In the twenty years since the terror attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, 2001, Muslims in the West have been haunted by suspicions of radicalization, extremism and terrorism. Studies have demonstrated the way these suspicions play out in media representations of Muslims, in security briefs and police surveillance, as well as in everyday prejudice (Cesari 2009; Morey and Yaqin 2011; Rane et al. 2014). As Mehdi Semati (2010, p. 257) has discussed, the idea of the “spooky” brown man of Middle Eastern descent has come to dominate the public imaginary.Footnote 1 George Bush Jr.’s gaff on September 16, 2001, when he referred to the war on terror as a crusade, arguably heightened the sense that Muslims were not only a present enemy of the West but an eternal enemy reaching back into history as well as ominously into the future (Bush 2001; Lincoln 2006).

What is striking in the twenty years since 9/11 is not only the renewed attention to religion in the Western public sphere but the forms this attention has taken. Suspicion towards Islam has intensified. Narratives in which the West and Islam are conflicting and clashing entities have become entrenched. Farid Hafez (in this special section) outlines the way Muslims and Islam have increasingly been deemed a political problem, thereby differentiating them from other religious groups. In Europe, anti-Muslim rhetoric has reached fever-pitch in far-right movements. But although, as Hafez points out, there are serious problems with deeming Islam a political object, there are also problems with the myopia surrounding political forms of Christianity in Europe over the last two decades. What has gone largely unnoticed is the Bible-use that can be found in the programmes, protests and proclamations of far-right groups and actors. The British far-right organisation Britain First fosters one example in recent years of such Bible-use. Far from accidental or negligible, I argue that contemporary far-right Bible-use may look banal and even benign, but it masks toxic and violent attitudes to Islam. This Bible-use demonstrates the way references to religion have come to replace overt references to race in the Islamophobic discourse of the far right.

After discussing the role of religion in a post-9/11 context I explore examples of far-right Bible-use in Britain First’s social media communication. I argue that this Bible-use is significant for three interrelated reasons. The first reason is that it taps into the idea of a clash between Christianity and Islam that has become prevalent particularly since 9/11. The second reason is that the Bible-use demonstrates the tendency to refer to religious over racial difference in the contemporary European far right. The third is that this Bible-use, though benign-seeming and banal, can be effective and affective in spreading political messages that mask a dormant violent potential. To conclude, I suggest that in a post-9/11 context, where forms of Islamophobia take extreme and mainstream form, it is crucial that biblical scholars identify the way the Bible is used to stoke divisions and draw distinctions between a Christian West and an Islamic other.

1 Religion after 9/11

It has become common to talk about the events of 9/11 as a “watershed” moment for religion in the public sphere. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (2015, p. 23) has argued that the assumption that states deal with religion internally, if at all, was already crumbling before the events of 9/11, but “gathered decisive momentum after 9/11 as experts turned to religion as a central problem to be solved,” what she calls “the agenda of surveillance.”Footnote 2 In the discourse about religion that Hurd analyses, anxieties about “bad religion” intensified. Religion is “perceived as relevant to global politics when dangerous forms of it escape the control of the state and are understood to be in need of discipline” (Hurd 2015, p. 23). In Atalia Omer’s (in this special section) words, the “post-9/11 era saw the neoliberalizing and securitizing of religion,” with the “global war on terror designed to contain ‘bad’ religion.” Particularly since 9/11, the word “terrorist” has, as Sara Ahmed (2014 [2004], p. 76) suggests, stuck to certain bodies, namely those who “might ‘look Muslim’,” just as the word has become inextricably associated with other terms such as “fundamentalism, Islam, Arab, repressive, primitive.” Saba Mahmood (2006, p. 323) calls attention to the way the terror attacks sparked increasingly urgent calls for more secularism, with Islam as the most obvious target for these calls. The problem haunting Muslim societies is seen to lie “in their inability to achieve critical distance between the divine text and the world, and a concomitant overvaluation of received authority” (Mahmood 2006, p. 344). Anxiety is generated at the fundamentalist Muslim who is a literalist, who cannot or will not read sacred scripture in a “modern” manner, consonant with liberal principles.

