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Debates about Islamophobia have been blighted by the question of whether the prejudice can be defined as a form of racism or as hostility to religion (or a combination of the two). This paper sheds light on this debate by presenting the findings of a new nationally representative survey, focused on the UK, that contrasts perceptions of Muslims not only with perceptions of other ethnic and religious minorities but also with perceptions of Islam as a religious tradition. We find that prejudice against Muslims is higher than for any other group examined other than Travellers. We also find contrasting demographic drivers of prejudice towards Muslims and towards Islam. Across most prejudice measures we analyse, intolerant views are generally significantly associated with being male, voting Conservative and being older, although not with Anglican identity. We find, however, that class effects vary depending on the question's focus. Anti‐immigration sentiment – including support for a 'Muslim ban' – is significantly correlated with being working‐class. However, prejudice towards Islam as a body of teachings (tested using a question measuring perceptions of religious literalism) is significantly correlated with being middle‐class, as is negative sentiment towards Travellers. Using these findings, the paper makes an argument for supplementing recent scholarship on the associations between racism and Islamophobia with analyses focusing on misperceptions of belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What factors explain majority members' anti-Muslim prejudice? This is an increasingly important question to ask, but to date only relatively few studies have sought to provide answers from a cross-national comparative perspective. This study aims to help fill this gap. Using data from the seventh round of the European Social Survey (ESS) linked with country-level characteristics, our results indicate that (a) a larger Muslim population size, (b) more liberal immigrant integration policies and (c) greater state support of religion are all associated with lower levels of majority members' negative attitudes towards Muslim immigration – our indicator of anti-Muslim prejudice. Such attitudes, however, prove to be unrelated to (d) cross-national differences in the frequency of negative immigration-related news reports as measured by the ESS media claims data. Collectively, these findings bring us one important step closer towards a better understanding of interethnic relations between majority members and Muslim immigrants in European host societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti‐immigrant attitudes are not only widespread among Eurosceptic nationalists, but also among people who feel that immigration threatens European values and identity. We therefore assumed that the connection between nationalism and xenophobia can only partially explain the rise of hostile attitudes in the post‐2015 period. In two online surveys (N = 1,160), we compared how (a) glorification versus attachment and (b) national versus European identity can predict anti‐immigrant and anti‐Muslim attitudes in Hungary. In the first study, national and European glorification predicted higher anti‐immigrant and anti‐Muslim prejudice. However, attachment with Europe predicted positive, while attachment with Hungary predicted negative attitudes towards immigrants. We replicated this pattern in a second study and found that the different predictions of national versus European identities were mediated by attitudes towards the EU. Eurosceptic attitudes were associated with increased hostility towards both immigrants and Muslim people and reflected a perceived contradiction between the interest of the nation and that of the EU. We conclude that for a better understanding of intergroup hostility towards Muslim immigrants in Europe, we need to simultaneously consider the psychological phenomenon of ingroup glorification and the values and norms of the social categories with which people identify. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is threefold. First, based on ongoing theoretical discussions on the dimensionality of Islamophobia, this study analyzes whether Islamophobia empirically constitutes a one-dimensional construct or rather a multidimensional construct consisting of anti-Muslim prejudice and anti-Islam sentiment. Second, the effects of symbolic, realistic, and terroristic (safety) threats on Islamophobia were analyzed concurrently. Finally, within the framework of the revised Integrated Threat Theory (Stephan & Renfro, 2002), and in order to test the mediating effect of threats, SDO is tested as an antecedent of perceived threat and Islamophobia. Respondents from Berlin (N = 355) participated in an online survey. The results indicate that Islamophobia empirically constitutes a two-dimensional phenomenon, consisting of anti-Muslim and anti-Islam sentiment. Whereas symbolic threat is related to both types of Islamophobia, realistic threat is associated only with anti-Muslim prejudice, and terroristic threat is associated only with anti-Islam sentiment. Finally, the results indicate that the relationship between SDO and both dimensions of Islamophobia is mediated by threats. Symbolic threats mediate the relationships between SDO and both dimensions of Islamophobia. Realistic threats mediate the relationship between SDO and anti-Muslim prejudice and terroristic threats between SDO and anti-Islam sentiment.

