Book: Xenophobia and Islamophobia in Europe

This Book is a comparative analysis of racism and Islamophobia in Europe with a particular emphasis on France and Germany.

The book “Xenophobia and Islamophobia in Europe” has written by Raymond Taras and published by Edinburg university press in 2012.

European anti-Muslim attitudes: the voice of public protest against out-of-touch elites?Are anti-Muslim attitudes becoming the spectre that is haunting Europe? Is Islamophobia as widespread and virulent as is made out? Or do some EU societies appear more prejudiced than others? To what extent are European fears about unmanaged immigration the basis for scapegoating Muslim communities? And is there an anti-elitist dimension to Europeans’ protest about rapid demographic change occurring in their countries?This cross-national analysis of Islamophobia looks at these questions in an innovative, even-handed way, steering clear of politically-correct clichés and stereotypes. It cautions that Islamophobia is a serious threat to European values and norms, and must be tackled by future immigration and integration policy.

This is a comparative analysis of racism and Islamophobia in Europe with a particular emphasis on France and Germany to which whole chapters are devoted. Importantly the book seems to work with a clear distinction between Islamophobia and forms of racism and other types of xenophobia and clearly refuses to reduce Islamophobia to a variant of cultural racism which seems to be the dominant interpretation at present.

Table of Contents:

• Studying phobias

Framing Muslims as strangers

Confronting the Phobia of foreigners

Where fear and prejudice come from

Prejudice and ethnicity

The overlay of religious intolerance and racism

Prejudice and religion

Phobias outside the west

Structure of the book

• Norms and models of migrant rights

Debating immigration

Europe’s commandments

Standard setting and stranger

Reconciling immigration and integration policies

Standard setting on family reunification and asylum

Norms and practices affecting irregular immigrants

The European pact on immigration and asylum

The institutionalization of norms

Ways of accommodating foreigners

The multicultural paradigm: the British case

Assimilation: the French republican ideal?

The myth of the single French nation

Exceptions to France’s blindness

Assimilation, multiculturalism and Islam

Norms and fears

• From fear about immigrants to prejudices against Muslims

From hospitality to hostility

The alleged wrongdoings of migrants

Europe’s multiple insecurities

Evidence of xenophobic attitudes

Patterns of migrant settlement

Integration choices and migrant strategies

How gate keeping functions

National differences in attitudes to immigration

Anti-immigrant political parties

• Islamophobia’s deep structure and shallow stereotypes

‘Base and bastard Turks’

Explaining Islamophobia

Religious underpinnings of anti-Islamic ideas

Muslim community organizations and Islamophobia

Imagining the Muslim other

Freedom of expression and Islamophobia

Survey research on anti-Islamic attitudes

Monitoring anti-Muslim bias

Muslims’ experience of Victimization

The ethnic majorities’ views

• France: from assimilation to affirmative action?

Immigration growth, integration outcomes

Policy shift towards selectivity

Is there a ‘French Islamophobia?

French Muslim diversity

Radical stereotypes

Francising Islam

Contemporary anti-Muslim attitudes

Distinctive but not unusual Islamophobia

• Germany: From multiculturalism to Realpolitikl?

Protests, violence and rhetoric

Guest workers and migration

Permanent foreigners?

Integrating an underclass

Organising Germany’s Turks

German Turkophobia

Berlin’s policies, Ankara’s objections

Opposing Turkey’s EU bid: how distinctly German?

Turkey’s European values

• Undoing Islamophobia

The making of anti-Muslim prejudice

Introducing contingent factors

The historical determinism of deep causes

Structural feature and contingent events

Unmaking public opinion on Islam