Publication: Race and Class
Publication Date: 01-JUL-04
Format: Online - approximately 12042 words
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Author: Fekete, Liz
Article Excerpt
Abstract: Across Europe, the 'war on terror' is having a major impact on race relations policies. New legislation, policing and counter-terrorist measures are casting Muslims, whether settled or immigrant, as the 'enemy within'. In the process, the parameters of xeno-racism, which targets impoverished asylum seekers, have been extended to Muslim communities. Islam is seen as a threat to Europe, which is responding not only with draconian attacks on civil rights but also with moves to roll back multiculturalism and promote monocultural homogeneity through assimilation. Hence 'integration' measures--like France's banning of the hijab--become an adjunct to anti-terrorist law. This is not just 'Islamophobia' but structured anti-Muslim racism.
Keywords: al Qaida, assimilation, civil rights, hijab, integration, Islamophobia, multiculturalism, war on terror, xeno-racism
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Europe is, we have been warned, facing a 'global threat', posed, post-September 11, by 'Islamic extremism'. In a speech to his Sedgefield constituency, Prime Minister Blair spoke in apocalyptic tones of a threat that is 'real and existential'; that needs to be fought 'whatever the political cost'. (1) Yet the threat to our 'values', to nations that are 'free, democratic and benefiting from economic progress', comes not just from Blair's many-headed monster of 'international terrorism', but from a domestic peril of Europe's own making. And, arguably, it will have longer-lasting results and inflict greater damage on European civil society, traditional values and way of life than any external danger. It derives from the very way that that danger is conceived and, hence, the measures taken to counter it. It is inherent in the counter-terrorism measures the EU has adopted since September 11, which extend the definition of terrorism, as it is in the emergency laws passed by member states which undermine the fundamentals of justice. It marks the first stages in Europe's assumption of a fundamentally different authoritarian paradigm of the state. It is based on a concept of national security that is shot through with xeno-racism--which is the precise term Sivanandan uses to describe the new racism that has emerged across Europe over the last ten years and is directed at those who, displaced and dispossessed by globalisation, are being thrown up on Europe's shores. (2) It is xeno in form in that it is directed against foreigners irrespective of colour; it is racism in substance in that it bears all the hallmarks of demonisation and exclusion of the old racism--and the mechanisms that set that foreign-hess in situ are legal and structural and institutional.
What appears to have happened post-September 11, though, is that the parameters of that institutionalised xeno-racism--anti-foreignness --have been expanded to include minority ethnic communities that have been settled in Europe for decades--simply because they are Muslim. Since Islam now represents 'threat' to Europe, its Muslim residents, even though they are citizens, even though they may be European born, are caught up in the ever-expanding loop of xeno-racism. They do not merely threaten Europe as the 'enemy within' in the war on terror, their adherence to Islamic norms and values threatens the notion of Europeanness itself. Under the guise of patriotism, a wholesale anti-Islamic racism has been unleashed which itself threatens to destroy the fabric of the multicultural society.
It is in this context that we need to understand the new drive, across Europe, towards assimilation. Assimilation is being forced through by the adoption of a number of measures, which include the recasting of citizenship laws according to security considerations; the introduction of compulsory language and civics tests for citizenship applicants; codes of conduct for the trustees of mosques; a cultural code of conduct for Muslim girls and women who, in some areas of Europe, will be forbidden to wear the hijab in state schools and other state institutions. But in order to understand how an assimilationist minority ethnic policy serves as an adjunct to anti-terrorist laws in the security state, it is first necessary to consider the political rhetoric of security that European leaders deployed in the aftermath of September 11 to justify the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It is impossible to divorce the current debate on the 'limits of cultural diversity' from the war on terror.
The securitisation agenda
After the events of September 11, no one could argue that al Qaida did not pose a threat to the US or that its tactics were not those of terror. As close allies of the US and active participants in the first Gulf war, EU governments would have considered themselves at risk from al Qaida suicide bombers and the activities of sleeper cells. Germany, shocked that the September 11 plot had been hatched in Hamburg, arrested four Algerians after uncovering evidence of a conspiracy to bomb the Strasbourg Christmas market in 2000. The British authorities, too, were alarmed when Richard Reid, a young British-Caribbean convert to Islam, attempted to blow up a commercial flight using explosive devices hidden in his shoes. EU states would have been irresponsible had they not taken proportionate measures to protect their citizens from al Qaida terror attacks. The problem, however, was that the response to September 11 was not proportionate. Not only did the EU pass resolutions and initiate legislation that brought a whole array of unrelated issues under the rubric of the war against terror, but the most prominent European heads of state (with the exception of the German chancellor and the French president) played a vital role in creating the myth that the West was in 'imminent' danger from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam had high-level contacts with al Qaida going back a decade.