In recent years, Islamophobia has become a useful tool for right-wing parties to mobilize electors in many European nation-states. The general xenophobic campaigns of the 1980s have given way to Islamophobia as a specific expression of racism. It is not only the new incarnations of right-wing populist parties that are making use of Islamophobic populism, but also right-wing extremist parties, whose traditions hark back to fascist or Nazi parties. This development appears unsurprising, as Islamophobia has somehow become a kind of ‘accepted racism’, found not only on the margins of European societies but also at the centre. Another interesting concomitant shift is the attempt by such parties to gain wider acceptance in mainstream societies by distancing themselves from a former antisemitic profile. While the main focus on an exclusive identity politics in the frame of nation-states previously divided the far right and complicated transnational cooperation, a shared Islamophobia has the potential to be a common ground for strengthening the transnational links of right-wing parties. This shift from antisemitism to Islamophobia goes beyond European borders and enables Europe's far right to connect to Israeli parties and the far right in the United States. Hafez's article explores this thesis by analysing the European Alliance for Freedom, a pan-European alliance of far-right members of the European parliament that has brought various formerly antagonistic parties together through a common anti-Muslim programme, and is trying to become a formal European parliamentary fraction in the wake of its victory in the European elections in May 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, the place of Islam in Western European society has become a central political issue, particularly on the far right of the ideological spectrum. Parties as diverse as the Schweizerische Volkspartei (SVP), the Lega Nord, the Dansk Folkeparti and the Vlaams Belang have mobilized against the 'Muslim invasion', launching campaigns against the building of mosques and minarets, the integration of Muslim immigrants and the recognition of Islam as a religion of equal status. Betz and Meret discuss how parties such as the SVP have framed the question of Islam in terms of culture, values and identity. This has allowed them to put themselves forward as defenders of fundamental liberal values, such as individualism, secularism and gender equality. Betz and Meret also advance an analytical framework that might allow us to put contemporary Islamophobia in Western Europe in a larger historical and transnational context. Their central argument is that the current political mobilization against the 'Islamization' of Western European societies is part of a larger 'quest' for a European identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalism provides us with a window on the ways that social, ethnic and religious sameness/diversity is viewed. Hence, an examination of the ideas and arguments in the journalistic media provides us with insights into social ideas and attitudes, specifically into the understandings of who 'we' are and who 'they' are that are circulating at any one time. Richardson examines the ways that British Muslims were represented in British national newspapers, both broadsheet and tabloid, during the general elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005. Two weeks of press reporting immediately prior to each election day were sampled, with any journalistic text referring to 'Islam', 'Muslim' or 'Moslem' in the context of the United Kingdom recorded for analysis. Quantitative analysis, focusing on lexical collocation, was used initially to assess the frequency of key ideational frames in the newspaper reporting of British Muslims over the three elections. The analysis of the sample was enriched, through qualitative critical discourse analysis, to determine how British Muslims were depicted in these journalistic texts. The findings demonstrate a quantitative expansion of reports, and a qualitative shift in the texts' arguments towards a constellation of negative representations. Richardson argues that the changes in reporting British Muslims are entirely a response to the so-called 'war on terror' in general, the invasion of Iraq in particular, and how these events were thought to be playing out in the national political sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bleich assesses levels of anti-Muslim prejudice in two important European countries—Britain and France—to begin a process of systematically evaluating the status of Muslims on national ethno-racial hierarchies. He reviews major scholarly and institutional public opinion polls from 1988 through 2008 to discern attitudes towards Muslims over time and in comparison to other religious and ethnic groups. The findings support the following conclusions: negative attitudes towards Muslims have risen over the past twenty years in Britain and France; when compared to other religious groups, Muslims are viewed with tremendous suspicion by British and French respondents; and, in spite of the events of recent years, Muslims have not sunk to the bottom of the ethno-racial hierarchy, most measures suggesting that other groups remain more distant ethno-racial outsiders than Muslims in both Britain and France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Meer and Modood identify a variety of reasons why the notion that Muslim minorities could be subject to racism by virtue of their real or perceived 'Muslimness' is met with much less sympathy than the widely accepted notion that other religious minorities in Europe, particularly Jewish groups, can be the victims of racism. They begin by elaborating the relationships between Islamophobia, anti-Muslim sentiment and cultural racism, before turning to the results of interviews with journalists who make allegedly formative contributions to our understanding of anti-Muslim sentiment. Meer and Modood delineate and discuss four tendencies. The first is the conceptualization of racism that assumes that the protections afforded to racial minorities conventionally conceived as involuntarily constituted should not be extended to Muslims because theirs is a religious identity that is voluntarily chosen. The second is that the way that religion per se is frowned upon by the contemporary intelligentsia invites the ridiculing of Muslims as being salutary for intellectual debate and not, therefore, an issue of discrimination. Third, while ethnic identities are welcomed in the public space, there is much more unease about religious minorities. Finally, some find it difficult to sympathize with a minority that is perceived to be disloyal or associated with terrorism, a view that leads to a perception of Muslims as a threat rather than as a disadvantaged minority, subject to increasingly pernicious discourses of racialization. Each of these tendencies could benefit from further study, underscoring the need for a greater exploration of anti-Muslim discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The denial that racism operates against Muslims qua Muslims has permeated public and media discourse of late. Intellectuals, commentators and legislators from across the political spectrum have explicitly rationalized this position by distinguishing involuntary racial identities from voluntary religious identities. Meer explores the nature of Muslim identity vis-à-vis the involuntary and voluntary dichotomy before examining the consequences of recognizing some 'racial' identities in anti-discrimination formulas while ignoring others. This is followed by a short case study of some of the 'commonsense' arguments about race and religion that surrounded the proposed incitement to religious hatred legislation in Britain. The findings suggest that Muslims in Britain are disadvantaged by the operation of a 'normative grammar' of race that materially (in terms of legal instruments) and discursively (in terms of public and media comment) treats their racialization with less seriousness than it does that of other minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]