If Islam is frequently portrayed as peculiarly given to violence in the modern West, Talal Asad (2003) similarly contends, this is due to two assumptions. The first is that “the Qur’anic text will force Muslims to be guided by it” (Asad 2003, p. 10). The second is that “Christians and Jews are free to interpret the Bible as they please” (Asad 2003, pp. 10–11), a point taken up also in Hafez’s article in this special section in regard to questions around religion and agency. The idea is that the Bible can be read as poetry and myth (Asad 2003, p. 9). Islamic scripture, on the other hand, is seen as imbued with a “magical” quality which makes it univocal and contagious (Asad 2003, p. 11). Muslims come to “represent fateful and blind followers of the scripture of the Islamic religion” (Hafez, in this special section).Footnote 3 Far-right groups have for several years now pedalled claims about the Qur’an being, for instance, an “instruction manual” for terrorism (Crossley 2018, p. 69). But what about the rise of far-right movements in Europe over the last two decades and the use of Christian scripture by European far-right groups? What the assumptions about Christian and Islamic scripture mask is both the fact that Islam (like Christianity) has a complex and diverse history of shifting principles of interpretation, and the potential powers and political use of the Christian Bible.

2 The far right

Far-right violence by Europeans over the last twenty years has not gone unnoticed. But it has not garnered the same kind of attention as so-called “Islamist” terrorism. Nor has it indelibly marked the image of the “angry white man,” as Michael Kimmel (2013) has put it, on the public imaginary in Europe. There are many examples of such violence, however. Between 2003 and 2010, for instance, serial shooter Peter Mangs targeted and killed those he saw as not belonging in Sweden—Black, Muslim and Roma people. The neo-Nazi terror group, National-Sozialistischer Untergrund, killed nine immigrants of Turkish, Kurdish and Greek descent in Germany in the first decade of the 2000s. A sympathizer of the extreme right Casa Pound organisation killed two Senegalese men in Florence in 2011. In Norway in 2011, far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik set off a bomb in central Oslo and shot at Social-Democrat summer-camp attendees on the island of Utøya. He saw his victims as defenders of multiculturalism and pro-immigration policies. Another far-right-inspired attack in Norway followed on August 10, 2019, when a gunman attacked the Al-Noor Islamic Centre in Bærum, opening fire just after the prayers in the mosque had ended.

Far-right demonstrations have also marked the public squares of European countries. The far-right group PEGIDA have marched through the streets of Dresden in Germany with Islamophobic placards and Islamophobic speeches by its leader Lutz Bachman. The Danish far-right party Stram Kurs have thrown Qur’ans to the ground and burnt Islam’s sacred scripture in Muslim-majority neighborhoods. Farhad Khosrokhavar (2017, p. 5) argues that the public anxiety in Western Europe and the U.S. about radical Islamists is more acute than far-right extremism because “radical Islamism is experienced as external.” This would go some way to explain the shock and horror of the far-right terrorist in Norway as “one of us” (Seierstad 2013)Footnote 4 rather than the “Islamist” terrorist he was assumed to be at first.Footnote 5

Religion quite clearly plays an important role for the contemporary European far right. The term “far right” is a broad category often used to include a range of positions and different kinds of actors, ranging from political parties to militant groups and lone-actor terrorists. Despite these differences, Islamophobia has been described as “the new xenophobic flag of the far right throughout Europe” (Mammone, Godin and Jenkins 2012, p. 6), and continues to be central to far-right actors. Hafez (2014, p. 480) talks about “tendencies and special lineages” when it comes to different actors on the far right. Islamophobia provides not only common values among activists, thus characterizing such tendencies and lineages in important ways, but also provides “opportunities to further their cooperation across borders” (Mammone, Godin and Jenkins 2012, p. 6). Claims to religion are increasingly examined, particularly when it comes to contemporary expressions of populism (Marzouki et al. 2016; Kerr 2019; Strømmen and Schmiedel 2020; Schmiedel and Ralston 2021), but the use of Christian scripture has not tended to feature much in studies of the contemporary far right, however broadly or narrowly “far right” is conceived.

