Gendered identities and German Islamophobias

Abstract

ABSTRACT The German political imaginary and reality increasingly equate the presence of Muslim ‘Others’ within and beyond national borders with the Islamization and ‘Global Islam’, deemed an existential and national security threat. While Islamophobia assumes universal characteristics, its expression within national narratives impacts political discourse. This article explores narrative strategies employed by East and West Germans who assert aspects of ethnic identity to exclude Islam, contain its influence, or critique advocates of German tolerance. Their arguments reassert a primary German identity, linked to European citizenship. By taking the historical and geographic differences between plural Islamophobias into account, German gender identity is considered against portrayals of Muslim masculinity and femininity in cultural contexts, with the assumption that these pose imminent threats to the public and private sphere. Representations of anxieties about Muslims resort to the ‘moralization of borders’ and the mapping of eastern inflections of Islamophobia onto the political landscape of Europe, fuelled by populism and far-right electoral successes across the continent. Islamophobias’ mainstreaming empowers local and regional politics to engage in ‘moralizing borders’, exacerbating anxieties about the nation, the region, and the body.