(article originally published on June 5, 2024 in the online journal Telos)

Islamophobia has a clear political use that has been consecrated by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. But beyond that, what does the term really mean? And is what it is supposed to designate – a deep hostility towards Muslims that has spread in French society – supported by facts?

The expressions "Islamophobia" or "Islamophobe" saturate public debate today. Jean-Luc Mélenchon gave his (highly controversial) political "letters of nobility" to the term by participating, on November 10, 2019, in a demonstration against Islamophobia called by an organization, the CCIF (collective against Islamophobia in France) much criticized because it cultivated links with the Muslim Brotherhood and which has since been dissolved. It was undoubtedly a turning point¹ in the trajectory of the Insoumis leader whose 2017 presidential program promised to combat all communitarianism as well as the political use of religions. Subsequently, he will no longer hesitate to use the term, saying for example, in an interview with Benjamin Duhamel on BFMTV on September 17, 2023, "that he was not aware (before) of the virulent Islamophobia that reigns in this country."

If Jean-Luc Mélenchon's political project in reappropriating this controversial expression is clear - to unite around LFI the electoral clientele of the suburbs and the immigrant or descendant populations of immigrants and sympathizers to their cause - this should not lead to contesting the term or its use on the political or ideological grounds alone. Let us take Islamophobia seriously and try to see to what extent the notion has a solid foundation. This is the purpose of this paper.

Let's start with the definition of Islamophobia given by the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH)². She defines it as "the attitude of systematic hostility towards Muslims, people perceived as such and/or towards Islam". The difficulty with this definition is twofold. First of all, etymologically, the term "phobia" seems inadequate to express hostility. Its true meaning is that of a panicky and irrational fear that leads rather to flight, distancing oneself than to aggression or combat. Xenophobia, a related term, is no longer used much in the social sciences.

But the main difficulty, noted by several observers, is that this definition equates hostility towards Islam, a religion, and hostility towards Muslims, a group of people practicing this religion. However, being hostile to Islam as a religion does not necessarily imply hateful or discriminatory behavior towards Muslims. From a strictly legal perspective, it is lawful to criticize a religion; this falls under freedom of expression, while racist attitudes – whether insulting remarks, discriminatory behavior or physical violence – of which Muslims may be victims are punishable by law.

The Islam-Muslim amalgam

This amalgamation between Islam and Muslims leads certain committed researchers, such as Houda Asal³, in an article in the journal Sociologie⁴, often quoted, to speak of "religious racialization", the definition of Islamophobia being, according to her, "in the classical theories of racism". The assimilation of religious criticism, virulent if necessary, to racism is the result of great intellectual confusion, but undoubtedly has a certain logic that we will try to decipher. Let us return to the definition of racism: "ideology based on the belief that there is a hierarchy between human groups, the 'races'" (Larousse). Religion is not a race and the practitioners of Islam in the world are of all origins. Even in France, where Muslims are overwhelmingly of Arab origin, nothing prevents a non-Arab from embracing this religion and some, the converts, do so. And above all, a proportion of young people from families of Maghreb origin declare themselves to have no religion, in a significant proportion: INSEE estimates that more than 30% of descendants of Algerian immigrants declare themselves to have no religion (26% for descendants of Moroccan or Tunisian immigrants). The latter may be victims of racism, but it would make no sense for them to equate racist discrimination with Islamophobia. In doing so, the supporters of this concept are carrying out an ideological coup by assigning an entire human group to a religion that is supposedly the victim of ostracism.

"Race" is an attribute of the "ascribed" type, as the American anthropologist Ralph Linton would have said.⁵, It is assigned, we do not choose it and we cannot renounce it; religion is an attribute of the "achieved" type, it is acquired and we can refuse it. The coup de force therefore amounts to making this chosen attribute, religion, an assigned and imprescriptible attribute by assimilating it to a race which defines the individual completely and definitively.

In the minds of their promoters, this reversal is undoubtedly supposed to unify this human group in a victim status of oppressed Muslim, while the excesses of Islamist radicalization are increasingly denounced. This also allows to cast an opaque veil over these excesses. It is quite fascinating to see in Houda Asal's article on Islamophobia that not a word is said about Islamist terrorism except under the terms of " costs of Islam as an external and internal threat" or " discourse on Islamic radicalism in French mosques (which) particularly target 'young people from immigrant backgrounds' in the 'suburbs', who are also 'Muslims'" Under his pen, Islamist radicalism⁶ seems to be nothing more than a social construct whose purpose is to stigmatize Muslims.

Are Muslims Ostracized?

There remains an open question: are Muslims actually victims of ostracism linked to their religion? The answer to this question cannot be binary (yes/no). All questions about inequalities and discrimination can only be addressed in a relative mode. Indeed, there are no human societies, and probably never will be, in which racism, discrimination, hatred or mistrust towards foreigners, those who are different or marginalized, would be totally absent. At the other extreme, some speak of "systemic racism" as if French society in all its components were structurally racist. This thesis seems just as absurd as the opposite thesis of a total absence of racism. So what are the facts about the degree of ostracism or discrimination that can be captured through a series of surveys conducted on the subject?

