Global Islamophobia

Muslims and Moral Panic in the West

George Morgan, Scott Poynting, Scott Poynting

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317127710
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Minority Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The decade since 9/11 has seen a decline in liberal tolerance in the West as Muslims have endured increasing levels of repression. This book presents a series of case studies from Western Europe, Australia and North America demonstrating the transnational character of Islamophobia. The authors explore contemporary intercultural conflicts using the concept of moral panic, revitalised for the era of globalisation. Exploring various sites of conflict, Global Islamophobia considers the role played by 'moral entrepreneurs' in orchestrating popular xenophobia and in agitating for greater surveillance, policing and cultural regulation of those deemed a threat to the nation's security or imagined community. This timely collection examines the interpenetration of the global and the local in the West's cultural politics towards Islam, highlighting parallels in the responses of governments and in the worrying reversion to a politics of coercion and assimilation. As such, it will be of interest to scholars of sociology and politics with interests in race and ethnicity; citizenship and assimilation; political communication, securitisation and The War on Terror; and moral panics.

Chapter 1
A School for Scandal: Rütli High School and the German Press

Bruce M. Z. Cohen and Catharina Muhamad-Brandner

Introduction

With global migration patterns intensifying over the past fifty years, contemporary moral panics have taken on a more overt racialized form which often links ‘race’ with youth and crime (Cunneen 2007; White 2007). The classic example of this variety of moral panic has been outlined by Hall et al. (1978) in their analysis of the ‘mugging crisis’ in Britain in 1972 and 1973. Despite there being little evidence to suggest a ‘crime wave’ of mugging at the time, the ensuing moral panic came to symbolize ‘a crisis in law and order’ and to portray young black males as the archetypal folk devil, ‘dangerously prone to gratuitous violence’ (Critcher 2003: 14). It is argued here that the work of Hall et al. and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) Mugging Group remains highly useful in examining post-9/11 media portrayals of young minority groups, including the ‘Muslim Other’.

The concept of ‘moral panics’ has, however, been criticized on a number of accounts. McRobbie and Thornton (1995), for example, argue that, with the development of ‘multi-mediated social worlds’, connections between ‘the media’ and ‘social control’ are no longer so clear-cut; folk devils are not as marginalized as they once were because they also have access to forms of media (e.g. online media) and thus can attempt to resist (or heighten) such moral panics for their own ends. Focusing specifically on Hall et al.’s (1978) research, Waddington (1986) also offers a significant criticism, claiming that the concept represents academic polemic rather than any reality of media reportage. Waddington criticizes Hall et al. (1978) for an inadequate review of the evidence on ‘mugging’. He also comments that the issue as to whether the media representations of the crisis really represented a moral panic remains ‘essentially a value judgement’ (Waddington 1986: 257). On the basis of these criticisms, we believe that it is important to return to testing the validity of the moral panic concept through measuring research results against established criteria. In this chapter, we utilize the criteria from the CCCS Mugging Group’s ‘signification spiral’ (cited in Poynting and Morgan 2007: 3–4) to analyse whether the German press’s coverage of Rütli High School represents a moral panic. The criteria are outlined below and will be returned to in our discussion:

a. The intensification of a specific issue;

b. The identification of a ‘subversive minority’;

c. ‘Convergence’ or the linking by labelling of the specific issue to other problems;

d. The notion of ‘thresholds’ which, once crossed, can lead to further escalation of the problem’s ‘menace’ to society;

e. The element of explaining and prophesying, which often involves making analogous references to the United States – the paradigm example;

f. The call for firm steps.

Background

Migrants in Germany

Currently around 19 per cent of the population (15.3 million people) living in Germany has a migration background (Kristen and Granato 2007: 345; Statistisches Bundesamt 2006: 73–9). Based on a sui generis notion of bloodlines, Germany’s integration and citizenship policies have been highly exclusive and restrictive (Green 2002). Apart from those – such as the Spätaussiedler (‘late repatriates’, mainly from the former Soviet Union) – who can prove German ancestry, migrant populations have been denied the rights that German citizens enjoy, including the right to peaceful assembly, freedom of movement, freedom of association and freedom of occupation. This has included the second- and third-generation children of migrants who have been born and raised in Germany. Such populations are still officially recognized as ‘foreigners’ (this includes 26 per cent regarded as ‘Turkish’, eight per cent as ‘Italian’, seven per cent ‘former Yugoslavs’, and five per cent ‘Polish’). The majority of the ‘foreign’ population (56 per cent) are the descendants of Gastarbeiter (literally, ‘guest worker’) families who arrived in the 1960s and 1970s (see Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge 2006: 82).

