Why are Polish people so wrong about Muslims in their country?

Muslim population in Poland? 0.1%! Not 7%!

Why are Polish people so wrong about Muslims in their country?

Kasia Narkowicz and Konrad Pedziwiatr 13 January 2017

The recent Ipsos survey Perils of Perception showed that most countries believe their population is much more Muslim than it actually is. But the Poles emerge as the unquestionable leader in these overestimations.

Although Muslims make up only around 35,000 of a 38 million population, Poles believe that their number is actually 2.6 million, which would make the Polish Muslim population one of the largest in the European Union after France, Germany and the UK.

Furthermore, Poles believe that the number of Muslims in the country will grow to up to 13% by 2020. If this were to happen the Muslim population in Poland would have surpassed not only that of Italy, Spain and the Netherlands but even the British which has grown dynamically in the last decade.

If this were to happen, Poland would need to experience a huge wave of Muslim migrants or massive processes of conversion. In reality, both phenomena are quite unthinkable not least because Poland has blocked the entry of refugees and done little to challenge the unprecedented rise of Islamophobic attacks within its borders in the last couple of years.

Poland is currently one of the most religiously and ethnically homogenous countries in Europe and judging from the politics of the conservative government that came to power in 2015 the country is heading towards less, not more, diversity. But that is not what the Polish population believes.

Interestingly, the number of Muslims in Poland is one of few estimations the Poles got so wrong in the Ipsos survey. In contrast, Poles scored much better than people in France, Hungary, Spain, Japan or Belgium when it came to their perceptions of other phenomena. So why the sudden and so exaggerated moral panic over Muslims? Looking back historically, we know this is a recent phenomenon.

Islam in Poland

Islam has a long history in Poland dating back to the fourteenth century with little recorded hostility towards the then quite sizable Muslim minority. Before Poland disappeared from the maps of Europe at the end of the eighteenth century it was home to almost 30 purpose-built mosques and prayer houses.

At that time, Poland was ethnically and religiously diverse with significant groups of Tatars, Jews, Armenians, Ukrainians and Germans living side by side with Poles and Lithuanians. After the Second World War, only about 10% of the Muslim settlements stayed within the new Polish borders and the country became one of the most religiously homogenous countries in Europe.

During Communism, a significant number of Muslim students came to Poland from ‘befriended’ socialist countries in the Middle East, thus contributing to a small revival of Islam. Today, while Polish Muslims are small in numbers they are a diverse mix of communities from Tatars, former students from Arab countries who settled in Poland and recent converts. Unfortunately, this long and vibrant history of Islam in Poland is forgotten in the current discourse on Islam and Muslims in the country.

Why are Poles so wrong about Muslims in their country?

The exaggeration of the size of the Muslim community in Poland is tied with political changes in the country in the last couple of years and increasingly divisive nationalistic rhetoric around the imagined presence of Muslims in the country. The 2015 elections won by the right-wing Law and Justice party opened up a space in Parliament to members of the far right National Movement.

Politicians have frequently invoked Islamophobic rhetoric, empowering far-right groups and contributing to a climate where not only Islamophobia, but also anti-Semitism, homophobia, sexism and other expressions of hate seem permissible. This in turn empowered far-right groups that organised several anti-refugee and anti-Muslim demonstrations in 2015 in cities that are home to Muslim minorities such as Białystok. Wrocław, Gdańsk and Kraków.

While Muslims were previously disliked as an ‘external enemy’ and usually mentioned in the context of terrorist attacks abroad or through the Polish involvement in military invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the figure of the Muslim as a dangerous Other slowly transformed to an ‘internal enemy’ who was supposedly posing a threat to Poland.

The refugee crisis helped in cementing views that Muslims were taking over Europe. It mattered less that this was predominantly an imaginary threat as the substantial inflow of migrants and refugees to Poland has not taken place. The new Polish government has been particularly reluctant in opening its borders to refugees and as such, Poland did not experience a ‘migration crisis’ and was never even a transit country for refugees.

