Category: Statements

Background

The European Commission published its White Paper on The Future of Europe – the Commission’s contribution to a new chapter of the European project – on 1 March 2017. The White Paper mapped out the challenges and opportunities ahead of us and the key drivers of change that need to be addressed in order to consolidate Europe as a common project.

In his State of the Union speech on 13 September 2017, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker outlined his vision for the future, to ensure the well-being and security of European citizens in an inclusive Union and in an increasingly multipolar world. At the December 2017, European Council first conclusions will help to decide on course of action to be rolled out in time for the EP elections in June 2019.

A broad debate across the continent, including the European Parliament, national Parliaments, local and regional authorities followed the publication of the White Paper. It has also seen the participation of 270, 000 citizens who attended 1,750 events across Europe, supported by the Commission.

The “Engaging Muslim Young People” event, hosted by Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans and European Parliament First Vice-President Mairead McGuinness was an opportunity to listen to the ideas and concerns of young Muslims from across the continent as Europe navigates its path and maps out its future. 28 Muslim students and activists in 17 Member States attended the event which was structured around 3 workshops.

Below are the 10 key issues raised by the participants, each followed by proposals for action to be taken by the European Union and its Member States.

Key issues raised and proposals for action

Workshop I – The Social Dimension of Europe

1. Corporate Taxation

Considering that Europe’s social security systems represent the bedrock of Europe’s cohesive and prosperous societies, the EU and its Member States must put an end to aggressive tax planning and tax avoidance by certain corporations in line with the Commission’s Anti-Tax Avoidance Package of 28 January 2016.

• Ensure that tax is paid by companies where profit and value is generated;
• Ensure effective access to tax information between Member States.

2. Education

In too many countries, teachers are still badly paid in relation to the fundamental role they have in today’s society. Furthermore, school curricula do not reflect the diversity of European history and its current society.

• Encourage Member States to increase investment in their education systems, including with regard to teachers’ wages, especially those working in primary and secondary education;
• Include Muslim heritage and history in education curricula, particularly in the field of history of science, in order to build a more accurate and representative collective memory.

3. Social inclusion

While integration is often presented as a two-way process, integration strategies rarely promote migrants’ meaningful participation. Furthermore, urban design in several cities has exacerbated social segregation.

• Conceive integration policies as a two-way process, requiring active engagement from governments’ side;
• Implement policies and legislation to counter blatant segregation and gentrification in cities;
• Call on Member States to increase investment in social assistance and social policies;
• Adapt taxation systems in such a way to relieve the worst and less well off;
• Support business incubators in order to cultivate investors and citizens who have innovative ideas.

4. Discrimination and racism

Structural discrimination and racism still exist in various Member States in various areas of life, including in education and employment. The situation of veiled Muslim women in the workplace is of particular concern following the CJEU judgment issued in Case C-157/15 Achbita of March 2017[1].

• Adopt legislation and policies to address the adverse impacts of the CJEU’s ruling on persons who wear visible religious clothing at the workplace;
• Encourage the use of anonymous job and internship applications;
• Take measures to increase the recognition of degrees held by third-country migrants.

Workshop II – Harnessing Globalisation

5. The EU’s external relations with Muslim-majority countries

There is no significant control of companies based in EU Member States selling arms and weaponry to regimes in Muslim-majority countries. This state of affairs is particularly serious in the MENA region from where the majority of the refugees fleeing to Europe come.

• Implement binding legislation, preferably regulations, on arms embargos on European companies selling and exporting weaponry to countries in the MENA region. Recommendations on such matters are insufficient.

6. The European Commission’s Diversity Strategy

While the European Commission is a global player and aspires to lead the way in diversity, its own internal personnel Diversity Strategy which aims to reflect the diversity of our society does not specifically address racial, ethnic and religious grounds as grounds worthy of focus alongside gender and disability.

• Amend this strategy to include racial, ethnic and religious grounds as grounds worthy of focus;
• Develop specific measures to ensure that all EU institutions become more diverse workplaces.

Workshop III- Muslims in Europe

7. Data collection

Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA on racist and xenophobic hate crime and hate speech  falls short of providing detailed indications on how law enforcement and judicial authorities should investigate and prosecute hate crimes.

