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

In: Historical Materialism
Author:
Cihan Özpınar Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Galatasaray University Istanbul Turkey

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https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5918-181X
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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.

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