A lot of the media coverage following the events in Cologne
overlapped with right-wing (and colonial) notions of wild and savage North African men, who only come to Europe to sexually harass the white women. After Cologne, the media helped create a sense of anxiety about the safety of women, which not only focused on women living in Germany, but on white women in Europe in general” (Jazmati, Studer, pg. 4)
While this article did a good job of pointing out the media bias in reporting on the incident in Cologne, I believe the issue only became one of Islamophobia due to media mishandling the entire incident. This began with underplaying the incident, about which the police initially reported that New Years Eve had gone “flawlessly” according to the police press release. Later on, German Justice Minister Heiko Maas called the attacks “organized crime.”
An anti-immigration meme about the attacks.
The release of this information to the press triggered conjecture in a vast swath of German and wider European society, a large part of which devolved quickly into Islamophobic and anti-migrant rhetoric. And, I confess, I find this topic very difficult to talk about. On the one hand, the media response and public response are widely offensive to me as someone of a Muslim majority country in Europe. I do find a lot of the handling of this event to be Islamophobic, not in that the accused were largely North African men however, but rather in the way those men were described and the proposed solution to the event being largely to tighten immigration. I am, however, also born female. And, I have been sexually assaulted before, as I’m sure many AFAB folks can either attest to themselves or know someone who was. I never intend to question the validity of any woman’s experience with assault. That is to say, if the women account that they were assaulted by foreigners or those who they perceived to be refugees, then I take that to be true. What I am interested in, however, is why the public response was so strongly against Islamic peoples and how Europe got to a place where the “threat” of Islam felt so real that Germany took to this as an immigration issue rather than a larger women’s rights issue.
The issue may have began in colonial times, this is perhaps true, but there is no doubt that the European Migrant Crisis massively exacerbated existing anti-Islamic sentiments.
The UK has a similar issue:
Islamophobia and Media Portrayal of Muslims in the UK/ Miqdaad Versi
As does France, as discussed in this article and supported by their legal code: France banned the niqab in 2010 and abaya and hijab in state schools just this year.
And Scandinavian countries like Denmark and Sweden still allow Quran burnings and are coming under fire now for their continued indifference on the topic.
Why mention these countries in addition to Germany? Well, they all have surplus immigration for the time period from 2015 to today, and Germany consistently ranks no. 1. As such, if the Muslim migration has caused a drastic uptick in Islamophobia in all these countries, as well as exacerbating previously existing Islamophobia, would it not be safe to say the same has occurred in Germany too?
And so, it becomes clear that the anti-Islamic sentiment in Europe was clearly fueled by the Migrant Crisis in Europe to such a degree that it altered public perception before these attacks even occurred. After the attacks, Islamophobic rhetoric spread because the channels were opened already by a perceived “brown-washing” of Europe from mass migration.
This is a larger issue than simply Cologne, and to be honest, it was difficult to read the article when they simplified the issue to simply that of sexual assaults causing Islamophobia. This was hardly an isolated incident. German far-right groups were just looking for an excuse to deport Muslims, this gave them one. They took it.
The fact is, that sexual assault in Muslim majority countries is vastly underreported, whether never reported in the first place, due to a lack of understanding of consent, a stifling patriarchal system, or, in rural areas, resolution via a fatwa, sexual assault is a near untouchable subject. On the one hand, whether religious or simply cultural Islam, purity is valued very highly in Islamic societies. It remains as such mostly out of tradition for women, and I grew up with a lot of that rhetoric. So, when someone’s purity is taken unjustly and clearly as such, it is perceived as an attack against the entire family. As far as I have seen, it is then dealt with, especially rurally, in an extrajudicial manner. These solutions are often taken to defend the family’s honor and not out of support for the woman herself.
Rarely, though, these issues ascend to national heights. Albania had one incident like this in 2020: A 15-year-old girl was r*ped by classmates and a school guard for 2 years and once the issue was reported, the girls house was graffitied blaming her for the assaults. Indeed, much of my culture has been largely silent, or worse, on issues of sexual violence. It took me a full year to disclose my own story worried for my family’s reaction. It took my sister 4 years. It took others decades. Still more never tell their stories at all. Some are still in marriages with their r*pists because they had to maintain the perception of purity. The issue has a long way to go before reaching adequate protection. The age of consent in Albania is 14, “For r*pe of an adult, the penalty is three to 10 years in prison. The government did not enforce the law effectively. Authorities did not disaggregate data on prosecutions for spousal r*pe. The concept of spousal r*pe was not well understood, and authorities often did not consider it a crime.”
I do not provide the example of my home country to deride them or justify Western European behavior. I do so to illustrate a point: Though sexual assault may be seen as a drastically different issue in Islamic countries, it is nevertheless discouraged in its own way. Just because someone is from any country where sexual assault is handled this way or where women’s rights are dealt with minimally, does not make them a r*pist nor does it increase their proclivity to r*pe. All North African men in Germany ought not to be demonized for the actions of a horrifying few. But what is important to get right is that, when events like this happen, we must speak about it. Albania’s issue was not just the incidence of sexual assault but also a lack of understanding of what sexual assault is. Men especially have little to no concept of consent or its opposite. It starts with education and proper jurisprudence. It ends with us.
Sources:
https://balkaninsight.com/2020/06/04/albanian-women-protest-in-street-against-sexual-violence/
https://www.reuters.com/article/europe-migrants-germany-muslims-idINKCN0Z11CI
https://thecorrespondent.com/4401/time-for-the-facts-what-do-we-know-about-cologne-four-months-later/1073698080444-e20ada1b
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/why-are-sweden-denmark-having-crisis-over-koran-2023-08-03/
https://www.npr.org/2023/09/08/1198520450/a-ban-on-wearing-the-abaya-in-french-schools-is-causing-an-uproar
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/migration-series_europe-s-immigration-balance-sheet/42495760#:~:text=Unsurprisingly%2C%20the%20richest%20countries%20attract,8%25%20of%20the%20total%20population.
https://thecorrespondent.com/4401/time-for-the-facts-what-do-we-know-about-cologne-four-months-later/1073698080444-e20ada1b