New European Report Highlights Public 'Rejection of Muslims & Immigrants'

The Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Berlin has published a report, titled ‘Intolerance, Prejudice and Discrimination: A European Report’, which investigated the broad extent, major determinants and possible causes of group-focused enmity in eight European countries on the basis of a telephone survey of a representative sample of one thousand subjects per country.

Group-focused enmity is described as “the syndrome of interlinked negative attitudes and prejudices toward groups identified as ‘other’, ‘different’, or ‘abnormal’ and assigned inferior social status. These take the form of anti-immigrant attitudes, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim attitudes, sexism and homophobia as well as prejudices against other identified groups.”

The main findings of the report, which are summarized here, state that “Europeans are conspicuously united in their rejection of immigrants and Muslims” and “rejection of immigrants and Muslims was found everywhere.”

Nearly half (44.7%) of UK respondents think that there are too many Muslims in the country (no doubt influenced by some of the misleading claims reported regularly in the British media, such as those of Ed West of the Telegraph); 50% believe that ‘Muslims are too demanding’; and 47.2% believe Islam to be an intolerant religion. Only 39% of UK respondents believe that Muslim culture fits well in to their country or Europe (contrast this to reports of Muslims expressing positive attitudes toward their part in Britain and general feelings of belonging).

Supporting the findings of recent reports by Searchlight Educational Trust and the Guardian/ICM poll, the findings also indicate, “in all the countries a majority of respondents feel they are ignored by politicians”, adding that “political attitudes and the feeling of political powerlessness are crucial for the extent of prejudice. Those who position themselves on the right politically, who feel politically powerless… exhibit greater group focused enmity.”

The report associates right-wing extremist attitudes with three ‘fundamental ideological orientations’: authoritarianism, social dominance orientation (support for social hierarchies) and rejection of diversity (of culture, ethnicity and religion), and finds that the most important factors in mitigating against group-focused enmity are “trust in others, the ability to forge firm friendships, contact with immigrants, and above all a positive basic attitude towards diversity.”

It adds that enmity decreases with education and income (again confirming the findings of Searchlight Educational Trust, which reported that hostile attitudes toward immigrants stem from a feeling of economic insecurity in at least one section of the UK population).

The report outlines two measures to “strengthen democracy and weaken right-wing extremism”:

“The dissemination of group-focused enmity in Europe and especially the similarity of the causes in different countries underlines the relevance of joint European efforts. Individual and contextual causes must be taken into account. It is crucial to promote attitudes and establish structures that support equality, which means accepting cultural difference and embracing multiculturalism, rejecting authoritarian attitude and behaviour patterns and encouraging horizontal (as opposed to vertical) social structures.

“According to the study, citizens are not fundamentally disinterested in politics but feel subjectively detached from the political system. Gains made by right-wing populism show that citizens are blaming immigrants, Muslims and other minorities rather than directing their ire against the established political system. This underlines the need for intervention and prevention strategies to combat the collective formation group-focused enmity directed against “the others”. Taking the challenge of increasing diversity in Europe seriously at the political level also means acknowledging that all members of society need political participation and involvement.”

While the report advocates promotion of attitudes which accept cultural difference, embrace multiculturalism and reject authoritarian attitudes, the exact reverse has been the trend across Europe as of late.

At home, the Prime Minister has chosen to blame diversity and the acceptance of cultural difference as being the cause of ‘Islamist terrorism’. During a speech at the Munich Security Conference, he said, “Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream.  We’ve failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong.  We’ve even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values.”

His comments are due to feed in to the ongoing review of the Prevent programme, which will determine the direction the government’s engagement with the Muslim community will take. The Prime Minister would do well to take heed of the growing number of reports, of which this is one, which indicate the growing hostility toward Muslims in Britain and across Europe and demonstrate that he not only takes this problem seriously but will actively combat it with the same vigour which he has shown toward combating anti-Semitism.

Meanwhile, an All-Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia has been established to look
at Islamophobia in Britain. Baroness Warsi urged support of the APPG as being a step to demonstrate political leadership in responding to the problem of Islamophobia.

You can write to your local MP to encourage them to sign up to and support the work of the APPG. Details on how to contact your local MP can be found here.