Containing Muslims: Europe’s Lower-Strata Working-Class Muslims and the Weaponisation of Antisemitism and Islamophobia

Abstract

Abstract This paper discusses the subjection of Europe’s lower-strata working-class Muslims to a politics of containment on two levels: isolation and elite capture. Departing from analogies between antisemitism and Islamophobia, it argues for a different comparison between the two that involves their effects when weaponised as discursive strategies. While the effects of the weaponisation of (‘new’) antisemitism tend to isolate Muslims through a de-essentialising good vs. bad Muslim discourse, the effects of the weaponisation of Islamophobia move towards the tendential dynamics of elite capture through a re-essentialising discourse. Instead of theorising identity-formation as a direct consequence of ideology, the paper situates both discursive strategies within a structural framework that involves Muslims’ organisational and collective- action forms, which in turn consolidate non-class identities. The paper concludes that the effects of the weaponisation of both discourses are realised in the containment of Muslims.