On this basis it has been argued that Germany’s citizenship laws have sought to deny many migrants full political rights and, consequently, have undermined the development of multiculturalism and integrationist policies in the country (Kaya 2001). In contrast, the dominant discourse on immigration in the last decade has focused on the perceived inability of certain migrant populations to ‘integrate’ into German society (Ha 2005). With specific references to problem migrant groups from ‘Muslim countries’ (Hewitt 2010) and such issues as ‘honour killings’, attitudes towards homosexuals, and religious intolerance, post-9/11, this discussion has taken on a heightened sense of Islamophobia. An anxiety permeates the dominant (white) German discourse on immigration, integration and multiculturalism in the face of a declining birth rate and ageing population, with occasional calls for the promotion of an alternative Leitkultur (a guiding national culture) to challenge what is sometimes perceived as the ‘watering-down’ of ‘German culture’ (this, of course, has some dark historical undertones in Germany) (Karnitschnig 2010). As a country of 70 million Muslims, the possible entry of Turkey to the European Union has only increased this fear of a ‘clash of cultures’ and religions in Germany (Arnold and Schneider 2007: 116).

Rütli High School

Rütli-Hauptschule (Rütli High School) is located at the northern tip of Neukölln, a large inner-city district in the south of Berlin. The immediate area surrounding the school is known locally as Reuterkiez (Reuterstraße is a main street running through the area, Kiez is a Berlin expression which can be roughly translated as ‘local community’). Traditionally working-class, Reuterkiez has high levels of social and economic deprivation (Cohen 2008: 103). Neukölln was a cheap area to house Gastarbeiter families in the former West Berlin, so it is little surprise that, compared to an average of 13 per cent of ‘foreigners’ living in the city as a whole, Neukölln has a larger share of minorities living there (22 per cent); 30 per cent of school children are also denoted as ‘foreign populations’ in Neukölln, compared to a city average of 16 per cent. These figures are further accentuated in Reuterkiez (Cohen 2008: 103).

The Hauptschule (literally, ‘high school’) is one of three types of school which form Berlin’s tripartite system of secondary education. Steinbach and Nauck (2003: 14) have explained the German system as follows:

It is easiest to gain entry into the Hauptschule, which offers a general education in preparation for a vocational career … Lesson plans in the Realschule are more difficult than in the Hauptschule, but a Realschule-diploma qualifies graduates also only for vocational training. These diplomas, however, do grant access to career tracks in a wider range of professions … The Gymnasium offers an exclusively college preparatory curriculum … A diploma from a Gymnasium … grants automatic access to all higher level educational tracks.

On 28 February 2006, Rütli High School’s teaching staff sent a two-page letter to the Berlin Senate for Education, Youth and Sports outlining their concerns for the school’s current situation; this letter later became known as the Brandbrief (Miller 2006b).1 After one month had passed without any acknowledgement of the school’s distress, the letter was leaked to the German media and the first news article on the school was published on 29 March 2006. To be able to determine whether the response of the German press to the problems of the school constitutes a moral panic, we utilize the contents of the Brandbrief as our baseline data. That is, our analysis will compare the issues outlined in the letter with the resulting responses in the media. For this reason it is important to briefly outline the contents of the Brandbrief itself.

The Brandbrief

The Brandbrief summarized a number of issues which the teaching body of Rütli High School wanted to see addressed by the Berlin Senate for Education, Youth and Sports (Eggebrecht 2006). The letter begins by outlining the school’s steadily increasing proportion of pupils with a migration background (then at 83 per cent), noting that those with an Arabic background are most strongly represented amongst the student body (35 per cent) followed by just over 26 per cent of Turkish pupils. The teachers then remark that, ‘there are no staff members from other cultures at our school’.

A general atmosphere in the classrooms of ‘aggression, lack of respect and ignorance’ is described. Few students take interest in the lessons, and violent behaviour in the school – doors being kicked in, paper bins being used as footballs, firecrackers being let off, and picture frames being ripped from the walls – is on the increase. The general culture of the student body is blamed for the current atmosphere: students’ misbehaviour and aggressiveness elicits respect amongst other peers. The role of the students’ parents is highlighted, remarking that little support is forthcoming in encouraging students to obey school rules, that arranged meetings with the parents are not kept, and that telephoning the parents is difficult because of ‘a lack of language skills’. Widely reprinted in the media a month later, the letter states that Wir sind ratlos (‘we are helpless’). It is explained that the school remains under-staffed due to maternity leave, illness and retirement, and that the residual teaching body is over worked with no time for developmental activities.