• Continue to support and encourage Member States to ensure that bias is properly investigated and prosecuted in cases of anti-Muslim hate crime and to collect and disaggregate hate crime data to include anti-Muslim hate crime.

 

8. Stigmatising speech in the media and politics

While recognising that the EU’s red line on free speech is ‘incitement to hatred or violence’ against groups or individual members of such groups, certain political discourse severely stigmatises Muslims, going as far as to question their status as EU citizens and to depict them as a threat.

• Openly counter and condemn stigmatising speech by politicians against Muslims when this occurs, thereby demonstrating the EU’s strong leadership and consistency with regard to stigmatising speech and hate speech;
• Adopt guidelines addressed to the audio-visual media watchdogs in each Member State in order to provide a comprehensive and pedagogical approach to media outlets in relation to issues related to Muslims.

 

9. Rhetoric surrounding certain counter-terrorism measures

The rhetoric surrounding certain counter-terrorism policies and certain measures themselves have had the effect of stigmatising and generalising Muslims.

• Ensure that actions falling under the “Prevention” pillar of the European Union Counter-Terrorism Strategy and actions taken by national governments in the framework of counter-terrorism or state of emergency do not infringe on fundamental human rights and do not directly or indirectly alienate Muslims from their society by framing them as potential terrorists;
• Implement police guidelines against discriminatory practices, in particular ethnic profiling;
• Widen the scope of de-radicalisation and counter-terrorism measures and the accompanying discourse to apply across the political spectrum including far-right extremism, which is often fuelled by leaders and members of far-right political parties.

10. The non-recognition of Islamophobia

While several governments and indeed, the European Commission employ the term “anti-Muslim hatred“, various Muslim organisations and NGOs support the use of the term “Islamophobia“[2]. The non-recognition and lack of understanding of Islamophobia is detrimental to countering its impact.

• Officially recognise Islamophobia as a specific form of racism, which is structural and affects visible Muslim women disproportionately;
• Raise awareness about Islamophobia by means of legislation and awareness campaigns;
• Adopt national plans against racism which address Islamophobia as a specific form of racism.

[1]       The CJEU held that an internal rule of an undertaking which prohibits the visible wearing of any political, philosophical or religious signs does not constitute direct discrimination under the Employment Equality Directive 2000/78/EC.  Muslim organisations have denounced the negative impact of this ruling on veiled Muslim women’s access to the job market. Other human rights defense organisations such as Amnesty International expressed their “disappointment” regarding the ruling and declared that it gives “greater leeway to employers to discriminate against women – and men – on the grounds of religious belief.”
Source: https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2017/03/eu-ecj-rules-no-violation-in-dismissal-of-women-for-wearing-headscarves-at-work/

[2]       A commonly held definition employed by these NGOs and organisations defines Islamophobia as “Acts of violence and discrimination, as well as racist speech, fuelled by historical abuses and negative stereotyping which leads to exclusion and dehumanisation of Muslims, and all those perceived as such. Islamophobia has nothing to do with criticism of Islam”.

FEMYSO condemns in the strongest possible terms the murder of three Roma sisters aged four, eight and 20, who died in a fire after a Molotov cocktail was thrown at their camper van on the outskirts of Rome, Italy early Wednesday morning. Such attack is as a heinous crime that is calling for an unbiased police investigation, and we’ll not rest until the perpetrators are brought to justice regardless their origin.

We would like to express deep condolences to the family and surviving children.

We appeal to the media and politicians to keep sensitivity in their coverage and in political responses to make sure they don’t fuel already existing antigypsyism in the society.

We repeat our call to the Italian municipal authorities, the Italian government and the European Commission to ensure that Roma families in Italy have a chance for equal citizenship and being offered decent housing conditions and facilities where their children grow up in a secure environment and can invest in a better future.

***

FEMYSO joins the open letter of Graziano Halilovic that you can find here:Graziano Halilovic- an open letter.

The European Network against Racism (ENAR), Open Society Justice Initiative and the European Parliament Anti-Racism and Diversity Intergroup (ARDI) are calling on the European Union to address the urgent challenge of ethnic profiling by police forces across Europe—which leads to individuals being singled out for identity checks or searches purely because of their race, ethnicity or perceived religion.

