Thinking Europe’s “Muslim Question”: On Trojan Horses and the Problematization of Muslims

Abstract

Understanding the ways in which Muslims are turned into “a problem” requires an analytic incorporating the insights gained through the concepts of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism into a larger frame. The “Muslim Question” can provide such a frame by attending to the systematic character of this form of racism, explored here through biopolitics. This article develops a conceptualization of Europe’s “Muslim Question” along three lines. First, the “Muslim Question” emerges as an accusation of being an “ alien body” to the nation, often expressed through the Trojan horse legend. Second, the “Muslim Question” is elaborated through demands of integration and assimilation, in which the production of difference entangles with calls and measures to regulate Muslims. And third, the “Muslim Question” is brought to life upon the terrain of gender and sexuality, as the imaginary of threat at the heart of the “Muslim Question” is a replacement conspiracy centered on birthrates.

Memeing a conspiracy theory: On the biopolitical compression of the great replacement conspiracy theories

“…In this article, I focused exclusively on the functionalities of memes in the circuit narrative of the PRCT and this entailed taking ‘selective directions’ (Stoler, 1995) during the analysis. The categories of gender and sexuality are crucial for structuring the narrative of PRCT (Bracke and Hernández Aguilar, 2020, 2021), and indeed, there is a lack of academic analysis of how gender and sexuality shape Conspiracy Theories in general (Thiem, 2020). 4chan/pol is infamous for the sexism and homophobia posted on a daily basis, during my 10 months digital ethnography on 4chan/pol mostly pornographic images of white women were used to mourn a loss, the replacement of populations.…”

“…First, the sexuality of the non-white Other is represented as violently excessive (see: de Hart, 2017), i.e., hyperfertility as a tactical warfare for the replacement of ‘European natives.’ Conversely, European sexuality is chastised as not being ‘fertile enough’ to withstand the challenges in population dynamics and growth. Within these contours, PRCT postulate different ‘solutions’, including banning abortion for European women to have more European babies, ‘remigration’ of ‘non-Europeans’ to their supposed countries of origin as a way to stop the replacement, and employing different economic and ideological incentives to exponentiate ‘native’ European fertility (Bracke and Hernández Aguilar, 2020, 2021). Far from being a discourse confined to the demonization of the ‘non-European Other’ and the closing of the European borders, PRCT also hinge on controlling European women’s sexual practices.…”

Animal Politics or Animal Police? Islamophobia and Animal Advocacy Politics

“…Illustrative is the ever-growing list of policy interventions regarding Islamic practices-for example, veiling, the construction of mosques, halal slaughter, and (de)radicalization (Jung 2022;De Koning 2020;Fadil, Ragazzi, and De Koning 2019;Anna Korteweg and Yurdakul 2009;Lettinga and Saharso 2014;Maussen 2004). Instead, it produces an image of Muslims through which they are monolithically addressed and considered to be an alien and a threat to the nation (Bracke and Aguilar 2022).…”

Incomplete lives: experiences of Islamophobia as governmentality in education and employment in Flanders, Belgium

“…Scholar of religious studies Anya Topolski refers to the race-religion constellation to show how processes of racialisation have been entangled with views of the religious Other since the sixteenth century (Topolski 2018). Others advance the notion of 'the Muslim Question' to connect to the Jewish Question and European histories of national exclusion (Bracke and Hernández Aguilar 2021). Bracke and Hernandez Aguilar focus on the Muslim Question to understand how nation-states create mechanisms of exclusion through a Foucauldian biopolitics that produces Muslim minorities as an eternal internal/external 'alien' body that ought to be integrated or assimilated, and whose demographic growth ought to be kept in check.…”