The political engineering that has been deployed against Muslim minorities by main political parties aggravates both the exclusion and the alienation of Muslims from national politics in much of continental Europe, a recent report revealed. Published by the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA), the report, titled "Political Engineering and the Exclusion of Religious Conservative Muslims in Europe," suggests that even the existence of numerous Muslim-origin representatives in various European parliaments does not translate into advocacy and support for Muslims' religiously specific rights, needs and demands.
"This is what I refer to as the lack of ‘substantive representation' despite the existence of some ‘descriptive representation,'" said the author of the report, Şener Aktürk.
"When faced with such systematic and multi-layered discrimination, including legal, political, popular and economic discrimination, one would expect a Muslim civil rights movement to erupt, but Muslim-origin politicians are unwilling to lead such a challenge," he added.
Stating that this exclusion of Muslims from politics is a historical phenomenon in historically Catholic, mostly Latin, European countries such as France, Italy, Spain, and Austria, Aktürk expressed that the violent exclusion of Muslims is actually a foundational element of national identity in these countries. "In the historically Protestant northern European countries, in contrast, the exclusion of Muslims does not have deep historical roots," he added while noting that the United Kingdom is an exception to this issue.
"That is why I qualify my statements by saying ‘continental' European countries. What I mean, in fact, is European countries except the U.K.," Aktürk emphasized.
In terms of the influence of this exclusion on the everyday lives of Muslims, Aktürk underlined that economic discrimination and exclusion is probably the most harmful dimension of this situation. "It is destroying the everyday lives of Muslims, condemning them to a permanent lower class, a ‘lumpenproletariat' status," he expressed. Socially, however, the problem is equally acute, in Aktürk's opinion. "There are not many political role models for disadvantaged European Muslims," he said, pointing at the fact that despite numerous legislative and even constitutional initiatives targeting all kinds of Islamic religious practices, massive economic discrimination affecting everyday life of Muslims and a historical memory of colo
nial brutality, there is still no Martin Luther King or Malcolm X among European Muslim politicians.
When it comes to what can be done to overcome this situation, Aktürk suggests that the first step should be raising awareness about the various forms of political, economic and social discrimination that Muslim minorities have been suffering in European countries.
"Mainstream political parties can be pressured to take into account the substantive representation of Muslim minorities' interests if Muslims' acquisition of citizenship and voter turnout increases and Muslim minorities may want to concentrate on the candidate nomination process within major political parties in order to gain representation," he further recommended, adding that, Muslim minorities may need to seek out the representation of their interests in the conservative sects, including Christian democratic and liberal parties, in order to avoid being a voting bloc captured by the leftist parties alone.
"Muslim voters may apply pressure on leftist parties in order to motivate an ideological revision in their party programs so that they include non-Christian religious practices as part of their conceptualization of multiculturalism," he further expressed while indicating that Muslim parties that cannot pass national legislative thresholds can actually still succeed in European parliament elections where such thresholds are often not applicable.
