While many in the world rightly bemoan the rise of populism, few are willing to confront the fact that it is the hatred of Muslims that is driving populism in Europe and the west.
In 2024, almost half the world’s population will take part in elections. Many countries have already gone to the polls, and in a number of countries, particularly across Europe, the biggest gains have been made by those who make a living out of vilifying Muslims.
I am, proudly, a western Muslim. I had the great honour and privilege of being the first Muslim leader of any western democracy, and yet it is increasingly difficult to persuade fellow Muslims that Europe does not have a problem with our very existence.
In the UK, the scale of a Labour victory is likely to be the story of the day, but it is also expected that Nigel Farage’s Reform UK will make significant gains. A recent YouGov Poll put Reform one point ahead of the Conservatives.
Farage – who, during this campaign, has said that Muslims do not share British values – has a history of making Islamophobic remarks. In 2015, he said that people had fears of Muslims as a “fifth column”; in 2013, he suggested Muslim migrants were “coming here to take us over”. Farage has failed to get elected seven times and yet, despite this and regardless of the fact that he has made a living out of fanning the flames of religious and racial tension, the British media appears obsessed with platforming him.
Across the Channel, we have had results of elections to the European parliament, and in many countries we have seen the far right victorious and celebrating gains.
In France, such was the scale of the victory of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, it forced President Macron to take the gamble of early parliamentary elections. The man who could well be France’s next prime minister in a month’s time, the 28-year-old TikTok politician Jordan Bardella, described Trappes, a municipality west of central Paris, as an Islamic republic because it had the audacity to re-elect a Muslim mayor.
In Germany, a country that knows what the demonisation of an entire community can lead to, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) came second in the EU elections, improving on their 2019 result. This is a party that, during 2017 federal elections, dedicated an entire chapter of its manifesto to explaining why, in its words, “Islam does not belong to Germany”.
Outside the EU elections, Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) has negotiated a slate of ministers with coalition partners, paving the way for it to play a central, leading role in the Dutch government. In a world littered with Islamophobes, Wilders is the bleached blond poster boy. He has called for the Qur’an, which he compared to Mein Kampf, to be banned, alongside mosques, and described Islam as a Trojan horse in Europe.
Commentators and politicians have often caricatured the likes of Farage and Wilders as your harmless, old-fashioned uncle who, after downing one too many glasses of Pimm’s at the family barbecue, will spout the odd off-colour remark. This complacency, this tendency to ignore and dismiss anti-Muslim hatred, has allowed it to grow from the fringes to the mainstream of our political discourse.
Politicians across the political spectrum have, over the decades, been far too dismissive of Islamophobia within our politics. Instead of challenging and confronting inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric, politicians have inexplicably allowed it to fester. They have allowed anti-Muslim hate preachers to spread their insidious ideology and let it rip throughout our communities.
In the meantime, we have faced significant global challenges over the past two decades – a global financial crash, a pandemic, conflict and extreme climate events. When politicians have looked for others to blame for their own failures, Muslims have been an easy target for far too many.
I recall previously when mainstream politicians flirted with Islamophobia, they tried – miserably – to sound subtle and nuanced, often talking euphemistically about the dangers of “mass migration”. However, Islamophobia is so acceptable that they now barely bother disguising it. Just take the example of the former UK home secretary Suella Braverman, who can openly write a newspaper column stating “the Islamists, the extremists and the antisemites are in charge now”.
As a result of the growing popularity and mainstreaming of the far right, Muslims I speak to are fearful, and many of them do not know where their future lies.
The far right want Muslims to leave Europe – to, in their words, “go back home”. However, we have no home other than the countries we were born in, live, raise our children, work, pay our taxes to and contribute to. The result? We risk tens of millions of people across Europe feeling disfranchised, feeling as if they do not belong in their own country.
It is not only the far right that would seek to gain from such feelings of disillusionment, but Islamic State-inspired extremists. They prey on vulnerable people, on those who do not feel as if they belong. Their twisted propaganda relies on the creation of a false dichotomy, splitting the world in two: dar al-harb (the land of war) and dar al-Islam (the world of Islam). They tell those who feel lost that they belong in the land of Islam, that the west has become a land of war in which all and any deadly tactics are acceptable to punish the enemy.
It is not too late for politicians of all persuasions to confront and face down the anti-Muslim hatred rampant in our political discourse. The real danger is that by appeasing the far right, we also risk emboldening IS-inspired extremists too. If we allow this to happen, the consequences could be devastating.
Humza Yousaf is a former first minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National party
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