Islamophobia......... is the New Anti-Semitism?

Or is Arab the new black? For a while I thought gay was the new black. Or is is it woman? It's so hard to keep track with the myriad bigotries.

Anyway, last year I attended a lecture by Professor Matti Bunzl on the rise of Islamophobia in Europe. Bunzl explained how the same European politicians who were vehement anti-Semites just a number of years ago are now the ones ranting and raving about the dangers of Islam and the Islamization of Europe and now claiming to be friends of Israel. There's been a bit of coverage about this, but it still shocks me- the Islamophobia just seems to be even more open and blatant that it is in the states, though the stuff Fox News has been saying after the Fort Hood shootings is pretty disgusting in its own right.
Here's my write up in Bunzl's talk last fall:
In his lecture “Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in Europe Today”, Professor Matti Bunzl explores the roots of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and the ways each is used in post-9/11 European politics. The European Union agency that monitors racism and xenophobia within its member countries believes that both Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are analogous and that they both originate in a right-wing Christian ideology. Bunzl argues instead that the EU is mistaken because the right-wing politics in Europe are in fact not anti-Semitic whatsoever, but purely Islamophobic. If Bunzl is correct, it appears then that the EU agency looking to effectively deal with xenophobia and racism may be quite misdirected in their efforts.
Bunzl began his lecture by introducing where anti-Semitism originated from in Europe, stating that it was originally based on religious discrimination but eventually became a secular and racial issue as it entered into European politics in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, primarily in the form of German nationalism. The evidence that anti-Semitism became racial is seen in the fact that while German Jews were allowed to convert to Christianity in the 1800’s, they became permanently ostracized and discriminated by the 1900’s, again based on them being a separate “race” in the German view of such.
What Prof. Bunzl argues as the main point of his lecture is that anti-Semitism is not present in any way within the right-wing Christian political parties of Europe, and has been largely replaced by Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiments. For evidence we can look to the three major parties of Austria that were vehemently anti-Semitic in the inter-war period and are still in power there today. Anti-Semitism is currently not included anywhere in their party platforms or policies, and some of these parties have even nominated Jewish candidates for election to the Austrian government. And while these same parties made this transition to tolerating and including Jews as the idea of a more tangible European Union emerged in the early 1990’s, they are now overwhelmingly anti-Muslim in their stated policies.
Islamophobia has now become the center ideology of all right-wing Christian political parties, largely based in the growing Muslim presence in Europe and the unsubstantiated fear that European culture and government will become “Islamicized”, as well as the question of Turkey’s proposed membership in the European Union. It appears that apart from more substantial and relevant issues concerning Turkey’s application, many of the arguments against it lie in the fear of including a nation that has a Muslim-majority population (apparently ignoring the fact that Turkey is one of, if not the most secularized nation of the Islamic world). In some of his arguments against Turkey being included in the EU, French President Sarkozy has even said that in Turkey “they have a different way of life, a different culture” that would not integrate well in the union. The rhetoric is even harsher in other EU nations- one prominent Austrian political party has said that they find Turkey “wholly incompatible” with the European way of life; politicians in the Netherlands have publicly expressed concerns that “Europe is being over-run by Muslims”; members of the Belgian Flemish party, which comprises 30% of the political membership in the nation, have stated that Muslims don’t know the value of women and the separation of church and state.
In his closing Prof. Bunzl characterized the current wave of Islamophobia propagated by the European right-wing as a “post-modern phenomenon” and “hemispheric” in nature in that it came about after the idea of a more integrated and united Europe rose to prominence. Furthermore, he links this rise in Islamophobia to the European politicians’ ideas of protecting the EU member nations from the erosion of secularization and, hypocritically, the protection of the Judeo-Christian tradition of Europe. Bunzl also noted the hypocrisy of the Europeans Islamophobes claiming they hold the high ground of pluralism and tolerance while they simultaneously refuse to tolerate Muslims within their borders based on what I feel are unsubstantiated fears. The most interesting statement made in the lecture by Prof. Bunzl was made in reference to why we do not have this problem in the US, that because Americans have no hostility with open religiosity Islamophobia remains relatively low here.
I was left with a few questions after this lecture, mainly where the majority of anti-Semitism comes from today. Bunzl did mention that some violence against Jews was committed by Muslims living in Europe, but I highly doubt this can account for all incidences. It also seems highly unlikely that the Christian right in Europe could have eliminated their anti-Semitic sentiments so easily and in such a short period of time, especially amongst the voting population of these nations. Surely the remnants of anti-Semitism remain to some extent in the segments of the right-wing population that have kept these parties in power, despite their stated platforms not including anti-Semitic positions. I also would have liked some more in-depth explanation as to exactly how anti-Semitism was replaced with Islamophobia so easily and in such a short amount of time in European politics. It is interesting that the two movements seem so interchangeable, so I wonder if this does not speak to some trend of political hate groups simply needing an enemy and having malleable platforms instead of being committed to their original principles.