preview

Czech Republic And The European Union

Better Essays

Czech Republic has been freed from the shadow of communism for 24 years, and since has made strides in integrating with Western Europe, including joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1999 and the European Union in 2004. Although the known effort to join the global world, the Czech Republic is self-imposing their own isolationist policies as the Syrian Refugee crisis swarms over Europe, except for the Czech Republic. The Isolation is because of the rise of institutionally pushed Islamophobia within the Czech Republic and also the history that has tied the Czech Republic to a naturally xenophobic culture. The Czech Republic is located in central Europe landlocked, while also strategically located extending across some of more …show more content…

President Zeman and others are also using the social identity theory to create the ‘us’ vs ‘them’, which the automatically divides and creates prejudicial attitudes towards the ‘them group’. The securitization theory and the social identity theory are both political in nature as once the population accepts the threat or ‘us v.s. them’ ideaology, then it enters the political policy agenda. The policy agenda will be pushed with momentum by the perceived reality of the threat, which creates solution to the problem. Islam in the Czech Republic is being utilized and mobilized as a double threat. The first component is the perception of Islam as a violence promoting extremist ideology. The second component of the Islamic threat is the intolerant and totalizing of the religion, which controls all aspects of a Muslim’s life. According to Bonansinga the two sided threat appears to Czechs as “Europe should protect itself from Muslim migration if it does not want to surrender to an Islamization of its society”. The President of the Czech Republic, Milos Zeman is openly institutionalizing islamophobia in the country; The president holds a symbolic role in the parliamentary republic, but the Czech Republic is historically known for their strong man presidents. “According to Czech President Milos Zeman, the mass migration of

Get Access