Muslims across Europe are grappling with a “worrying surge” of racism that is being fuelled in part by “dehumanising anti-Muslim rhetoric”, the EU’s leading rights agency has said, as it published a survey in which nearly half of the Muslim respondents said they had recently experienced discrimination.
Published on Thursday by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), the survey of 9,600 Muslims across 13 member states found that racism and discrimination threads through most aspects of their lives.
People reported children being bullied in school, inequalities in accessing job opportunities and prejudice when it comes to renting or buying homes.
Although the survey was completed before the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, which led to ferocious reprisals on Gaza, the Vienna-based agency said information from civil society organisations and national authorities suggested that the number of anti-Muslim incidents had continued to rise since the conflict erupted.
“We are witnessing a worrying surge in racism and discrimination against Muslims in Europe,” said the agency’s director, Sirpa Rautio. “This is fuelled by conflicts in the Middle East and made worse by the dehumanising anti-Muslim rhetoric we see across the continent.”
After the attacks of 7 October, officials scrambled to contain a rise in hate crimes aimed at the Muslim and Jewish communities, ranging from an attempted arson at a synagogue in Berlin to dozens of letters containing threats and insults sent to Muslim councils and mosques in France.
The FRA, speaking to Muslims in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, found that 47% reported experiencing racism in the five years before 2022, up from 39% in 2016.
“What we see is that the situation of Muslims is getting worse,” said Vida Beresnevičiūtė, a co-author of the survey. “It’s getting more complicated to live as a Muslim in the EU.”
The rates of reported discrimination appeared to be closely linked to the rise of the far right. In Austria, where the Nazi-founded anti-immigration Freedom party (FPÖ) recently emerged as the most-voted-for party, 71% of Muslims reported recent experiences of racism. In neighbouring Germany, where the anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland has been steadily gaining, 68% reported discrimination.
Across the 13 member states surveyed, 39% of Muslims reported discrimination in the job market, with 41% working in jobs for which they were overqualified.
A third of respondents (35%) said they were impeded from buying or renting a house due to discrimination, up from 22% in 2016. “The phenomena are pervasive and persistent,” said Beresnevičiūtė. “The scope is overwhelming.”
The consequences of this racism were wide-reaching and long-lasting. Muslims are more likely to live in poverty, be crammed into overcrowded housing and 2.5 times more likely to be on temporary contracts. Muslim respondents were three times more likely to leave school early than the general population across the EU.
Particularly concerning were the experiences of young Muslims, said Beresnevičiūtė. More than half of Muslims born in Europe (55%) said they had felt racially discriminated against when looking for work in the past five years, suggesting that they were not being treated equally despite having the same language capabilities and qualifications.
“It’s appalling,” said Beresnevičiūtė, who noted that many Muslims reported “overlapping” discrimination as they felt targeted over their religion as well as their skin colour and ethnic or immigrant background.
Women who wear religious clothing, such as a headscarf, also reported higher rates of discrimination in the labour market. When it came to women between the ages of 16 and 24 who wear religious clothing, the reported rate of discrimination climbed to 58%.
Few seemingly felt it was beneficial to report their experiences, with just 6% saying they had filed a complaint or report about a recent incident.
The FRA called on member states to implement tougher sanctions for discrimination and hate crimes as well as to collect equality data, including on ethnic or racial origin, to allow policymakers to set better targets and track progress. Unlike the UK, most EU countries do not collect census data on racial or ethnic diversity.
Thursday’s survey follows a report last year that found nearly half of Black people surveyed across the EU reported discrimination and a July survey in which nearly all Jewish respondents reported recent experiences of antisemitism.
Taken together, the reports suggest that “racism and racial discrimination is a persistent phenomenon throughout the EU and that it needs to be addressed,” said Beresnevičiūtė. “And that without any specific efforts, it does not disappear.”
