We are pleased to present the ninth edition of the European Islamophobia Report (EIR 2023). The report, authored by 33 scholars and experts, offers a comprehensive analysis of Islamophobia’s state and development across 28 European countries in 2023. Since its inaugural edition in 2015, the EIR has become an indispensable resource for understanding Islamophobia’s impact on politics, media, employment, education, and justice.

In her report on France in this volume, Kawtar Najib has highlighted the killing of Nahel Merzouk, a young man, in the context of a simple traffic stop that could have had a completely different outcome, stating that there was no violence on the part of Nahel or his two friends aged 17 and 14 years old who were passengers. She understands his murder at the hands of French police as the murder of “a racialized Muslim body, … a killable body that a police agent representing the French state could target.” Najib shows that the police union Alliance came to the defense of the murderers, stating they were at war with “nuisibles et hordes sauvages” (pests and wild hordes), a dehumanizing reference to racialized Black, Arab, and Muslim bodies in the French banlieues. Revolts and protests followed the killing for several days in June and July 2023. During these protests, other racialized men were also killed by the police and others suffered physical deformations following shots. Some lost an eye and a man lost a part of his skull which had to be removed for his survival. This episode, which became the cover page of this year’s report, is characteristic of the extent of dehumanization and criminalization of postcolonial populations in a metropole of a major European country. The episode was sparked by state violence and led to the arrest of 3,200 individuals (including children), 1,056 of whom were sentenced to prison.