspect of Islamophobic (online) discourse – its relation to street politics and the use of violence.

The politics of fear manufactured by counter-jihadist bloggers is reflected in the increasing use of violence against European Muslims. For example, in 2014 more than twelve violent attacks were carried out against mosques in Sweden alone (Expo 2014). These attacks, along with violent street marches carried out by organizations such as EDL, feed from the Islamophobic online discourses disseminated by leading counter-jihadists. The latter, such as Spencer and Geller, also associate with the leadership of EDL (Feldman 2012, 11). When self-proclaimed Christian nationalist Anders Behring Breivik went on a killing spree and executed politically active Social Democrats (most of them teenagers), he validated his actions by claiming that Europe is under attack by Islam. His choice of targets was also made upon the assumption that ‘left-wingers’ are aiding the process of ‘Islamization’. Breivik’s extreme actions echoed the rationale of the counter-jihadist ideology on the Internet. Moreover, Breivik’s 1,500 pages ‘manifesto’ included many references to Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch and to Gates of Vienna. Spencer was the most cited counter-jihadist, receiving 162 mentions (Lean and Esposito 2012, 167). Breivik was also a supporter of Politiskt Inkorrekt, the predecessor of Avpixlat (Ekman 2011), and he considered the blogger

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and Gates of Vienna contributor, Fjordman (Peder Jensen), to be one of the most important actors in the struggle against Islam.10 The immediate reactions to the terrorist attacks in Norway also reveal the mass media’s inability to look beyond narratives of Muslim terrorists. Several news publishers quickly stated that it was a terrorist attack executed by a jihadist terrorist – but no one suggested a counter- jihadist terrorist (Kundnani 2012b). This echoes the reaction following the Oklahoma City bomb attack in April 1995, when the mass media quickly asserted that the perpetrators were Muslim terrorists (Said [1981] 1997, xiv).11 The representational frameworks of Muslim terrorists in news media and in popular culture (Gardell 2010) have contributed to what Kundnani (2012b) calls the ‘blind spot’ of official security narratives within Europe – the threats of far-right violence.

In conclusion, the end product of Islamophobic discourses and the social practices of discrimination and stigmatization of Muslims in the West is the ‘act of physical racial violence carried out by individuals’ (Schiffer and Wagner 2011, 82). Therefore, Islamophobic and racist discourses must always be understood in a dialectical relationship with other social practices and the physical violence of racial hatred.

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to Simon Stjernholm and Jan Christofferson for their helpful comments on the article. I am also grateful to the reviewers of Ethnic and Racial Studies for comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Dhimmitude is a neologism that derives from the term dhmmi, which denotes the non- Muslim subjects living in an Islamic state. 2. The Islamophobic milieu is under-researched and more empirical studies are needed on the relations between online discourses, political actors, policymaking and public opinions. 3. Besides the already mentioned actors we find people like Lars Hedegaard, Paul Beliën, Pamela Geller, Bruce Bawer, Mark Steyn, Daniel Pipes, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff and many more in the counter-jihadist camp. Important Islamophobic intellectuals are, among others, Melanie Phillips, Niall Ferguson, Oriana Fallaci (d. 2006), Diana West, Christopher Hitchens (d. 2011), Paul Berman, Frank Gaffney, Nick Cohen, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Douglas Murray (Kundnani 2012b, 2008; Carr 2006; Gardell 2010). 4. http://www.jihadwatch.org 5. http://gatesofvienna.net 6. http://avpixlat.info 7. http://www.alexa.com 8. All quotes from Avpixlat are translated by the author. 9. Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is an international organization consisting of fifty-seven member states. It is the world’s second-largest intergovernmental body (superseded only by the UN) and it has a permanent delegation in the UN. OIC was set up by the al-Saud family (in 1969) to promote Wahhabism and Saudi hegemony. Due to the close political

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relations between Saudi Arabia and the USA, OIC has well-developed contacts within the US Administration (Kumar 2012, 69). 10. The title of Breivik’s manifesto was taken from a blog post written by Jensen in Paul Beliën’s The Brussels Journal (Kundnani 2012b, 4f). The complete title of the blog post is ‘Native Revolt: A European Declaration of Independence’ (The Brussels Journal 2007). 11. The man behind the bomb, Timothy McVeigh, ‘was a white, New York-born fundamentalist’ (Lean and Esposito 2012, 73).

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MATTIAS EKMAN is Lecturer at the Department of Media Studies at Stockholm University. ADDRESS: Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University, PO Box 27861, SE-115 93, Stockholm, Sweden. Email: [email protected]

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