In the United Kingdom, Black people are stopped by police at six times the rate of White people and Asians at almost twice the rate of Whites. In Granada, Spain, Roma are 12 times more likely to be stopped than White people. In Belgium, there has been an increase in ethnic profiling by police of young males of African or north African background since the Brussels and Paris terrorist attacks.

These organisations are urging the European Commission led High Level Group on combating Racism, Xenophobia and other forms of Intolerance to establish a sub-group of experts on the issue, aimed at developing standards on combatting racial and ethnic bias in policing. These standards should include strong prohibitions against ethnic profiling, the collection of data on police stops, and the provision of appropriate training for police officers.

“Heightened concerns over both migration and the threat of terrorism are fueling discriminatory policing practices,” said Rebekah Delsol, who heads the Justice Initiative’s project on fair and effective policing. “Action at EU level would provide an impetus for change in many settings; changes that are already valued on the streets by those police forces that recognise the importance of this issue.”

Amel Yacef, ENAR Chair, said: “Ethnic profiling cannot be an ‘acceptable’ price to pay for security. It damages and alienates innocent individuals, results in tensions between communities and is ultimately an ineffective security strategy. We need European standards to promote fair and effective policing.”

“Ethnic profiling on the basis of ethnicity, race, nationality or religion is a discriminatory practice and is a breach of fundamental rights standards,” said Judith Sargentini MEP. “You cannot single out people and the practice must be stopped. Moreover singling people out based on their ethnicity, race, nationality or religion has a counter effect and often erodes trust in our society and trust in law enforcement agencies.”

Though increasingly active in the areas of justice and home affairs, the European Union has so far been reluctant to address the issue of ethnic profiling, claiming it is a national competence. However, national standards on the issue vary wildly: with the exception of police forces in England and Wales, and in some municipalities in Spain, most European member states do not keep records of police stops that do not lead to an arrest. This is also an issue for ethnic and religious minorities when they face intrusive stops, ID checks and searches when they cross internal EU borders.

A number of existing EU norms already outlaw racial discrimination, including the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the Framework Decision Against Racism and Xenophobia, and the Race Equality Directive. Developing EU-wide guidelines on ethnic profiling would ensure these norms are implemented in practice.

Background information:
Police, human rights officials and the European Commission will join civil society activists and members of the European Parliament in Brussels today for discussions on developing EU-wide standards on combating ethnic profiling. The event is being hosted by Judith Sargentini (Greens/EFA, NL) Cécile Kyenge (S&D, IT), Afzal Khan (S&D, UK) and Sajjad Karim (ECR, UK). For more information: http://www.enar-eu.org/Round-table-on-ethnic-profiling-towards-EU-guidel…

FEMYSO

In December 2015, Donald Trump issued a statement that called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” A few months earlier, he called Latino immigrants drug dealers, criminals and rapists. During his campaign for presidency, Trump has made several other bigoted and misogynistic remarks that have alienated many. The Islamophobic, racist, xenophobic and misogynistic rhetoric adopted by Trump throughout his campaign has had a negative impact on minorities and women not just in the US, but also globally.

An NBC poll conducted in December 2015 for example, showed that one in four Americans supported Trump’s ban on Muslims entering the United States. In March 2016, more than half of the American population supported this idea. This is echoed amongst the younger generation too, as seen in a report issued in April 2016 which stated that Trump’s campaign was having a ‘profoundly negative effect on children and classrooms’ producing fear and anxiety among children of colour and intensifying racial tensions in the classroom. Teachers have noted an increase in bullying, harassment and intimidation of students whose races, religions or nationalities have been the verbal targets of candidates on the campaign trail.

The US presidential election this year has proven to be a difficult one, and has had a negative impact on many minority groups, also resulting in repercussion for those in Europe. The results from the European Referendum in the UK caused a ‘horrible spike’ in hate crime according to the Met Police, particularly targeting those of Eastern European backgrounds. A survey by Tell MAMA, a project that measures anti-Muslim hate, found a 326% rise in incidents post-Brexit including a situation where a woman’s hijab was pulled off in a busy London street.The normalisation of racial language and abuse may be something that will continue in the rest of Europe and become more deep-rooted as we see the possibility of far-right leaders such as Marine Le Pen and Norbert Hofer feel empowered by a Republican win and may create opportunities to make minorities more vulnerable.

