Islam is not to blame

Social perception paints a dystopian reality in which Muslims become a demographic threat

Europe has many problems, but Islam is not one of them.
The temptation to deny the seal of European authenticity to broad layers of its population that make this religion a first sign of identity is.
It is also important to relegate to social and economic marginality the immigration that comes from the old colonial world or from the neocolonial wars that today devastate a large part of the Islamic world (Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan) and in which Europe is gambling its future, even if it does not seem very aware of it.
As is asking all Muslims to take a stand when terrorist attacks such as the latest one in Paris against the weekly Charlie Hebdo take place, which distort above all Islam but also Europe.
We have witnessed all this in recent years, creating a breeding ground that makes Islam the scapegoat for the many constitutional problems that Europe is dragging on.
There are currently about twenty million Muslims in the European Union, which is 3.9% of the population.
However, social perception paints a dystopian reality in which Muslims become a demographic threat: the British newspaper The Guardian published last November the data of a survey that placed France at the head of this nonsense (according to the perception of the respondents, there would be a 31% Muslim population in the country, when the real figure is 8%), followed by Belgium (29% vs. 6%), the United Kingdom (%/5%), Italy (%/4%) and Spain (%/2%).
Blinded by this perception, we Europeans engender ghosts that in turn feed back into jihadist terrorism, so adept at creating redemptive utopias.
If Europe rejects its dark-skinned children, with Arabic names, beards and hijabs, the open arms of another future, however impossible it may seem, welcomes them.
Carrying out jihad, real or virtual, becomes an act of insubordination to a Europe that denies.
This, of course, is not a justification for terrorism, but an explanation.
The future could not be bleaker.
A first step to prevent the wave of anti-Islamic reprisals that is coming (in France mosques are already burning, in Sweden three were attacked last week, in Germany more than 50 in the last year) is to call a spade a spade.
But the European political class still has a hard time pronouncing the term “Islamophobia”.
It is a form of racism and a social phenomenon, but as such it has a strong political component.
Islamophobia is fuelled by Europe sheltered behind the walls of austerity, which has expelled several generations of Europeans from their work and educational futures.
For many, as always, the fault lies with the “other”, the Muslim, the immigrant.
But Islamophobia is also fuelled by the growing dilemma that our leaders are already putting us face: security or freedom.
What better triumph for terrorism.
Luz Gómez García is a professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
Published in El País, International.