Pak Sahafat – Charlie Hebdo’s derogatory cartoons, Koran burning in Sweden and Holland, the expulsion of black Muslim representative “Ilhan Omar” from the Foreign Relations Committee of the US House of Representatives were just a few of the anti-Islamic actions of the West in 2022, which have their roots in various reasons.
Although Islamophobia and beyond that, anti-Islamism in the West goes back to the events after September 11, 2001, but in the last 2 decades there has been a lot of propaganda against Muslims, which is an intensification of anti-Islamic behavior. In 2000, the FBI recorded about 29 acts of Islamophobia. Two decades later, in 2020, this number increased to 110 cases.
To the extent that the United Nations also joined the fight against Islamophobia and named March 15 as the “World Day Against Islamophobia”. Despite the western slogans about democracy, freedom of expression and belief, most of the violent behavior towards Muslims takes place in Europe and America.
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The West and the advancement of the Islamophobia project in 2022
Last year, the voices of Muslims protesting in different parts of the world against the offensive actions of individuals and extremist groups in the West were always loud. The domino of organized desecration of Islam, which is always going on in European countries, just a few days after the permission of the Swedish government to burn the Quran, the project in Holland was activated.
“Edwin Wagensold”, the Dutch leader of the far-right group “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West”, desecrated a copy of the Holy Quran, the holy book of Islam, in the Netherlands, and in a video file he published on social networks, he asked the mayor of the Hague for the permission.
The tearing and burning of a copy of the Holy Quran in the Netherlands happened only 2 days after the incident of burning this holy book in Sweden, which “Rasmus Paludan”, a radical and anti-Islamist Swedish-Danish citizen, on Saturday, February 1st, in a derogatory act. He burned a copy of the Quran in front of the Turkish Embassy in the Swedish capital. He had received permission from the Swedish authorities for this work.
But the most obvious symbol of the double standard of Western freedom of expression is the French magazine “Charlie Hebdo”; Fakahi and Mohan magazine, which is supported by Elyse authorities, disrespects the beliefs of nearly 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, and last year also tried to destroy the image of Islam and Muslims with various cartoons related to Islam and even the leader of the revolution.
Since 2015, Charlie Hebdo’s insult to the holy place of the Prophet of Islam (PBUH), the Holy Qur’an and the religion of Islam has always been carried out under the banner of freedom of expression and under the support of political authorities. This position indicates that valuable concepts such as freedom of speech and human rights are only a means to advance the inappropriate approaches of Western governments, and in practice, as long as their values ​​are not violated, they use these tools against other religions, nations, and countries.
At the same time, they have put Islamophobia and destroying the face of the last divine religion on the agenda under the banner of freedom of expression, and they have considered the denial and even doubt of the Holocaust as a historical event to be a crime, and with any ordinary citizen or high-ranking political official such as “Ilhan Omar, who says or writes anything about this other than the official recitation, will face the most severe attacks; A Muslim and black female representative of the US House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee who was fired a few months ago for criticizing the Zionist regime.
The crime of this black and Muslim congressman was criticizing the crimes of the Zionist regime; An issue that showed that even American legislators do not have the patience to criticize this regime and their embrace for freedom of expression is only open to criticizing Islam and Muslims, which is an example of the advancement of the anti-Islamic project in the Netherlands, Sweden and France.
Why has the train of Islamophobia accelerated in the West?
One of the most important reasons for the increase in the speed of the Islamophobia train is due to the strengthening of radical and extremist parties that have also been able to achieve victories in the political arena, a few of which are mentioned below;
At the beginning of October, in the Italian parliamentary elections, the most right wing of this country, led by “Georgia Meloni”, won. Therefore, the victory of Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party, led by Meloni, aroused the concern of immigrants and religious and ethnic-racial minorities because this victory party and its leadership have adopted anti-immigration positions and demand the complete closing of borders to immigrants and refugees.
Italy was not the only European country for the emergence of the extreme right in Europe, and it can be considered an extension of the radical movement that the European continent has witnessed in recent years, and Sweden, Germany, and France are among them.
In the recent elections in Sweden, the right-wing coalition consisting of moderates, liberals, Christian Democrats and Swedish Democrats succeeded in winning 176 seats in the parliament. In Germany, the far-right party “Alternative for Germany” was able to win 10% of the votes in the parliamentary elections of this country.
In France, the “National Rally” party headed by Marine Le Pen managed to win 89% of the seats in the second round of the parliamentary elections. This is one of the few times that the extreme right has won this percentage of seats. In the presidential election of this country, which was held in May, Macron was barely able to pass the barrier of “Marine Le Pen”, the leader of the far-right party “Jejamat National” in the second round.
From the point of view of the observers, various and numerous factors and reasons are involved in the growth and popularity of far-right parties in Europe. Jassim Mohammad, director of the European Center for Anti-Terrorism and Counter-Intelligence Studies, says that three main reasons contributed to this growth.
From Twitter’s Islamophobic propaganda to the absence of monitoring organizations
According to a recent report titled “Islamophobia in the Digital Age” published by the Islamic Council of Victoria (ICV), three countries, the United States, the United Kingdom, and India, produce the most anti-Islamic content on Twitter. These three countries have shared 86% of the anti-Islam content on Twitter over a three-year period.
According to this report, India has only 5.75% of global Twitter users, but this country accounts for 55% of all anti-Muslim tweets. At least 3,759,180 Islamophobic posts were published between August 28, 2019 and August 27, 2021. Meanwhile, only 14.83% of anti-Muslim tweets have been deleted.
In the following chart, the 10 countries from which the most anti-Islamic tweets are published are given in order;
From the published texts and tweets that have an anti-Islam aspect, a “superword” consisting of 50 frequently used words and terms has been obtained, which we can see below.
The most common themes and tactics observed in Islamophobic tweets were as follows;
– The association of Islam with terrorism
– Showing Muslim men as perpetrators of sexual violence
– Fear that Muslims want to impose Sharia law on others
– Conspiracy theory that Muslims are sent as immigrants
– Targeted harassment of prominent Muslim figures
– Describing halal slaughter as an inhuman act and a symbol of barbarism
Of course, the role of prominent western politicians and officials cannot be ignored in the increase of anti-Islamic tweets. As an example, the increase in tweets with this content in the UK is due to several factors, including Trump’s hate speech, the country’s long-standing issues with anti-immigrant sentiments, and most importantly, the racism of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who said about veiled women: “It’s ridiculous that people choose to go back and forth like mailboxes.”