We view March 15, the UN International Day for the Elimination of Islamophobia, as an opportunity to reflect on the 10th anniversary of the European Islamophobia Report. While far from comprehensive, this reflection offers insights into the report’s preparation, the achievements made, the worsening trends, and a brief outlook on the future.
How Did We Begin?
In 2014, before the war in Syria forced millions of people to seek refuge in Europe, we decided to launch a project tracking the development of Islamophobia—or anti-Muslim racism—across all of Europe. Until then, academic literature had focused solely on Islamophobia in Western European countries with significant Muslim populations. Nevertheless, when we published our first report, we observed that in many Eastern European countries—particularly the Visegrad Four (Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia)—those in power had embraced Islamophobic rhetoric.
Why Did We Start?
The European Islamophobia Report fundamentally emerged from the necessity to confront the widespread skepticism across Europe regarding the existence and prevalence of Islamophobia. At that time, Muslim civil society organizations were complaining that their efforts to draw attention to the issue of anti-Muslim racism were being completely ignored. From the local to the European level, they consistently encountered the same standard response: “Where is the evidence?” For this reason, we believed we could draw attention to the issue of Islamophobia by publishing a report that examined each European country individually on an annual basis.
Back then, the concepts of Islamophobia or anti-Muslim racism were highly controversial. Media commentators regularly published articles downplaying the phenomenon or even challenging the concepts themselves; they even gave credence to conspiracy theories suggesting that the term “Islamophobia” and the issue itself had been invented by Islamic scholars or Islamists in Muslim countries.
A decade later, it must be noted that the denial of Islamophobia at the highest levels of power remains a serious problem. In this context, a genuine solution and healing cannot be achieved without the issue being politically acknowledged. The issue of Islamophobia, also referred to as anti-Muslim racism, remains largely unrecognized, and its existence is frequently denied by numerous European governments, political parties, institutions, journalists, and intellectuals.
Various strategies are employed to deny or downplay Islamophobia; while some actors completely reject the concept by claiming it does not exist, others attempt to downplay its scale or severity. Prominent Islamophobic figures and networks produce baseless conspiracy theories claiming that Islamophobia is a fabricated concept invented by “Islamists” to silence legitimate criticism of Islam and Muslims. Another common strategy is to completely avoid using the terminology, thereby refusing to acknowledge or legitimize the discussion of Islamophobia. Instead of terms like “Islamophobia” or “anti-Muslim racism,” softer expressions such as “anti-Muslim sentiment” or “prejudice” are frequently used, which serves the purpose of obscuring the structural and institutional dimensions of Islamophobia—beyond individual attitudes or interpersonal biases—that are inherent in the phenomenon.
Nevertheless, there have always been people who understand the concern regarding the spread of Islamophobic discourse and are fully aware of the argument we presented from the very beginning: Anti-Muslim racism will harm everyone, as it challenges not only Muslims’ religious freedoms but also their civil liberties, thereby affecting other communities and ultimately leading to the erosion of democratic rights that some hold dear. In other words, what is happening to Muslims in Europe today could potentially happen to anyone tomorrow.
What Has Changed for the Better?
In this context, we have presented the findings of the European Islamophobia Report on various platforms, addressing policymakers from the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the United Nations, and national parliaments across Europe at different times. On the other hand, we also shared our findings with anti-racist civil society organizations dedicated to combating Islamophobia.
During this process, one of the rare positive developments was that key EU countries, such as Germany, began including anti-Muslim hate crimes as a separate category in their hate crime statistics, thereby increasing the visibility of these crimes. At the same time, the establishment of a coordination body within the EU to combat anti-Muslim hate over the past decade, along with the Council of Europe’s appointment of a special representative for anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2020, clearly demonstrated that Islamophobia is no longer a problem that can be ignored.
In this context, the UN’s declaration of March 15 as the International Day for the Elimination of Islamophobia in 2022 marked a turning point in the international recognition of Islamophobia. This decision also signals the beginning of a new phase in the fight against Islamophobia. Finally, in 2023, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution requesting the UN Secretary-General to appoint a special envoy to combat Islamophobia. While all these developments are far from perfect, they have nonetheless demonstrated that the problem can no longer be denied and that action must be taken, thereby increasing the issue’s visibility.
At the civil society level, the past decade has also seen an increase in the number of activities, long-term projects, and newly established organizations dedicated to preventive and active efforts against Islamophobia. These initiatives span a wide spectrum, ranging from associations that have improved the tracking of anti-Muslim hate crime data at the national level to groups creating safe spaces to combat epistemic racism within their own communities and those who have brought the fight against Islamophobia to an intersectional plane by forming alliances with other marginalized communities. While there remains potential to raise greater awareness and address existing gaps, the overall picture has fundamentally shifted when comparing 2026 to 2015.
