ABSTRACT
This chapter considers political Islam as a transnational concern, as a shared political issue in Europe and North America and a multilevel source of anxiety that has unleashed an intense public debate, moral panic, and security concerns about Muslims since 9/11. Our main contention in this chapter is to show how racialization became the central axis for the politicization of Islam and Muslims by non-Muslim majorities in many sectors of social and public life. Drawing on the comparison of countries, with national specificities always defining the relationship between church (religion) and state, and different models of incorporation of ethnocultural diversity, we propose that the construction of the problem of the Muslim presence in Western societies shares common traits. The first section briefly describes the context in which narratives about Muslims and Islam have developed in the European Union, and in Canada and the United States. Secondly, we highlight how the transnationalization of feelings of insecurity is founded on the racialization of Muslims in non-Muslim contexts. Finally, the third section examines the “moral panic” surrounding the fear of radicalization. The domestic pursuit of the “war on terror” based on counterterrorism policies “combatting religious radicalization” tends to presuppose that Islamic religiosity is a threat to peaceful cohabitation. In this context, the fetishization of Islamic religious signs and motives by the secular gaze is at the core of the controversies reviewed in this chapter and of the “racialized surveillance” of Muslim minorities in Western societies since 9/11.
