Muslim Riots in Europe: Wasnt this part of the program?

By Farish A. Noor

Across Europe today Islam and Muslims are being put to question. In early
May the British National Party (BNP) contested local elections across the
country calling the elections a ‘referendum on Islam’. In France similar
questions were posed by the Front National on 1st May. Likewise in Denmark
and the Netherlands. All across Western Europe, European citizens are being
asked if they are willing to ‘put up’ with the presence of Islam and Muslims
in their midst. Europe’s universalist dreams and pretentions have been laid
bare and rendered hollow by the parochialism that now masks itself as
patriotism and nationalism. These countries look, sound and feel more like
rural villages in the outback, with the villagers scared of the first black
or brown face they see.

To make things worst, the political mainstream has also shifted to the right
thanks to the vociferous campaigning by the extreme right-wing. In Britain,
France, Netherlands, Germany and Italy not a day passes without yet another
flaccid editorial piece about ‘European identity being under threat’ and the
‘failure of multiculturalism’. Western Europe bemoans the end of
cosmopolitan pluralism and yet cannot grapple with the very real
structural-economic reasons for the failure of nation-building.

Rather than deal with concrete issues of class, power relations and power
differentials between the majority and migrant communities, we have passed
onto the more ambiguous and abstract register of cultural difference
instead. If Europe cannot deal with Islam and Muslims, so we are told, it is
because Muslims are ‘culturally different’ from other Europeans. (Little is
said about the millions of ‘Others’ who reside in Europe, including the
millions of Jews, Hindus and Buddhists who are there as well…)

The starting point of this spurious non-debate is the question of violence
and instability. The right-wing Islamophobes point to the recent instances
of riots by young Muslims in the ghettos and suburbs of London, Paris and
other major cities of Western Europe. These instances of civil disobedience
and conflict are, for many right-wingers, ‘proof’ that Muslims are generally
a burden and trouble-makers who ought to be pacified, integrated or
repatriated to their home countries. Muslims are presented as a ‘problem’
that needs to be pathologised, analysed, solved. But the obvious question
follows: Was this not part of the programme in the first place?

The ‘programme’ here refers to the Liberal-Capitalist project of Western
Europe itself. Let us remember that all these countries that are facing the
‘problem’ of failed integration and failed multiculturalism happen to be
developed capitalist states. And as any good political scientist and
historian will remind us, capitalist states have always thrived on civil
dispute, precariousness, instability and the politics of divide-and-rule.

Capitalism requires there to be a surplus working class that can be played
against itself and exploited at will. It requires a surplus of workers who
can be domesticated, disciplined and co-opted when the needs of the market
arises. Throughout the history of capitalism, the ruling commercial and
political elite have sought to keep the workers divided along lines of race
and communalism so that they would not unite and stir up a revolution. In
the late 19th century the poor workers of England were pit against the poor
migrants of Ireland. The Irishman was cast as the poor white parasite who
had descended upon the shores of England to steal the jobs of honest English
working men. Irishmen were contemtously referred to as the ‘white niggers’
of Europe who were savage drunkards and hooligans best kept at bay by the
police baton (and later rubber bullets and tear gas). The history of
migration to countries like America, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, France
and Germany is a record of successive ways of poor migrants being abused,
demonised, exploited and turned against other equally poor communities.

Today the debate in Europe about ‘violent Muslims’ strikes a resonant chord
with this older narrative of mistrust and alienation. Europe’s Muslims are
cast in culturalist terms as backward, violent, anti-social and
untrustworthy; in the same way that earlier migrants from Ireland, Greece,
the Jews etc were portrayed. In all these cases the discussion of cultural
difference is a convenient way to avoid the discussion of class, power
differentials, institutionalised discrimination and exploitation by Capital.

The net effect is also the same: As was the case during the anti-Irish
campaigns of the 19th and early 20th century, what is happening today is the
division of the poor working classes of Europe along racial, ethnic and also
religious lines. Yet we often forget that the plight of poor Muslims in
Europe is similar to the plight of poor Europeans as well. All these
minority communities suffer from unequal mediatic and political
representation, less access to education and the tools of governance, less
legal protection (and too much policing instead).

How can the problem be solved? One way out would be for Muslims in Europe to
emphasise their class and political identities more and their
religio-cultural identity less. The issue is not Islam or being Muslims; but
rather racial and class discrimination which is not limited exclusively to
Muslims themselves. As long as the poor working class Muslims of Europe do
not realise this, and do not try to bridge the gap with other poor working
class communities, they will remain a culturally-defined minority that will
remain perpetually on the margins and treated like outsiders. For too long
Europe’s Muslims have blindly walked into the right-wingers’ trap of
sectarian communal-religious identification and allowed themselves to be
cast and seen exclusively as members of a religious community. Now they need
to emphasise the universality of their class condition and see themselves
for what they are: the poor and exploited of Europe, who are no different to
the poor Irish of the past.