And yet Poles believed in the divisive rhetoric of many of its leaders about an imagined inflow of Muslims. Why? The media bombardment of stories about a Muslim invasion certainly fueled some of the misconceptions. Several conservative mainstream Polish news outlets in Poland published front cover images depicting Poland being ‘flooded’ by Muslims, for example carrying bombs, and drawing parallels to a famous image of Nazi invasion of Poland in the 1930s, with Muslims now being portrayed as German soldiers.

In contrast to other European countries where Islamophobia is on the rise, Poland’s minorities are too small a group to challenge these false ideas. Instead, they have painfully felt the country’s’ increasing hostility towards all forms of Otherness. Our research on Islamophobia in Poland has confirmed that there has been an unprecedented rise in anti-Muslim sentiments resulting in attacks on individuals, mosques and places of business such as kebab shops (for a detailed chronological review of recent attacks see the European Islamophobia Report 2015 and the forthcoming 2016 report).

According to Association Never Again (Nigdy Wiecej) the numbers of homophobic, racist or xenophobic incidents per month drastically shot up from around 20 a month to 20 a week. In recent years we have also observed a particular focus with Muslim women at the centre of both far-right and liberal anti-Muslim agendas.

During 2016, frequent news of verbal or physical attacks on Muslims or ‘foreign-looking’ people, including women wearing the hijab, in different parts of Poland circulated on social media platforms and in independent media. Since the current government abandoned the only government body committed to tackling racial discrimination and refused to institutionally tackle the growing number of hate crimes it is largely up to the civil society to do the work of reporting and resistance.

Grassroots resistance

While there are individuals within the Polish government that are critical of the rise of anti-Muslim attitudes and attacks in the country, the main resistance happens on the grassroots level.

Within the Polish civil society there are several groups that work on behalf of minorities that feel increasingly targeted. Solidarities across difference have increased particularly since the 2015 elections, including ethnic minorities, women and LGBTQ groups joining together in various initiatives.

One of the oldest and most prominent organisation that has been monitoring and reacting to instances of hate crime for many years now is the Association 'Never Again' (Stowarzyszenie Nigdy Więcej) first registered in 1996. Their ‘Brown Book’, published every couple of years or so due to limited or no financial support has systematically reported cases of hate crime in Poland.

Other significant grassroots initiatives are the Centre for Monitoring Racist and Xenophobic Behaviours (Ośrodek Monitorowania Zachowań Rasistowskich i Ksenofobicznych), the Coalition Against the Hate Speech (Koalicja Bez Nienawiść) and Hate Stop (Hejtstop). Several members of the Muslim community in Poland are collaborating with these groups as well as making a significant effort to tackle, challenge and change the narrative on Islam in Poland.

Yet despite common believes among Poles, Polish Muslims are not many and challenging hostile public discourses supported by the authorities is a challenge that cannot be overestimated.

On being a Muslim in Poland

Al Jazeera ran this story . . . .

News Poland

How big an issue is Islamophobia in Poland?

Analysts say the country has become increasingly hostile to Muslims in the wake of the refugee crisis.

by Shafik Mandhai 14 Nov 2017

Like hundreds of thousands of her compatriots, Anna Lachowska left her native Poland shortly after its accession to the European Union, in the hope of finding opportunity elsewhere in the bloc.

The journey first took her to Ireland, then the Czech Republic, and later to the UK, where she spent a decade living in London.

It was there that she underwent a spiritual transformation, leaving the Christianity of her upbringing behind for a faith few in her native land knew much about.

"Islam showed me God like I had always felt I seen," she told Al Jazeera, describing how the decision prompted a reaction of disappointment from her mother.

Initially heated conversations about Islam, however, turned more conciliatory, and eventually, Lachowska's mother came to defend her daughter's decision.

"Whenever she is on the phone with some relatives from Poland, if they say something 'anti-Islamic', she bravely argues with them, defends Islam, defends my choice, alhamdulillah (thank God)."

Refugee crisis

Lachowska's relatives are not alone in their negative opinion of Islam, and the scale of anti-Muslim feeling in the country was on display at Saturday's Polish independence day march, which drew around 60,000 people, many of them from far-right groups.

