Islamophobia in Poland
[8] During communist rule the censorship office barred unfavorable portrayals of Muslims due to Poland's geopolitical alignment with Arab countries during this period.
[9] Immigration of Poles to the United Kingdom has led many migrants from the homogeneous Polish society to encounter a culturally diverse setting for the first time.
[13] A 2017 poll of Polish secondary school pupils showed that the majority expressed strong homophobic, anti-refugee, and Islamophobic prejudice.
A group called Europe of the Future (Polish: Europa Przyszłości) organized protests against construction, framing their opposition in terms of "European values" of freedom of expression, secularism, democratic ideals, and women's rights.
[8] In their statements, PiS politicians used falsified data and differentiated between refugees and so called economic migrants which had wholly negative connotations.
[8] Following the 2015 Polish parliamentary election, PiS cemented control of public media and utilized Islamophobic rhetoric to rally its supporters.
[16] In the 2006, League of Polish Families's MP Wojciech Wierzejski wrote a blog entry titled "Resistance to Islam" which was criticized by the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights.
[8] On public television, guests have spoken of Muslims as "uncivilized" and a threat to "European and Christian values" and have described them as "violent": as "Jihadists", "terrorists", and "rapists".
Piela and Łukjanowicz contend that guests they say engage in anti-Muslim rhetoric—Miriam Shaded (director of the Estera Foundation), Tomasz Terlikowski, Wojciech Cejrowski, Marcin Rola, Witold Gadwoski and Dariusz Oko—are "handpicked" by the networks.
[6] In 2016, the right-wing wSieci magazine ran a cover with a white women assaulted by dark males under the title "The Islamic rape of Europe" which evoked outrage,[22][8] and has been compared to WWII propaganda with the same imagery.
[1][23] According to Jaskulowski, the more liberal Polish media (Polityka and Gazeta Wyborcza) opposed the right-wing discourse of fear and focused in some instances on the human aspect of the immigration story, but have also spoken of a "flood" and a "wave".
[6] Whereas in other Western countries Islamophobia has been linked with concerns of public displays of faith by Muslims, in Poland it has been connected to the Catholic church and the notion of European re-Christianization.
Archbishop Henryk Hoser stated that jihadists controlled the migration and that communities of refugees would be a "perfect breeding ground for the recruitment of fanatics".
Several hundred men surrounded the Prince Kebab restaurant, chanting racist, anti-immigrant and Islamophobic slogans,[25][26] and tossing firecrackers, stones, and Molotov cocktails at the shop.
[27] In November 2017 on Polish Independence Day, marchers in a 60,000 strong nationalist march in Poland expressed antisemitic and Islamophobic sentiments.
According to the American Jewish Committee the march was "seriously marred by hateful, far-right throngs that threaten the core values of Poland and its standing abroad".
[17] Later in November 2017, amidst a rise in xenophobic incidents, two hooded men smashed a dozen windows in the Muslim cultural centre in Warsaw.
[29][30] In 2019, Polish president Andrzej Duda awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland to Roger Scruton who had previously been dismissed from his UK government role following comments on Jews and Islamophobia.