In an uncertain time, we must emphasize how imperative it is to stand together, united. We may not know what the future holds, but we can probably expect one thing; the situation for many minority groups in society will become worse as young Muslim women consider taking off the hijab for their own safety.For us, the European Muslim youth and all who believe in fighting against racism and bigotry in every sense and believe in standing up for humanity, it is important to unite in solidarity. We cannot sit back and allow hate crimes to increase and for individuals to feel like they are in danger in their own country. We have to at least speak up and follow the heritage of our Prophet (pbuh), who taught us to stand up against all types of injustice. We need glimpses of hope and not greater powerlessness and hopelessness caused by racist beliefs and discriminatory structures. Let’s not build walls, instead, let’s build bridges. Let’s make it possible to live in an open society with equality, justice and peace. It may be difficult to rise up to the challenge in the current climate, but we have no other choice than to be resilient.

Almost a year ago, the EU held its first Fundamental Rights colloquium, focusing on Antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred. This was a strong political signal that the EU was finally willing to prioritise the fight against Antisemitism and Islamophobia. The European Commission – thanks to the appointment of a coordinator on anti-Muslim hatred – has had a whole year to listen and identify the main areas of concern. Now it’s time to see concrete political actions to address the most pressing issues, not least the very real – and rising – violence and discrimination faced by Muslims on a daily basis in Europe.

The recent human rights violations and abusive political discourse around the burkini bans in France epitomised the hatred faced by Muslims, and Muslim women in particular. Both politicians from across the political spectrum and the judiciary have capitalised on this structural Islamophobia to enforce discriminatory policies. But France is not alone. A study in Germany has shown that Islamophobia has risen markedly, with 40% of people surveyed who believe Muslims should be forbidden from coming to Germany. Government and political representatives in eastern European countries, including Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, repeatedly talk of a “Muslim invasion” and refuse to accept Muslim refugees, stoking fear among the population and an increase in racist attacks. There has been a surge in racist incidents, including against Muslim communities, following the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, a campaign marked by xenophobic and racist discourse. A recent ENAR report shows that Muslim women are the first to pay the price of Islamophobia in Europe and are disproportionately targeted by both employment discrimination and hate crime.

In addition, security-oriented counter-terrorism measures are having a disproportionate impact on Muslim individuals or those perceived as such, including racial profiling by law enforcement authorities, police abuses during raids and the use of administrative restrictions on the basis of vague and discriminatory criteria. The “escalator” approach whereby a conservative religious practice would lead to support for violent terrorism is bound to inefficiently target innocent Muslim individuals and families, and to generate violent backlash from the mainstream population.

As a first step, EU institutions must publically recognise and condemn Islamophobia as a specific form of racism. The European Commission should agree on a roadmap to ensure that EU member states adopt national strategies to combat Islamophobia in areas such as employment, education, health, hate crime and criminal justice. EU and national counter-terrorism measures must build on independent impact assessment studies, include human rights safeguards and be complemented by long-term prevention through equality and social inclusion policies.

For further information, contact:
Georgina Siklossy, ENAR Senior Communication and Press Officer
Tel: +32 (0)2 229 35 70 – Mobile: +32 (0)473 490 531 – Email: georgina@enar-eu.org – Web:www.enar-eu.org

Muslim women‪ are the first to pay the price for Islamophobia in Europe. That was the finding of the first European research report to be conducted on discrimination against Muslim women by the European Network Against Racism, launched in Brussels last week.

The report, which covers eight European countries, focused on discrimination in access to employment, education and hate crime. It found that Muslim women face a “triple penalty” – suffering the same gender discrimination as other women, compounded by racial and religious discrimination on account of their background, skin colour and faith. These forms of discrimination intersect in complex ways – for example, in the United Kingdom, 1 in 30 white women said they had been illegally asked whether they planned to get married or have children, compared to 1 in eight Pakistani women – i.e. nearly four times more. One in four employers in the UK also admit that they would be hesitant to hire Muslim women on the basis of cultural stereotypes, due to concerns that childcare would be an issue for them.