The teachers then question the logic of placing all disadvantaged students together in one type of school (i.e. Hauptschule), where the chances of progressing further in education and the labour market are seriously limited. Their students do not see the value of education, rather, they are more interested in their mobile phones and fashion trends. The school has also become a site of power struggle where the troublemakers becoming the role models. They conclude that the Hauptschule isolates and separates these students from mainstream society. For these reasons the letter then suggests that Hauptschule in general should be phased out and a new type of school developed in its place. While the letter notes that this is a long-term solution, it states that Rütli immediately requires more teaching staff. Likewise, they also state that they require regular financial support to fund other education professionals (e.g. social workers and psychologists) for crisis intervention with students and parents. With the school’s centenary approaching (in 2009), the letter finishes with the hope that, by this point in time, both the teachers and students at Rütli will be experiencing education and learning as positive activities.

Methodology and Analysis

The media storm that followed the publication of the Brandbrief on 29 March 2006 continued for several months afterwards. However, we wished to gain an overview of the initial period of intensive newspaper coverage in Germany to determine the extent to which this could be considered a moral panic, in and of itself. To do this we chose six news publications over a ten-day timeframe (29 March to 7 April 2006). The publications chosen for this analysis are outlined below:

• Berliner Zeitung: a regional centre-left daily broadsheet which sells over 200,000 copies a day, and is published by the Berliner Verlag;

• Bild: a national daily tabloid which sells nearly four million copies per day, it is right wing in political orientation and owned by the Axel-Springer corporation;

• FOCUS: a popular national weekly newsmagazine which sells close to 800,000 copies a week, it is conservative-leaning, supports economic liberalism, and is published by Helmut Markwort;

• Der Spiegel: a weekly national news journal which sells in excess of a million copies a week, it tends to accentuate conservative neo-liberal politics, and is owned by the publishing company Gruner + Jahr (a subsidiary of Bertelsmann);

• Der Stern: as with Der Spiegel, this is a national weekly news magazine which sells over a million copies per week and is published by Gruner + Jahr, however Der Stern is left-liberal in political orientation;

• Süd-Deutsche Zeitung: a regional liberal-centralist daily broadsheet which sells over half a million copies per day, and is published by Südwestdeutsche Medien Holding.

These publications were selected to provide a cross-section of tabloid and broadsheet newspapers at both the regional and national levels. Both daily and weekly publications were chosen, and, most importantly, the publications embody a diversity of political orientations. Using the key search word ‘Rütli’ and time-restricting the search from 29 March 2006 to 7 April 2006, the online news sites of the selected publications were reviewed for potential articles. From the resulting 189 search results, 48 were excluded from the final analysis as they were found to either be unrelated to Rütli High School or were blog commentaries. A total of 141 relevant articles were identified for final analysis; this sample included a variety of article types such as news pieces, brief headline reports, elaborate exposés, interviews, opinion pieces, and fact collections. Table 1.1 (below) provides an overview of the number of articles published by each newspaper/news magazine on each day of the selected time period. Nearly two thirds of th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction: The Transnational Folk Devil
• 1 A School for Scandal: Rütli High School and the German Press
• 2 A Panicky Debate: The State of Moroccan Youth in the Netherlands
• 3 Italian Intellectuals and the Promotion of Islamophobia after 9/11
• 4 The Sweden Democrats, Racisms and the Construction of the Muslim Threat
• 5 The Social Construction of Iraqi Folk Devils: Post-9/11 Framing by the G.W. Bush Administration and US News Media
• 6 Local Islamophobia: The Islamic School Controversy in Camden, New South Wales
• 7 Perverse Muslim Masculinities in Contemporary Orientalist Discourse: The Vagaries of Muslim Immigration in the West
• 8 A Failed Political Attempt to Use Global Islamophobia in Western Sydney: The ‘Lindsay Leaflet Scandal’
• 9 Moral Panic and Media Representation: The Bradford Riot
• 10 Moral Panics, Globalization and Islamophobia: The Case of Abu Hamza in The Sun
• 11 Criminalizing Dissent in the ‘War on Terror’: The British State’s Reaction to the Gaza War Protests of 2008-2009
• 12 Where’s the Moral in Moral Panic? Islam, Evil and Moral Turbulence
• Index