We can again start from an article, that of renowned researchers (Nonna Mayer, Guy Michelat, Vincent Tiberj, and Tammaso Vitale) on "attitudes towards Islam and Muslims"⁷. Let us first note that in their preamble, the authors support the idea that the criticism of Islam hides "less avowable reasons" (than the right to criticize religions) and masks "a phenomenon of so-called 'symbolic' or 'subtle' racism". In other words, from the outset, they do not seem far from adhering to Houda Asal's thesis of "religious racialization" (to which they also refer in their introduction). To support their argument in these first lines, they cite "numerous works" and first and foremost those of Vincent Geisser (La nouvelle islamophobie. Sur le vif, La Découverte, 2203), a very controversial researcher.⁸ who defends without nuance the thesis according to which France would be prey to a real "Islamophobic passion". This preamble casts doubt on their impartiality. Nevertheless, the data they present are interesting and deserve to be commented on, in particular figure 1 below.

It shows the % of tolerant responses towards French Jews, French Muslims and also towards the Muslim religion and the Jewish religion. First observation, positive attitudes towards religions, Jewish or Muslim, are clearly less pronounced than positive attitudes towards the practitioners of these religions. Or, conversely, religions are clearly more criticized than those who practice them. This is even more true for Muslims than for Jews. We therefore do not understand the conclusion of the authors of the article who write: "the distinction often made between the relationship to the Muslim religion (Islamophobia) and the relationship to practitioners of Islam ("anti-Muslim racism") is therefore not validated". It seems to me that it is quite the opposite: the view of Muslims is much more favorable (and moreover positive for nearly 80% of French people in 2016) than the view of the Muslim religion (between 30% and 50% favorable opinions). Or, conversely, criticism of Islam is much stronger than criticism of Muslims. Clearly, a good portion of the French people distinguish between the two and are much more lenient towards practitioners than towards the religion itself. It is also remarkable that the 2015 attacks in Paris did not trigger an anti-Muslim surge. In 2016, Muslims received nearly 80% tolerant responses. We are very far from a "virulent Islamophobia" (to use Jean-Luc Mélenchon's terms) that would sweep across the country by confusing extremist Islam and Muslims.

Second observation, the curves concerning Jews and Muslims follow the same trend, either because there is a mood towards religions as a whole which varies over time, or because there is a global variation in the spirit of openness and tolerance in society which applies to all minority religions.

Of course, over the period examined (it may be different today) Jews and the Jewish religion are better tolerated than Muslims and Islam and this gap is constant. It is therefore undeniable that, from a relative point of view, and until 2016 at least, Muslims and Islam are more ostracized than Jews and the Jewish religion, even if, once again, this ostracization is quite relative since Muslims receive 70% to 80% of tolerant responses (around 90% for Jews).

Other surveys also confirm the relative goodwill that Muslims enjoy in public opinion. A survey by IFOP⁹ of March 2022 shows for example that 79% of French people agree (completely or rather) with the statement that "in France, the vast majority of Muslims practice their religion peacefully and (that) only a minority of radical Islamists are in a logic of breaking with the values ​​of the Republic". On the other hand, in the same survey, 77% consider that Islamism is a danger for the Republic, an observation which therefore does not prevent them from showing benevolence towards ordinary Muslims.

However, it is also proven that Muslims suffer more than other groups from discrimination. Another IFOP survey from 2019¹⁰ with a sample of Muslims shows that 32% of them say they have been victims less than 5 years ago of at least one situation of discrimination among a list of cases presented to them. These perceived discriminations which affect a notable minority, but not the majority of Muslims, it must be kept in mind, are not a pure fantasy. The testing surveys conducted by Marie-Anne Valfort¹¹ on hiring situations (by comparing response rates to fictitious candidates of the same origin and differing only in their supposed religion) show that they do indeed have a reality. But as the study shows, these hiring discriminations are partly due to a form of so-called "statistical" discrimination, a rational behavior of entrepreneurs who fear that the cultural distance of Muslim candidates will affect their productivity or simply their behavior at work. They are also due to a "taste for being in a close circle that encourages recruiters to select people who are most culturally similar to them." But in both cases, spreading the false idea that Muslims are assigned to a religion that keeps them apart from society maintains and reinforces the mechanisms at the origin of these discriminations.

This thesis of Islamophobia is an extreme distortion of reality which, if it succeeded in imposing itself (which is far from being the case fortunately) would harm Muslims themselves by maintaining them, for ideological and political purposes, in a self-perpetuating victim identity figure which hinders their access to the status of citizens free to make their own choices.