Then, of course, there are the even higher levels of prejudice against Muslim women who wear the headscarf. Despite legal prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of religion or belief in employment, Muslim women are being regularly excluded from career opportunities across Europe. Forty four percent of Belgian employers state that wearing a headscarf can negatively influence the selection of candidates. In France, tests show that female applicants with a French sounding name and female applicants with an Arabic sounding name wearing the headscarf had a 71-point difference in positive responses for an interview.

For those who are lucky enough to secure a job despite the odds, many face discrimination once they are in the workplace including harassment, insults, discriminatory remarks, lack of career progression or dismissal. When Muslim women face discriminatory remarks, the reaction of employers is often to pressure, dismiss or penalise them, rather than stand with their employees.

A pending French case at the European Court of Justice is a case in point – a design engineer was dismissed after a customer complained about her headscarf, which “embarrassed” the company. Rather than supporting the employee, the employer demanded that she observe the principle of “neutrality” with regards to her dress when dealing with clients – although this principle has no legal basis in the private sector. When the employee refused, she was dismissed.

For those women who choose to challenge discrimination in the courts, the chances of success are pretty slim. While a strong legislative framework prohibiting discrimination in employment theoretically exists, companies and governments are using vague exceptions to justify discrimination against Muslim women.

Equality denied

In France and increasingly Belgium and Germany, states are using a particular interpretation of “secularism” or “neutrality” to exclude Muslim women wearing the headscarf from a whole swathe of public sector jobs. “Neutrality” and “secularism”, concepts originally intended to ensure states treat individuals equally, are being interpreted in ways that directly result in discrimination against individuals of different religions or beliefs.

Once “neutrality” and secularism are used by states to ban religious symbols in the public sector, they often begin to seep into the private sector. By imposing a discriminatory interpretation of these principles, the state thus opens the way for private employers to use the same language to justify discrimination across the board. This leaves the large numbers of Muslim women wearing the headscarf who graduate each year from French universities facing a brick wall of exclusion and rejection. When it comes to job prospects, Muslim women certainly do not enjoy the benefits of “liberté, égalité et fraternité”.

To cope with such discrimination, the report shows how Muslim women are developing a number of survival strategies. Some try to adapt themselves to employers’ discriminatory practices (“avoidance strategy”), requesting to be put in the back office to avoid customer contact, so as to keep their jobs while satisfying their bosses’ wishes for them to be invisible. Some are faced with the difficult choice between their personal convictions and their aspirations, and choose to remove the headscarf. Another strategy is to “opt out”, turning either to entrepreneurship and self-employment (a rising phenomenon in France), or give up on a career, leading to frustration and isolation.

Particularly disappointing is the position adopted by the European Court of Human Rights – as one legal expert commented at the report launch, the court has never upheld a Muslim woman’s right to wear a headscarf in education or employment. After years of legal struggle, women who have brought claims in the court have been denied their religious freedoms based on various grounds – public safety, ‘established social norms’, secularism, protecting the rights of others, or gender equality. The most powerful regional court in the world, charged with upholding the ideals of a democratic and pluralistic society, has repeatedly upheld bans on the headscarf based on government assertions about Islam and Muslim women, and mere stereotypes unsupported by evidence. By doing so, it is sending a clear message that Muslim women’s right to practice their faith has no place in European society and that, in order to “liberate” Muslim women, we must restrict their choices.

Muslim women targeted

The most significant finding of the report is that Islamophobia is a specifically gendered form of discrimination. It does not affect men and women in the same way – Muslim women are far more likely to be the victims of hate crime and speech than Muslim men, especially if they wear a headscarf. They are the primary targets of threats, hate speech, violence, assaults and online hate. In the Netherlands, over 90 percent of the victims of Islamophobic incidents reported to the organisation Meld Islamofobie in 2015 were Muslim women. In France, 81.5 percent of Islamophobic violence recorded by the Collective Against Islamophobia in France in 2014 targeted women, most of them wearing a visible religious symbol.

