Description
Although Muslims comprise less than ten percent of the population in various Western countries, their presence has become one of the defining issues of the current era. In the U.S., few things predict party affiliation more than attitudes toward Muslims and Islam. Across Europe, as unprecedented numbers of refugees have arrived from Muslim majority countries, populist parties articulate a shared fear of and opposition to Islam or Muslims.
Despite a great deal of recent scholarship on populism, very little research has focused on the intersection of Muslims, Islam and Western populism. The Brookings Institution proposes to examine how the growth of Muslim minority communities and fears of Islam’s public role are shaping the formation of new populist identities and ideologies. This focus, Brookings suggests, “offers an important entry point to address salient questions around what it means to be a nation at a time when elections are increasingly fought around so-called ‘who are we’ questions.”
The research will be conducted in the U.S. and nine European countries, with the goal of informing the public as well as scholars, journalists and policymakers. The project will provide a comparative analysis of major populist parties and movements, focusing on their evolving attitudes and policies toward Islam and Muslim minorities, and to what extent these attitudes reflect and shape national discourses around citizenship, culture and nationhood. Countries will be chosen to include those with low Muslim populations but strong far-right parties (Poland, Hungary) or restrictive immigration policy (Switzerland); those where Muslims have been present in larger numbers for some time but significant far-right parties have appeared only recently (Germany, Sweden); countries with the oldest far-right parties (France, Austria); and those known for liberal social policies and expansive welfare states (Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands).
A series of working papers will be produced by leading country experts and presented at a workshop at Brookings. Authors will write short “reaction essays” based on workshop discussions for the Brookings website. To supplement field-based research, surveys will be carried out on how populist movements influence political beliefs of Muslim communities, and vice versa; and to what extent do factors such as education and income play a role in determining how populist parties and Muslim communities respond to extremist violence. A dialogue will also be held in Europe bringing together members of populist parties and local Muslim communities; video interviews with these participants will be available on the website. This element is modeled on a previous project at Brookings supported by the HRLI, Rethinking Political Islam , which provided a window into the thinking of Islamist leaders. As in the latter project, the several elements will be brought together in an edited volume, including final versions of the working papers, thematic chapters by the co-principals, and exchanges with members of populist parties.
The project will be led by the Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World and the Center on the United States and Europe. The co-principals are Shadi Hamid (Islam’s role in politics), Alina Polyakova (European far-right populism) and Chris Meserole (violent extremism). Established nearly a century ago, Brookings is one of the foremost public policy research organizations in the U.S. Its work on foreign policy and international affairs is carried out by 43 full-time scholars and experts. In Washington, Brookings hosts about 260 public and 100 private events each year.