One banner carried by protesters showed a trojan horse labelled "Islam" attempting to enter a fortress marked "Europe".

Inside the trojan horse was a stereotyped caricature of a Middle Eastern man with a long nose, wearing a suicide vest and carrying a banner which read "I'm a refugee."

Fears of Islam and an influx of refugees to Poland, similar to what neighbouring EU countries experienced, have been amplified by politicians and sections of the media, according to Konrad Pedziwiatr of the Cracow University of Economics.

"Most of the information people get about Islam and Muslims comes from the media, and what has been happening over the last few years especially is this tendency to lump together the issues of terrorism, the refugee crisis, and Islam," he said.

"You always had politicians who had strong opinions against Islam, but the refugee crisis helped jack the cause and helped the Law and Justice party come to power."

Poland's largest party came to power in 2015 on a platform of restoring Polish pride and keeping refugees out of the country.

Whenever the issue of Islam and Muslims is there, it's always [represented] in a super negative way. Konrad Pedziwiatr, Cracow University of Economics

Pedziwiatr explained that the rise of Islamophobia in political life had been in tandem with increasingly unfavourable coverage of Muslims in the media, especially state media outlets.

"Whenever the issue of Islam and Muslims is there, it's always (represented) in a super negative way," he said.

The combined effect of vilified political and media discourse on Islam, he argued, has brought about a "banalisation" of Islamophobia and led to many Poles holding inaccurate perceptions about the Muslim community.

Muslims make up just 0.1 percent of the Polish population, or around 35,000 people, including indigenous Polish Muslims, such as the Tatars, converts, and immigrants from all over the world.

However, the average citizen believes the number is much higher.

"Poles hugely overestimate the size of the Muslim community, the average that people think is seven percent, which is ridiculous because it means over two and a half million people," Pedziwiatr said, explaining that such perceptions were of "the Polish fear of Islam and Muslims".

Historic ties

While Poland's Muslim population is small, Islam has a presence there dating back to at least the Medieval era.

The Lipka Tatars are a Muslim community descended from Mongol conquerors who later served as soldiers for a succession of Polish monarchs.

Though initially thought to have numbered in the tens of thousands, the community now has just over 10,000 members, with just under 2,000 remaining in Poland, due to border changes and assimilation into the wider Polish community.

York University academic Kasia Narkowicz told Al Jazeera that Islamophobia had been brewing in Poland for years, in keeping "with the broader global trend of anti-Muslim sentiments".

Muslims in Poland have practised their religion freely for hundreds of years without any issues ... many Poles who are now worried about a Muslim invasion are completely unaware of [this history]. Kasia Narkowicz, York University

She argued that in that atmosphere the historic contributions made by the Lipkas were largely forgotten.

"When I did research on Islamophobia in Poland in 2011... people spoke about the 1683 Battle of Vienna, which they perceived as a key event where Poles stopped Muslims at the gates of Europe," she said.

"Now they are using another battle, the 1571 Battle of Lepanto, as example of Polish resistance to Islam that saved Europe from 'Islamisation'.

"What many ... do not realise is that many of the soldiers fighting for Poland at that time were indeed the Tatars, Poland's Muslim minority."

Narkowicz was eager to stress that Poland was once home to more Muslims than it was likely to have in the near future.

"Muslims in Poland have practised their religion freely for hundreds of years without any issues ... many Poles who are now worried about a Muslim invasion are completely unaware of [this history]."

Perspective

For Anna Lachowska, while the rise of Islamophobia in her native land is worrying, it is important to put the trend into perspective.

Now a resident of France, she described how she was asked to remove her headscarf while waiting in line for a travel pass, something she said would not have happened in Poland.

"I am a proud holder of a Polish passport with a hijab photo and it wasn't a problem to make it," she said.

"It's not that I am fixated about the scarf, but I cannot agree with the French fixation on this ban.

"Poland is better, more open, more respectful in this matter."

Follow Shafik Mandhai on Twitter: @ShafikFM