Even in the immediate aftermath of September 11, when the focus on al Qaida might have been expected to be at its sharpest, the EU reacted by bringing a whole array of dissidence--not just 'foreign terrorist organisations' but anti-globalisation protests, animal rights activism, subversive youth subcultures and so on--under the remit of counter-terrorism. The EU Common Positions and Framework Decision on combating terrorism, passed in December 2001, broadened the definition of terrorism considerably. Terrorist activity was no longer confined to extreme violence committed for political ends; now any action designed to 'seriously damage a country or international organisation' or that 'unduly compel[led]' a government to act in a particular way could fall within the definition. If the notion of undue compulsion or serious damage still implies that extreme violence is integral to the concept of terrorism, this was belied by the subsequent inclusion under the definition of all those who gave terrorism 'any form of support, active or passive' (emphasis added). (3) In this way, new crimes of association with terrorism were created. Henceforth, individuals fighting for ethnic self-determination, for instance, but who do not pursue their goals by violent means, or knowingly assist with the preparation of violent acts, could come under the scope of European anti-terrorist laws.
Member states subsequently began incorporating the EU Common Positions and Framework Decision into domestic law, leading to the introduction by some states of emergency legislation and new antiterrorist laws. Others amended existing public order, criminal justice and aliens' legislation and extended police powers. Crucially, both approaches led to the creation of a shadow criminal justice system for foreign nationals, including asylum seekers, who would, in future, be denied basic civil liberties and human rights. Countries such as France, Italy and Sweden have deported foreign nationals suspected of posing a security risk, thus abandoning the principle of non-refoulement according to which foreign nationals cannot be extradited to a state where they risk persecution, the death penalty, torture or other degrading treatment. (4) The UK Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 (ACTSA) introduced internment without trial for foreign nationals only, twelve of whom have been incarcerated at Belmarsh and Woodhill prisons without trial for two years. (5) The detainees have been charged with no crime, are unable to see the evidence against them and are confined to their cells for twenty-two hours a day.
In effect, EU governments have used the opportunity that September 11 afforded to expand the definition of terrorism and spread the tentacles of the security state in previously unthinkable ways, albeit Europe is no stranger to political movements that target civilians for bombings and other attacks. The thirty-year war in Northern Ireland, the ongoing conflict between Spain and Basque separatists, and in France over the future of Corsica, are the most obvious examples of conflicts that have claimed the lives of civilians, either at the hands of the state or paramilitary movements. Yet these real material outrages never led to the kind of blanket security measures engendered by September 11 and now justified post hoc by the March 11 terrorist attack in Madrid.
This is not to say that European states did not attempt to manufacture consensus for draconian policies in Northern Ireland or the Basque Country, for instance. But consent was manufactured through the idea that separatist violence could be contained on the periphery; the general public were encouraged to maintain a Blitz-style solidarity in the face of further potential attacks. However, after the events of September 11, European publics have been encouraged to think in an entirely different way, viewing any bombing in any part of the world as a direct threat to each individual's personal security. Criminologist Janne Flyghed has argued that the expansion of anti-terrorist measures has come through the depiction of 'imminent danger of dramatic proportions without a shred of empirical support'. 'Repeated references to certain spectacular events produce a false consciousness of impending danger' and are linked to 'perceptions of non-specific and diffuse, but nonetheless serious threats. The objects of these threats are also often quite difficult to define', but include '"the national security", "the safety of the nation", or "public order and safety", concepts whose content and applicability can vary according to the political situation'. (6) In essence, there are no distant parts of the world anymore, no peripheries. Or, rather, the periphery is at the centre, its boundaries determined by xeno-racism.
The constant reference to spectacular events, like those of September 11, then, serves a wider political agenda; that of manufacturing consent to increasingly intrusive surveillance and the circumscription of personal freedoms through the evocation of fear. The British government, for instance, has been engaged in 'illiberal experiments to govern by way of the exception' involving the adoption of 'extraordinary measures against those we are encouraged to consider as the outcast'. (7) The 'outcast' is necessary, as both threat and scapegoat. Radical lawyer Gareth Peirce has described how the politics of fear emerging around 'national security' takes effect:
'National security' has a seductive ring. It frightens off political disagreement. It frightens the population and makes it more subservient to authoritarian measures. It widens a circle of fear as the ever-expanding notion of national security perceives a nation's interests as being capable of being directly affected by events all around the world. It creates an exaggerated degree of fear and an exaggerated degree of threat, and it is of immense importance to governments and governmental institutions which have an inherent desire to act in secrecy and to hide material from which vital national...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.
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