The French expression idée fixe refers to a state oscillating between stubbornness, narrow-mindedness, and obsession, where the person holding such an idea refuses to abandon or review it, continuing to promote it relentlessly.
The expression was carried into English in its original French form, idee fixe (without the accent, since English does not use it), much like many culturally specific terms that resist translation and thus remain in their original language even when used elsewhere.
Islamophobia has become a fixed idea in France, or more precisely, a deeply rooted notion among dominant decision-making circles and some influential figures who shape public opinion. It falls within what is commonly called “the Islamic problem” or what is perceived as such.
Islamophobia gained new momentum following the tenth anniversary of the Bataclan attacks in Paris, with the publication of a survey on the religiosity of Muslims in France, commissioned by a right-wing magazine called “Écran de Veille”.
The survey claimed that religious commitment is spreading among Muslim youth in France, stating that one in four French Muslims is observant and that the hijab is becoming frequent among young women.
The report concluded, based on the survey, that religiosity is linked to extremism, that Islamisation leads toward Islamist tendencies, and that there is supposedly a relationship between religious practice and radicalisation.
Islamophobia, therefore, is not merely a set of behaviours targeting Islam or Muslims in the West. It is an orientation, a worldview. Thus, it differs from racism. It is not the product of lower social classes marked by prejudice, proximity to hardship, or limited education.
The survey ignited wide debate in France, reaching the Ministry of the Interior. Analysts and journalists rushed to television screens, websites, and newspapers to warn of “creeping Islamisation”, “re-Islamisation”, “worrying advances in religious expressions”, “adoption of radical narratives”, and “the supremacy of Sharia over the laws of the Republic”.
Yet some reasonable observers distanced themselves from the survey. A survey is not reality and can easily be shaped to become the intended “reality”. It is guided. It is a form of moulding public opinion under the guise of scientific neutrality. The sample size (one thousand people) is not necessarily representative, the questions are directed, the telephone-interview method is unreliable, and the timing of publication — coinciding with the terrorist-attack anniversary — was anything but innocent.
The survey reflects methodological deviation. It helps create a problem rather than solve one and gives a scientific veneer to entrenched prejudices, ideological assumptions, and propagandistic narratives. Even its main conclusion warrants scrutiny: is there really a link between religiosity and extremism?
After the survey and the commentary surrounding it, one is tempted to say that nothing is new on the banks of the Seine. It is simply another tone in the ongoing wave of Islamophobia in the so-called “land of enlightenment”, following the recent “Political Islam Report” published in June, which warned of “infiltration”. According to its authors, the threat does not stem solely from Salafism (left undefined) or radical Islamism — which are matters of security — but also from recognised associations classified as “political Islam”. These associations do not call for violence, nor do they practise it. They operate within civic society, yet are considered no less dangerous than radical groups because of what is labelled “infiltration”.
The “Religiosity Survey” and the Feeding of a Hostile Imagination
The recent survey, although not a law like the so-called “Islamic separatism law” — rebranded as the “law supporting secularism” (August 2021) — and not an official document like the Ministry of the Interior’s “Political Islam Memorandum” (June of this year), nonetheless contributes to giving Islamophobia a “socio-scientific legitimacy” by warning against visible expressions of religious commitment.
The survey appears to represent the third layer of a structure:
• The first layer is the anti-separatism law.
• The second is the Ministry’s memorandum on “political Islam”.
• The third targets society at large — specifically Muslims — which is exactly what the survey implies.
Islamophobia is not merely behaviour toward Muslims; it is a posture, a framework. It is not driven by the lower classes. It is fuelled by educated and influential elites in media and academia. It relies on an ideological reference point and operates within a historical continuity. Islamophobia is tied to something intrinsic: its manufacturing. Much like the industrial production of Holocaust memory, it is the production of an imagination — shaping, directing, and moulding public perception around an alleged, potential, or imagined threat.
Most often, it is imagined. Societies, as French anthropologist René Girard explained in his seminal work “The Scapegoat”, search for a scapegoat in times of crisis — someone to blame for collective suffering, even if the “danger” is merely a shared myth rather than an actual reality.
The Muslim as the “Necessary Enemy” in the French Imagination
This hostility fluctuates between persecution and demonisation. The supposed enemy can be confronted, humiliated, or symbolically sacrificed to rid society of its “curse”, whether by selecting a scapegoat, as in ancient traditions, or through institutions such as inquisitorial courts, or by legislating new laws — the modern form of targeting the “necessary enemy”.
In Europe generally, and in France specifically, the Muslim occupies this role. The hostility is built on selective memory, guided interpretations, and the magnification of certain events while ignoring others, following what is known as the “Gore principle”: focus on a single incident, repeat it endlessly, and neglect all counter-examples.
The enemy is constructed through deliberate or unconscious mixing of cause and effect. The foundational assumption is that Muslims cannot integrate into Western societies, especially France. Yet no one questions why integration fails. No one examines the weaknesses in socialisation: education, employment, housing, or the weaknesses in community relations.
Appealing to identity politics, as discerning scholars note, is often a way to bypass confronting structural problems. Holding tightly to identity becomes a reaction to exclusion.
What should be recognised as an effect is turned into a cause. This is blatant methodological error — what the humanities call metonymy: confusing cause and effect, focusing on a single attribute while ignoring the complexities. Seeing only “Islam” in a group and deliberately ignoring that the vast majority of Muslims are firmly embedded in the national fabric.
The “necessary enemy” is a tactic, a manoeuvre to avoid confronting the real causes of a society’s existential crisis.
In France, as elsewhere, Islamophobia, immigration, and the so-called “great replacement” converge. Yet migration is integral to modern societies. Migrants have contributed to Western economies. Identities evolve. And solutions to persistent problems do not lie in show trials, ready-made accusations, or media hysteria — but in dialogue and genuinely scientific approaches.
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