The far right paint Muslims as the enemy of the LGBT+ community – but they are the real danger

In the wake of the Christchurch mosque massacre, there has been a collective reckoning of the serious Islamophobia problem we have in the west. Since 9/11, anti-Muslim rhetoric has become a norm within popular discourse, something we’ve grown so accustomed to that at times we don’t even notice it. But for the far-right, it’s much more than just prejudice – it’s the entire basis of their ideology.

Over the past few years the far-right have packaged Islamophobia in a particularly insidious manner. Ignoring fascism’s own history of intolerance and profound hatred of liberalism, certain segments of European far-right parties have decided to fashion themselves as the true champions of progressive ideals – while rendering Muslims the menace to us all.

In several northern and western European countries, right-wing populists have been attempting to sway LGBT+ and women voters by declaring their commitment to “defending” such groups from the “danger” posed by Islamic and Middle Eastern communities. Geert Wilders, the Dutch leader of the Party for Freedoms, proclaimed that: “We believe that like Christians and Jews and women and journalists, gay people are also one of the first to pay the price of […] Islamisation.”

France’s Marine Le Pen has notably decided to portray herself as a symbol of feminist emancipation – but largely on issues involving Islam. In 2015, the far-right nationalist Sweden Democrats planned a gay pride event in Stockholm’s Muslim-majority neighbourhoods.

Nevertheless, once you look behind the façade, you realise that the sham which lies behind the far-right’s liberal honeymoon is nothing but a trap meant to ensnare us in their hate campaign against Muslims and non-European immigrants.

To begin with, the far-right’s own track record on social issues proves their hypocrisy. The “feminist” and “gay-friendly” Marine Le Pen belongs to a party founded by her father Jean-Marie, who has been fined for homophobic comments. Both Wilders and Le Pen have also cosied up with Italy’s Matteo Salvini, who will soon be attending a “traditional family”-promoting event in Verona organised by a designated hate group, and whose Northern League members in Calabria recently sent out pamphlets saying women’s “natural role” was as child-bearing homemakers and attacking those supporting their “self-determination”. In Germany, all Muslim MPs voted in favour of same-sex marriage, while the far-right AfD later threatened a legal attempt to block it.

Right-wing parties have been far more instrumental in hindering the advancement of LGBT+ and women’s rights in Europe than Muslim communities have, yet whenever stories of intolerance prop up with Muslims at the centre – such as the Parkfield school controversy over an LGBT-inclusive curriculum – far-right pundits and politicians launch their offensive, pointing out the Islamic “threat” to Western liberal values.

Another classic ruse of the far-right is to claim Islam’s supposed “inherent oppressiveness” by comparing Christian European democracies with Middle Eastern theocracies and regimes. But the west is not “liberal” because of its Christian heritage; rather, it’s liberal because of the post-Enlightenment separation of church and state. While the far-right will play on Saudi Arabia and Iran as examples of Muslim illiberalism, they conveniently ignore Christian-majority countries such as Uganda or Jamaica whose oppressive anti-homosexuality laws are a remnant of the British Empire.

It’s rather telling that, when it comes to critiquing certain Muslims’ positions on social issues, the far-right is conspicuously silent in making any kind of similar arguments towards some of their own homophobic or misogynist Christian compatriots. All Abrahamic faiths have a complicated, multifaceted relationship with sexual morality and gender, with alternating historical periods of acceptance and oppression, and a variety of scholarly views.

The truth is, the far-right is not concerned with engaging in genuine religious debates on social ethics, nor in defending progressive values for their sake. Their innate modus operandi is creating a “public enemy”, and subsequently propping up fear by constructing an “us vs them” narrative. That so-called “enemy” is an impending “threat” which poisons our values, steals our jobs, overruns our society. In 1939, it was the “Aryan” Germans versus the Jews. In 2019, it’s the west versus Islam. In countries where liberal values have become normalised, these suddenly become the new pawns in the far-right’s ideological battleground.

As members of the liberal left, it is vital that we do not fall prey to the far-right’s phoney, newfound profession of “tolerance”. It’s nothing more than a typical trick in their political game. Rather, it is time that we realise that the attitudes they propagate against Muslims are the same which they once (and often still) use to target other minorities.

As liberals we must stand against attacks to progressive values from whatever side they come. Similarly, we also need to acknowledge that each religion has a minority of extremists who can corrupt some of the beauty of the inner message. It is a the fundamental right for people to express their faith in a peaceful manner.

The far-right are the same force which peddled the narrative that “gays will threaten your marriages” and “feminists will wreck your home”, which they’ve temporarily set aside to concentrate on their new main target. Don’t buy their empty promises – especially when, as tragedies such as the Christchurch massacre show, the price is so hefty.