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

ÖZPINAR C.

Historical Materialism, vol.32, no.1, pp.194-224, 2024 (AHCI) identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 32 Issue: 1
  • Publication Date: 2024
  • Doi Number: 10.1163/1569206x-bja10046
  • Journal Name: Historical Materialism
  • Journal Indexes: Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, Historical Abstracts, Index Islamicus, Political Science Complete, Social services abstracts, Sociological abstracts, Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
  • Page Numbers: pp.194-224
  • Keywords: antisemitism, containment, elite capture, identity formation, Islamophobia, organisations and collective action, working-class identities
  • Galatasaray University Affiliated: Yes

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.