Islamophobia in Poland

painting Prior to World War II, the vast majority of Poland's Muslim population was Tatar, who had been present in Poland since the 14th century. However the boundary changes of the war left most of the Tatars outside of Poland, and this led the Polish Muslim community to be increasingly diverse. According to a 2015 estimate, Muslims in Poland are estimated to number between 25,000 and 40,000 people or some 0.1% of the population, During communist rule the censorship office barred unfavorable portrayals of Muslims due to Poland's geopolitical alignment with Arab countries during this period. After World War 2, the Muslim Religious Association grew leading to the eventual migration of Muslim Arab students to Poland during the 1970s and 80s. While Islamophobia existed previously in Poland, in connection to Polish casualties in the war on terror and mosque construction in 2010 and 2012, the 2015 European migrant crisis made Islamophobia a central issue. As of 2018 Poland exhibits one of the highest rates of Islamophobia in Europe. == Polls ==

According to a 2011 poll, 47% of Poles stated that "too many Muslims live in Poland", and 62% stated that "Islam is an intolerant religion", the highest rate of the eight countries surveyed in the poll. Between January and October 2017, 664 anti-Muslim hate crime proceedings were started in Poland, of which 193 proceeded to an indictment. Muslims were the most targeted group, and some 20% of all recorded hate crimes were directed at Muslims. == Mosques ==

, used by Lipka Tatar community, and targeted by an Islamophobic attack in 2014 In 2012, the Ahmadiyya community attempted to build a mosque in the Włochy district of Warsaw. Europa Przyszłości, who were the main opponents of the Ochota mosque, declared they would not protest as they viewed the Ahmadiyya community as peaceful. However, local councilors opposed the mosque construction, and most of the neighborhood signed a petition organized by Law and Justice councilors. The local council rejected the plan in 2013. While much of the opposition to the mosque employed spatial planning concerns, a subtext of resentment towards Muslims was evident in the debate as well as in the council's rejection letter which noted that "the construction of a culturally foreign object is a reason for concern regarding the loss of value of the estates in Włochy". The Ochota mosque, the first in Warsaw, was finally opened before the Ramadan of 2015, a turning point in Polish Islamic history. However, the mosque had been faced with hostilities since construction, including an incident in which it was shot at and the tossing of a pig's head into the building after it opened. Furthermore, a wave of attacks against Polish mosques accompanied construction, including notably the drawing of a pig's head on the Kruszyniany Mosque of the Tatar community who had previously lived in Poland for hundreds of years without hostilities directed at them. == Women ==

Traditionally Lipka Tatar women did not wear the hijab, making the visibility of Muslim women in Polish society a recent trend. Kasia Narkowicz and Konrad Pędziwiatr have stated in their co-authored paper that this visibility has made Muslim women targets of Islamophobia by two camps: right-wing Catholicism and a secular liberal camp. While these two camps share little in common value, the Islamophobic expression towards the bodies of Muslim women is shared, both camps stating that Muslim women face oppression. In Polish Islamophobic discourse, veiled Muslim women are symbolized as threatening in conjunction with the narrative that the women themselves are oppressed. The gendered anti-Muslim narratives in Poland is a version of "gendered exceptionalism" similar to that prevalent in Western countries in which the patriarchy of the ingroup is minimized while the patriarchy of the outgroup is emphasized. == Political parties ==

|alt= Law and Justice Following the European migration crisis, migration has become a central issue in Polish politics. The Law and Justice (PiS) party has adopted the discourse typical of the far-right in Europe. PiS has linked national security with migration, and connected refugees with Muslims. Extreme right While in other countries, such as the Czech Republic, there have been positive relations between the extreme right and Islamism, in Poland this is rare. In 2007 a branch of Stop Islamisation of Europe was established in Poland, and from 2010 the conservative Europe of the Future led by Jan Wójcik and the Euroislam.pl portal led by Piotr Slusarczyk have become vocal. During 2015 elections, the KORWiN party ran an openly racist advertisement titled "The invasion has started" showing aggressive dark-skinned men coupled with derogatory statements and world map in which white marked parts succumbed to a black invasion. == Media ==

On public television, guests have spoken of Muslims as "uncivilized" and a threat to "European and Christian values" and have described them as "violent": as "Jihadists", "terrorists", and "rapists". Piela and Łukjanowicz contend that guests they say engage in anti-Muslim rhetoric—Miriam Shaded (director of the Estera Foundation), Tomasz Terlikowski, Wojciech Cejrowski, Marcin Rola, Witold Gadwoski and Dariusz Oko—are "handpicked" by the networks. One evening program on TVP—After Eight—has hosted guests overtly hostile to Islam, one of whom referred to the '''Qur'an as a Satanic book "about hatred and intolerance" in contrast to the Bible, which the guest called "a book about love'''". According to Jaskulowski, the more liberal Polish media (Polityka and Gazeta Wyborcza) opposed the right-wing discourse of fear and focused in some instances on the human aspect of the immigration story, but have also spoken of a "flood" and a "wave". == Role of the Catholic Church ==

While Pope Francis has called for Catholic communities to aid refugees, this call has not been well received in Poland. Some Polish bishops have questioned the papal call, and some younger priests have taken an active role in anti-Muslim and anti-refugee protests. This has contributed to Islamophobia moving from the fringes to mainstream discourse in Poland. Whereas in other Western countries Islamophobia has been linked with concerns of public displays of faith by Muslims, in Poland it has been connected to the Catholic church and the notion of European re-Christianization. The othering of Muslims is used to rally the faithful around "Christian" values in order to halt the imagined "conquest of Europe" by Islam. One of the key targets of Catholic Islamophobic narratives is Muslim women. Within this narrative, Muslim women are seen as reproducers of the faith, a message that fits within the Church's emphasis on reproductive politics. The Polish Catholic church is composed of two camps: authoritarian, nationalist, traditionalist Catholicism and open post-conciliar Catholicism. While the leaders of the Church expressed themselves in the discourse of the open church, they also evoked the terrorist threat of the religious other. Furthermore, the church leaders endorsed a "help them where they are" (in refugee camps outside Poland) approach towards refugees, which was adopted by the ruling PiS party. A small group, connected to the liberal and Tygodnik Powszechny and Więź publications, expressed true open church sentiments criticizing the restrained approach of the Church hierarchy and the anti-refugee bishops. The opposing traditionalist bishop criticized the Church hierarchy as well, and expressed Islamophobic clichés. Archbishop Henryk Hoser stated that jihadists controlled the migration and that communities of refugees would be a "perfect breeding ground for the recruitment of fanatics". == Incidents ==

in 2015 In 2013, the Jewish and Tatar communities in Poland jointly protested a halal and kosher slaughter ban. According to the anti-racist organization "Never Again", the "biggest wave of hatred" in recent history took place during the Polish elections of 2015 when significant street protests against other ethnic and religious groups took place, focusing on Muslim refugees. and tossing firecrackers, stones, and Molotov cocktails at the shop. Police initially stood by and did not intervene for several hours, however when they did intervene the crowd turned against them as well. Prior to the march, called a "great march of patriots" by state TV, government-controlled media in Poland disseminated accounts of alleged Muslim criminal activity. In 2019, Polish president Andrzej Duda awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland to Roger Scruton who had previously been dismissed from his UK government role following comments on Jews and Islamophobia. Scruton had said that Islamophobia had been "invented by the Muslim Brotherhood in order to stop discussion of a major issue". In January 2021, two men in Warsaw were charged for planning to bomb a mosque. Explosives and firearms were found at the premises belonging to the two men. The men's motives were to "prevent the Islamization of Poland" and to "exterminate" Muslims. == References ==