What Has Gone Wrong?
Despite all these positive developments, we are also observing an increasingly alarming trend: alongside this political trend—which operates top-down rather than being socially driven but still has societal impacts—various European countries have institutionalized Islamophobia as a fundamental feature of their policies.
The governments of France and Austria have certainly taken the lead in criminalizing efforts to combat Islamophobia itself. These governments have used the power of counter-terrorism laws to suppress independent Muslim actors opposing their Islamophobic policies and have shut down organizations monitoring Islamophobia. Hiding behind the guise of combating political Islam, these governments have framed their attacks on freedom of expression and association within a different framework, aiming to stifle any criticism of human rights violations. Denmark’s infamous ghetto laws are another example of racialized disenfranchisement that effectively relegates Muslims to second-class citizen status.
Although all European countries have supported the UN’s designation of March 15 as the International Day to Combat Islamophobia, our monitoring efforts reveal the following reality: nearly all European countries completely ignore the very existence of this day; governments, state representatives, and even political parties do not even mention this day in their internal agendas. While Norway is the only country to have presented a national strategy against Islamophobia, most EU member states have not included anti-Muslim racism in their national strategies to combat racism.
At the same time, the organized far right has normalized overt Islamophobia in the public sphere. This has been driven not only by the emergence of new parties and the success of far-right parties across Europe but also by violent underground far-right groups targeting the lives of people of diverse ethnic backgrounds, including Muslims.
Our observations over the past decade are corroborated by other surveys conducted across Europe. In this context, a comparison of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights’ (FRA) 2016 and 2024 reports is quite revealing. The FRA’s 2024 report titled “Being Muslim in the EU-The Experiences of Muslims” confirms that the situation for Muslims has worsened in many EU countries compared to the 2016 survey.
According to the 2024 FRA report, the rate of racial discrimination faced by Muslims in Europe has sharply increased. Nearly half of the participants (47%) reported having experienced discrimination in the past five years, compared to 39% in 2016. The proportion of those who experienced discrimination in the past year has risen from 25% to over one-third (35%). Discrimination is particularly severe in the labor and housing markets: nearly two out of every five job-seeking Muslims (39%) have encountered racial prejudice. This represents a significant increase compared to the 31% rate in 2016.
Young Muslims born in Europe, particularly women who wear religious attire, face even higher risks. Among the 16–24 age group, 58% of women who wear such attire reported experiencing discrimination in the job market, while this rate stood at 38% among their peers who do not wear such attire. At the same time, no improvement has been recorded regarding racist harassment and violence. Twenty-seven percent of participants reported experiencing harassment, and 4% reported physical assault—figures that have remained unchanged since 2016. Another concerning trend is the increase in the perception of discriminatory police profiling: nearly half (49%) of those stopped by police in the year prior to the survey believe this was due to their ethnic or immigrant background; this figure was 42% in 2016.
Despite all these increases, reporting rates to authorities remain very low. The rate of reporting racist attacks to authorities has seen only a limited increase, rising from 23% in 2016 to 30% in 2022; however, most incidents still go unreported. Reporting rates have been particularly higher in Austria, Germany, and Finland. Current data reveal that racism is becoming increasingly evident in structural areas such as employment and housing and that discriminatory practices targeting Muslims have become much more pronounced compared to previous survey periods.
Where Do We Go from Here?
This overall picture demonstrates that the development of Islamophobia is not a one-sided process. Despite some gains, the areas requiring improvement can sometimes feel as though they are impossible to reach. While decision-makers’ reluctance to address the issue remains a fundamental challenge, the public’s ability to exert pressure is steadily increasing.
Authoritarian and anti-democratic developments clearly reveal how deeply intertwined anti-Muslim racism is with other repressive measures that threaten fundamental rights such as freedom of expression, religion, and association. As this reality becomes clearer, broader rights-based struggles and organized efforts are becoming more visible. In an environment marked by the rise of austerity policies and attacks on anti-authoritarian movements across Europe, these complex connections will only strengthen. Therefore, expanding the struggle through these social ties is of critical importance. Monitoring these developments through observations from local experts in the relevant countries, as provided by the European Islamophobia Report, will continue to be a fundamental aspect of sustaining and strengthening the ongoing work. The European Islamophobia Report will continue this path with unwavering determination.
The European Islamophobia Reports are available for free download: European Islamophobia Report
This article was written by Prof. Dr. Enes Bayraklı and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Farid Hafez. Bayraklı and Hafez are the founding editors of the European Islamophobia Report.
