/ world today news/ EC: Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are growing in Europe
Religious crimes against Jews and Muslims have increased in Europe. Politicians are looking for a way out of the crisis. What suggestions are made?
“Vulnerable Spots”
As Christmas approaches, the European Commission summarizes the results of the year. As it turns out, they are disappointing. The escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has brought corrections to the Old World idyll – and brought veiled problems to the surface.
“Due to the war between Israel and Hamas and the polarization it is causing in our society, as well as the upcoming holiday season, there is a huge risk of terrorist attacks in the European Union,” said EC Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson.
The reason for such a loud statement was an incident in Paris in early December. Near the Eiffel Tower, a 26-year-old from Neuilly-sur-Seine attacked a German citizen with a knife. The victim died in the hospital. Eyewitnesses report that the attacker swore allegiance to the Islamic State. And during his arrest, he said he was tired of watching Muslims die.
But even more than the incident in Paris, European officials are depressed by the statistics. A joint report by the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe shows that the already high number of religiously motivated crimes is growing rapidly. And that’s not counting the “echoes from the Middle East.”
“If you visit a mosque or a synagogue in any European city, you will most likely see that there is a ‘security zone’. And this is not European at all. Our Europe should not look like this,” shared his impressions of the deputy. the president of the European Commission, Margaritis Schinas.
To save Christmas, the European Commission first decided to allocate an additional 30 million euros to strengthen the security of “vulnerable places” – ie. in the temples – all over the continent. Second, they announced the creation of a special fund that will suppress manifestations of religious intolerance.
And thirdly, they called on Internet platforms – especially “X” and “TikTok” – to be more careful about the content they publish. Because, as EC Vice-President for Values Vera Yurova noted, the above resources “have a huge impact on the way the young generation thinks.”
“Atmosphere of Fear”
It is hard to say whether these measures will help. At first glance, given the scale of the problem, their effectiveness is questionable. Since the beginning of the escalation of the Middle East conflict on October 7, European countries have been swept by a wave of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
At the end of October, the Community Security Trust, which deals with the affairs of the Jewish community in Great Britain, said that in the first 25 days they had registered about a thousand incidents – more than in the first half of 2023 (then there were almost 800 cases). . The organization noted: in its entire 40-year history, this is a record figure for such a short period of time.
As for anti-Muslim crimes, they are many times less. The Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the London Police, Laurence Taylor, reported more than a hundred recorded cases.
The French Ministry of the Interior is also sounding the alarm. The head of the department, Gerald Darmanen, reported: since the beginning of October, more than 1,500 crimes against Jews have been committed in the country. Over 600 people were arrested.
“Of course I feel in danger,” Yael Brown-Pivett, who has Jewish roots, told reporters. She added that she received many anonymous threats and was therefore forced to leave the house accompanied by the police.
Followers of Islam are also concerned. The French Muslim Council told the media that it had received 42 letters containing threats and insults in October alone. Mosques have also become targets of hatred: in 17 of them, imams received letters of impending attack, and 14 churches were left vandalized.
Thus, unknown people painted the facade of a mosque in the municipality of Krepoles (Angers) with anti-Islamic slogans with the inscriptions “Justice” and “Retribution”. The occasion was the story of 16-year-old Tom – in mid-November, the teenager was fatally stabbed with a knife during a street festival. The radicals immediately blamed the Muslims.
In Germany, the Federal Association of Research and Information Centers on Anti-Semitism recorded 202 episodes of domestic anti-Semitism in the first week of the Middle East conflict alone – almost three and a half times more than during the same period in 2022.
Berliner Adeline Pearl, a mother of two, told reporters that when someone scratched a swastika on her neighbor’s door, she stopped sleeping in her room, whose door faces the street. The woman admits that she is afraid for her children, students at the local Jewish school.
Young Gal Mizrahi, after he and his friends were attacked in the center of the capital by a man shouting something in Arabic, stopped speaking publicly in Hebrew. Now the young man is looking for a new home because his neighbors know about his origins. “80 years after the Holocaust, Jews in Germany are again afraid to go outside,” he lamented.
German Muslims also face similar attitudes. Amira, a 30-year-old lawyer from Cologne, was on her way to kindergarten to pick up her daughter. Suddenly, a bystander stopped her, called her a “terrorist” and knocked over her baby carriage. Similar stories, she notes in an interview, have happened with co-religionists.
“Recently, followers of Islam have been attacked more often than ever before,” said the head of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, Aiman Mazek. Which, according to him, makes them think about the safety of communities – after all, people are forced to live in an “atmosphere of fear. And Interior Minister Nancy Feder points to Islamophobia as a major problem.
The exit is far on the horizon
The authorities of many countries openly admit that the situation is out of control, but do not offer effective solutions. On the contrary, officials sometimes only worsen an already complicated situation.
For example, in the Netherlands there are still no official statistics on religiously based crimes. But according to Edo Verdoner, national coordinator for the fight against anti-Semitism, there is a sharp increase in hostility towards Jews and alarm is brewing in the communities. The same was discussed at the meeting of the European Commission: in the kingdom, the number of incidents jumped by 800%. This is an anti-record.
Dutch Muslims look to the future with greater concern. The fact is that the Freedom Party won the last parliamentary elections. Its leader, Geert Wilders, an outspoken anti-Islamist, said a few years ago that he would “kick the prophet Mohammed out of the country if he lived in our time.” And in 2016, he publicly called Moroccans “scum.”
His party’s manifesto includes a ban on mosques, the Koran and Islamic headscarves in government offices. “The pain and fear is immense. We fear that he will make us second-class citizens,” said the head of the Organization of Moroccans in the Netherlands, Habib El-Kadouri.
According to theologian Roman Lunkin, it is almost impossible to find the optimal way out of the current situation.
“The problem of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the Old World is a long-standing one. The escalation of the conflict in the Middle East added fuel to the fire. Another aggravating factor is the split in European society itself,” he explains.
According to the expert, first of all, it is necessary to achieve a truce between Israel and Palestine, after which the waves of anti-religious sentiments can subside. Then European countries will face a more important task – to move away from unipolarity to recognize that there are several equal political and cultural centers in the world. But so far it is difficult to believe in this prospect.
Translation: V. Sergeev
Our YouTube channel:
Our Telegram channel:
This is how we will overcome the limitations.
Share on your profiles, with friends, in groups and on pages.
#years #Europeans #warned #largescale #threat
