Islamophobia and anti-Muslim feeling in Saxony – theoretical approaches and empirical findings based on population surveys

ABSTRACT

The uprising of PEGIDA and a high rate of politically motivated hate crimes in the East German state Saxony has created an image of this state as a stronghold of Islamophobia and right-wing extremism. Against this background our leading questions are: Are people’s attitudes to Muslims particularly negative in Saxony when compared to the rest of Germany? What are the causes of these attitudes? And, what consequences do these attitudes have? The results of a theory-led descriptive and multivariate statistical analysis of the data of the Saxony Monitor reveals that the Saxons are not particularly more Islamophobic than individuals in other East German states. However, Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiments can be found more often in East than in West Germany. The results demonstrate that anti-Muslim feeling is caused by a combination of factors. More relevant than actual economic disadvantage are subjective and strongly emotional factors, by which is meant primarily fears and the feeling of threat to one’s own culture, as well as authoritarian attitudes. The fact that a right-wing extremist attitude goes along with the rejection of Muslims should also be understood as a warning not to trivialize anti-Muslim attitudes as being merely a criticism of Islam.

KEYWORDS:

• Islamophobia
• anti-Muslim sentiments
• Germany
• xenophobia
• prejudices

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We would like to thank all colleagues who discussed the results of the analysis presented here as well as the unknown reviewers who helped us to improve the article.

2. The disparagement of Muslims by Christian and secular society can lead to an increased identification with Islam and generate negative attitudes to other religious communities (Pollack et al. 2016). Thus, young Muslims with a migration background are more inclined to radicalize their attitudes and identify with more radical social groups in their community. This is especially true when they withdraw from society and enter dogmatically religious spaces (Nordbruch 2016, 29). Experiences of discrimination then produce ‘possible disintegrative and self-ethnicizing effects’ (Nordbruch 2016, 29). This can lead to a spiral of radicalization, making Muslims into precisely what members of society fear. At the same time, there is the risk that opponents of Islam radicalize retroactively, since their rejection of and sense of distance from Islam become stronger. The way that social groups have a reciprocal influence on each other is in line with explanatory theories in social psychology (Helbling ; Pickel and Yendell 2016), such as Social Identity Theory (Tajfel/Turner 1986).

3. In this context the results of the latest Leipzig Study on Authoritarianism are quite revealing. The statistical analysis of the causes for right-wing extremist views reveals that especially the lack of recognition as a civil citizen has an impact on right-wing extremist views. The feeling of people to be regarded as a second class citizen is particularly high in the East of Germany (Decker, Yendell, and Brähler 2018).

4. In the Leipzig Authoritarianism Study 2018 44% of the German respondents agree with the statement that Muslims should be prohibited from migrating to Germany. The rate of agreement increased by 7% since 2014.

5. In the CATI-study of Zick et al. (2016, 44ff) only 16% of the respondents agreed on the statement that Muslims should be prohibited from migrating to Germany.

6. As a whole, the overlapping perception of refugees as Muslims and Muslim refugees is dominant in the German population (Pickel/Pickel 2018; Pickel and Pickel 2019).