Understanding the Framing of Muslim Identity in a Religion-Blind Setting: a Study of the European Parliament Over the Past Decade

This article looks at how the conflation of Muslim identity with factors such as race, ethnicity, and migration experiences is constructed in European institutions, and how religion-blindness plays out in the European Parliament. As the only directly elected body in the European Union, the EP shoulders the responsibility of representing a diverse European population across dimensions such as gender, age, class, ethnicity, religion, ability, and sexual orientation. Building upon data collected for a study for the European Network on Anti-Racism on diversity trends in the EP within the context of the 2014, 2019 and 2024 elections, this paper assesses the evolution of diversity over time in the parliament, of the framing of religious diversity, and of the perspectives of political groups and of MEPs themselves on these trends. What emerges from a mixed methodology – that includes a quantitative mapping of the parliament over three mandates, an analysis of the composition and work of parliamentary intergroups, and 11 semi/structured interviews with MEPs and parliamentary staff - is that while the topics of anti-racism and on sexual orientation have been co-opted as part of the European institution’s narrative of anti-discrimination and diversity, the field of ‘religious tolerance’ and ‘freedom of religion’ has been taken over by the right (and extreme right) of the political spectrum, resulting in an identity construction of the EU as in opposition of, and threatened by, the ‘Muslim other’.