This article addresses the topic of multiculturalism in Europe, taking Islamophobia and the attitude towards the "Other" as its point of reference. Many argue that today's negative attitudes towards Muslims living in Europe are the result of recent migration trends, the ongoing "refugee crisis" and a fear spread by right-wing nationalist parties and amplified by the media. Matti Bunzl analyzed this new condition and compared it with the anti-Semitism of the 1920s and 1930s and how this discourse is linked to xenophobia and the exclusion of the non-European “Other”. I will examine his points by exploring the relationship between Islamophobia and the reconfiguration of contemporary Europeanness. Here I will refer to Buchowski and Sayyid, who described Islamophobia as a means of reproducing the imagined European society based on xenophobic exclusions and visions of the future. This analysis takes into account not only prejudices, media representations and psychological processes, but also the form of governmentality that defines the current condition. Islamophobia is a form of racism, in which the constitutive antagonism is directed towards manifestations of Muslimness. As a result, it attempts to limit or deny Muslim agency and participation in the European project. The global rise in Islamophobia is not simply a consequence of violent acts committed by individual Muslims, but rather is a function of how the relational logic of racism is constructed. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayIn "Between Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Some Reflections on the New Europe", Bunzl argues that the only similarity between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, is their exclusivist ideological character, based on the construction of an alien “Other”. Jews and Muslims, therefore, have both been subjected to right-wing Christian fundamentalism. Beyond that, these are two different projects of exclusion since antisemitism was mobilized as part of the nation-building project in the 19th and 20th centuries, while Islamophobia is a more current phenomenon associated with the integration and geopolitics of 'EU. Bunzl links this to a shift in thought from the national state to the European state and towards a question of protection of "Europe" and "Europeans" rather than national purity. He argues that, anti-Semitism aside, Islamophobia functions less in the interests of national purification than "as a means of fortifying Europe". Furthermore, Bunzl points out that none of the European far-right movements today use conventional forms of anti-Semitism. Rather, Jews have been accepted into European society and are now subjected to violence by disenfranchised Muslim youth fighting against this new Europeanness. In today's Europe, Islamophobia is built through public debates on immigration, the status of Islam and through the possibility of Türkiye's EU membership. Bunzl argues that these debates capture a widespread fear, not just among the far right, about the future of Europe. By identifying conventional antisemitism and Islamophobia as two temporarily different entities, Bunzl ignores colonial historical discourse, living memory, and broader global contexts. . Scholars such as Sayyid, however, argue that Islamophobia is a product of the "processes and legacies of European colonial world-making", and therefore must be understood in the context of broader structures of European domination. Furthermore, Sayyid explains that the colonial enterprise was intrinsic to the formation of a European identity. The meaning of Europeanness in the 19th century wasdetermined by ideas inscribed in the racial-colonial order and white supremacy. He states that this is not only reflected in prejudices against Islam today, but is also expressed "culturally and socially, as well as militarily and politically." As De Genova argues, the European question involves a persistent conflation of migration, race and Muslim identity as floating signifiers for the “contradictory mediation of prolonged contemporary postcolonial agony.” Thus, questions about Europe are increasingly shaped against the postcolonial specter of an invasion of “non-whites” and “non-Europeans.” Bunzl bases his argument on a construction of the European Union as a “state” in the same way that Anderson defined the state as an imagined community is based on a shared ideal of what it means to be a member of that community. European identity is arbitrary, imaginary and contextual as it exists only in relation to other identities. It is therefore brought into sharper and clearer focus when contrasted with something that is “non-European”: the “foreigner”, the “immigrant” and the “Other”. Without minorities, the idea of ​​majority loses its meaning. Islamophobia is a form of governmentality that supports the Westernizing horizon, where this Western ideology is strengthened by contrasting it with the Islamic one. Sayyid emphasizes that what informs the view of the Middle East is the contrast between it and Europe, rather than any “indigenous recognition of its continental coherence or geographical unity or social homogeneity”. Furthermore, the discourse on Muslims in Europe is mostly dominated by the “immigrant imagination”. Here immigrants are not accepted by the West either as full citizens or as full "foreigners". Therefore, Muslims as immigrants can only express some aspects of their complex identity and are denied the social and cultural capital necessary to identify themselves as full European citizens. As DuBois explained, this “double consciousness” describes the internal conflict experienced by subordinate groups in an oppressive society. The immigrant identity is divided into multiple parts, making it difficult to develop a unified identity. Bunzl describes how Islamophobia builds on and reproduces the common idea that Islam generates a worldview that is "fundamentally incompatible with and inferior to Western culture." The racially marked Muslim body is characterized as “misogynistic, racist, violent” and therefore antithetical to the “core liberal values” of the West. As Buchowski argues, these negative attitudes toward Muslims do not stem from personal experiences but rather "represent the result of the power of symbols and associated fears." These symbols are influenced by the monolithic position of the Christian Church as representing Europeanness, as well as by nationalist and racist ideas through right-wing political discourse and media in the West. This "phantom thread", which encompasses historical myths about "infidels", influences people's thoughts and actions, including those of European Union politicians. The homogeneity of Europe has become a value and “strangeness” is perceived as “something out of place”. In this context, Europe is not just a geographical entity but a project. It is this “Europeanness” that determines the character, extent and depth of what is considered Europe. Holmes coined this concept with the term “integralism”, a philosophy that seeks to reformulate European society as a moral order, a form of social solidarity based on the idea of ​​a “shared, integral and organic culture”. “Europeanness” is often understood as a metaphor for modernization, while “Muslimness” represents an “alien presence” that interferes with this process. The 36: 1–24.