The statistics put forward in the report represent only the tip of the iceberg – as a 2009 survey by the EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights found, 79 percent of Muslim respondents did not report their most recent experience of discrimination to any competent organisation and an average 80 percent of respondents could not name any anti-discrimination organisation that could offer support or advice to people who experience discrimination.

Despite the clear rise in Islamophobic attacks documented by NGOs, most EU states do not register the religious affiliation of victims or disaggregate statistical data along religious lines. Without official statistics on the scale of the problem, it becomes easy to ignore it.

For Islamophobes, and for wider society, Muslim women (especially those who are visibly identifiable) are “boundary markers”, their dress not seen as a matter of personal choice, but as fodder for public debate, invested with meanings and prejudices imposed by society, by media representations and political exploitation.

Listening to the victims

While the public debates about Muslim women that flare up periodically in Europe are allegedly about their autonomy and liberation, they are often the last to be consulted. This report, for the first time, puts them centre stage and seeks to understand their experiences and realities.

It is time for us to take Islamophobia seriously. The discrimination documented by ENAR’s report is only a symptom of a deeper malaise that is attacking the very roots of Europe’s democracy. Hate and intolerance are becoming the currency of political discourse, used by governments to distract from their inability to offer social mobility and economic opportunity to a new generation.

Adopting the illiberal discourse of extreme and far right movements only serves to strengthen their appeal. It is time for European governments to assert their commitment to the fundamental principles of democracy, human rights and equality – principles that were adopted precisely to ensure Europe would overcome the horrors of conflict and genocide. It is time we listened to the voices of the victims, and not to those who seek to draw Europe back into the grip of a not-too-distant intolerant past.

– Intissar Kherigi is a Tunisian-British researcher and PhD student at Sciences Po Paris in Comparative Political Sociology. She holds a BA in Law from Kings College, Cambridge University and a Masters in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is a qualified solicitor and has worked in the UK House of Lords, the United Nations and the European Parliament.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

source: www.middleeasteye.net/

The Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organisations (FEMYSO) would like to congratulate Malia Bouattia in her election as the President of the National Union of Students (NUS) at the annual National Conference in Brighton.

The former NUS Black Students’ Officer is the first Muslim to be elected to the presidential position in the organisation’s 94 year history. Malia is also the first black and minority ethnic (BME) woman to hold this position and will be representing 600 student unions and over 7 million students across the United Kingdom.

The dedication of Malia towards supporting and campaigning for student rights cannot go unnoticed. She launched the NUS ‘Liberate My Degree’ campaign, led the campaign against Islamophobia on university campuses, hosted the national ‘Black Lives Matter’ tour, led the nationwide PREVENT day of action and founded the national ‘Black Sabbs Network’ and the Black Students’ Campaign regional network.

FEMYSO would like to once again congratulate Malia and all elected Vice-Presidents (Shakira Martin, Shelly Asquith, Sorana Vieru, Richard Brooks, and Rob Young) on their successful election campaigns and wish all the success in their roles in bringing real positive change to students across the UK.

ENDS

Notes to editor:

1. For further information, please contact: comms@femyso.org
2. FEMYSO was founded in 1996 in Sweden at a time when Muslim youth from across Europe felt the need to come together to create a united body, to share ideas and experiences, help develop the capacity of Muslim European youth and represent their concerns and views to the European institutions. Since then, FEMYSO has grown into a wide network of 34 student and youth organisations throughout Europe, all working to benefit their communities and societies. The FEMYSO vision for European Muslim youth is proactive youth participation and service to humanity. We have trained thousands of young Muslims, contributed to the emergence of a strong confident identity of young European Muslims, and built strong partnerships with organisations across Europe.
3. NUS National Conference 2016 started on April 19 and runs until April 21 in Brighton. More information about the conference can be found at conference.nusconnect.org.uk.

4. Malia Bouattia’s full manifesto can be read here.

5. Shakira Martin election speech for Vice President can be seen here.

6. Shelly Asquith’s election speech for Vice President can be seen here.

7. Sorana Vieru election speech for Vice President can be seen here.

8. Richard Brooks election speech for Vice President can be seen here.

9. Rob Young election speech for Vice President can be seen here.
Follow FEMYSO on twitter: @femyso; if you were forwarded this release, sign up to join our mailing list via www.femyso.org
Press Release Team