A Critique of Islamophobia – in Defence of European Culture

Abstract

The fear of refugees and migrants that has flooded Europe in the last few years emphasises the threat posed to contemporary European culture by the supposedly radically different Islamic culture. However, the roots of European Islamophobia reach far beyond that, all the way back to the Crusades; while Central and parts of Eastern Europe have mostly been feeding these roots with memories of Ottoman invasions. After inspecting these roots, this article sheds light on the irrefutable Christian sources of European culture, but also exposes other influences without which the culture would not exist today – especially the antecedent Greco-Roman antiquity, and the subsequent Renaissance, Humanism and Enlightenment. This outlines modern European and Western culture, characterised mainly by secularity, which is the precondition for religious freedom of non-Christian, alternative, and ‘non-native’ religions as well. This article emphasises that it would be difficult to include Islam amongst these latter religions since it has been an important contribution to the shaping of European culture for centuries. The old antagonisms between European and Islamic cultures therefore do not stem from their irreconcilable differences but from their resemblances – in other words: in the West, we are not afraid of Muslims because they are so radically different but because they are strikingly similar. The real threat to European and Western culture is therefore not Muslim migrants but a demagogic fuelling of the fears of the supposed Islamic threat.