Although Europe’s Islamophobia has historically been relegated to right-wing circles in the past, we are now seeing anti-Muslim sentiment continue to seep into the political mainstream, largely based on these ideas that ISIS-like attackers can speak for Muslims as a whole. Adam Shatz from the London Review of Books has written that center-right political circles now openly talk about a “Muslim fifth column” across Europe. To give you a sense of what this means in terms of the normalization of Islamophobia within mainstream European politics, a leading figure in former French prime minister Nicolas Sarkozy’s centrist political party once proposed interning four thousand suspected Islamists in “regroupment” (a.k.a. internment) camps with no controversy whatsoever. The fact that such a proposition was greeted without any outrage shows just how prevalent anti-Muslim sentiment has seeped into the European mainstream.

QUESTION: How far has this normalization spread, and what mainstream institutions or actors still resist it?

XREF: Connects to broader discussions of the securitization of Muslims and the far-right to mainstream shift seen in other countries as well.

Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Gl…, loc. 480