Contesting Islam, Constructing Race and Sexuality

Published by: Bloomsbury Academic,London/ New York, 2022, 258pp. ISBN: 9781350198715.

In 2022, the European Union passed a resolution stating that in the future there would be no EU funding for projects that “promote the hijab.” The background of this resolution was in the scandalous censoring of an earlier 2022 training commissioned by the European Commission for civil society actors on human rights-based campaign work against anti-Muslim racism. The then EU presidency holder France demanded the removal of already EC-approved campaign materials produced by the trainees, which stated that “Hijab is freedom.” The argument was that these statements are against women’s rights and promote oppressive religious practices.

European nations have long witnessed state violence against Muslim minorities with measures from national hijab-bans to ethnic pro ling, securitisation, and the recent criminalisation of the academic fight against anti-Muslim racism. This disciplining has now reached the state where, by excluding projects that focus on the battle against gendered Islamophobia from public funding, the European Union is sending a message straight to the grassroots and misrecognising the identities of Muslim women while it is redefining its own identity in relation to its religio-racial Other: the Muslims.