Islamophobia in Western Europe: Opposing Muslims or the Muslim Headscarf?

This paper reveals that while Muslim immigrants have a surprisingly good reputation in Western Europe, the headscarf is opposed by a large majority. Several arguments are developed in this paper to investigate why people make a difference between Muslim immigrants as a group and their religious practices. While attitudes towards Muslims hardly vary across countries there is a lot of variation of resentment against the headscarf. It appears that the more state and church are separated in a country the more negative are attitudes towards new religious practices. At the individual level it will be tested to what extent general xenophobic attitudes, religiosity and liberal values help us understand why attitudes differ. It will be shown, among others, that religious people are neither particularly opposed nor in favor of Muslims and their religious practices. On other hand, people with liberal values are tolerant towards Muslims as a group but much more critical about the headscarf that for some people stands for the illiberal values of Islam. Data from a survey in six Western European countries will be analyzed. As one of the first studies attitudes towards Muslim immigrants are analyzed across several countries and for the first time attitudes towards Muslims as a group the Muslim headscarf are compared.