Antisemitism among Western European Muslims

Absztrakt

Antisemitism is on the rise in Europe, which many experts call a “new antisemitism”, because its source is different from the traditional, racially motivated European antisemitism. The perpetrators are mostly young men of Muslim immigrant origin. This antisemitism has its roots in Islamic doctrine. The size of the communities where such views are present is growing because of immigration and higher fertility rate. Their level of integration into the host societies is not improving over time, on the contrary, each subsequent generation is distancing further from the host society, locked in self-reinforcing circle of separation and exclusion. The ever-growing and culturally increasingly separated Muslim communities are significantly more antisemitic than the rest of the rooted Western European populations, and a central topic of their anti-Jewish sentiment is the Middle East conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. It is likely that this antisemitism will increase over time, and with the growing of this population, it will have an influence on state and indirectly EU policymaking in connection with the Middle East conflict. In this article three case studies will show the situation in France, the UK and Germany, countries with the three largest Jewish communities in the EU. The fourth would be Hungary, and the rest are significantly smaller, so this sample is appropriate to draw conclusions about the Western European situation.