It is noteworthy, though, that both more mainstream and more extreme versions of the far right have turned to Christian symbols and scripture in their programmes, protests, and proclamations. Alternative für Deutschland, for instance, have alluded to the Bible in their interpretation of The Good Samaritan from the Gospel of Luke, to support their fiercely anti-immigration stance (Strømmen and Schmiedel 2020, pp. 76–77). In 2014, members of the British far-right organisation Britain First invaded mosques in Bradford and Glasgow and distributed Bibles to the Muslims worshipping there (Allen 2014). After the Charlie Hebdo murders in January 2015, Britain First, carried crosses in so-called “Christian Patrols” among Muslim communities in East London (Crossley 2018; Burke 2018). PEGIDA have carried crosses and sung Christian hymns in protests and on their marches (Schmiedel 2019). Breivik cited multiple biblical verses—what he called “battle verses”—in his manifesto, seemingly to motivate himself for his own battle against those he saw as traitors to Norway and to Europe as a whole, for supporting immigration, multiculturalism and pluralism (Strømmen 2017a and 2017b; Strømmen and Schmiedel 2020).

These references to Christian symbols and scripture may look superficial and negligible—not the sign of real religiosity or evidence of religious beliefs to be taken seriously. Scholars could easily dismiss such references as inane and risible. But in what follows I would like to examine more closely the British far-right group Britain First and their Bible-use in order to raise further questions as to what this Bible-use does and what it means for religion in the public sphere. I use the term “Bible-use” to indicate any kind of reference to biblical texts or invocations of “the Bible,” as well as any practice that involves a Bible as a material object (Strømmen 2021).

3 Britain First

Britain First emerged in 2011 as a far-right political movement. It is led by the former British National Party councillor Paul Golding. In many ways Britain First fits within traditional understandings of the far right, characterized by nationalistic, authoritarian, nativist, ethnocentric and xenophobic tendencies (Allen 2014, p. 359). Immigration is a key issue, to preserve the “indigenous” British people. In line with other contemporary manifestations of the far right, Britain First identifies Islam as a destructive and alien force in Europe, claiming the “Islamification” of Europe needs to be opposed. Britain First has had a mixed mode of operating politically, in part like a political party and in part more like a street-level protest movement. For instance, like the British National Party, Britain First attempted to make headway in the May 2014 European elections while simultaneously undertaking provocative street-level protests against Muslims that were shared on social media (Allen 2014, p. 355).

Some Britain First stunts, such as the invasions of mosques where members thrust army-issue Bibles onto Muslim worshippers have received significant mainstream media interest. But even more significant is the way Britain First have capitalized on the use of social media. While numbers of attendees at their demonstrations have been fairly small—rarely more than a hundred people—they have built up significantly larger audiences on social media (Davidson and Berezin 2018, p. 489).

Christianity forms a part of the Britain First worldview, which is perhaps not completely surprising given that the movement was founded by the protestant minister and former British National Party member Jim Dowson. According to Chris Allen’s (2014, p. 357) early analysis of their ideology and practice, the idea that Christianity represents the foundation for British society and culture is integral to the movement. On their official webpage they have a section dedicated to Christianity in their ideology section.Footnote 6 Here they write about Britain as a “solidly Christian nation,” and state that “[ou]r political and legal system was born out of the framework of laws and morals contained in the Holy Bible.”Footnote 7 Thomas Davidson and Mabel Berezin (2018, p. 499) have noted the frequency with which references to Christianity come up in Britain First social media posts. Since Britain First was banned from Facebook in 2018, where the group had built up a considerable following, they have migrated to the messaging service and social media platform Telegram. Britain First’s public Telegram channel abounds with references to the Bible.

4 Britain First on telegram

Telegram is a free cloud-based instant messaging service and broadcasting platform. As Richard Rogers (2020, pp. 216–217) explains, it operates as a messaging app for private and public groups, but also as a social media platform where administrators of public channels can share content and broadcast to subscribers. Since social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have begun deplatforming far-right actors, these actors have migrated to other platforms (Urman and Katz 2022, p. 905; Rogers 2020). Since its launch in 2013, Telegram has become increasingly popular with political fringe groups for its unmoderated content, encrypted messaging service and privacy-enhanced features (Urman, Chun-ting Ho and Katz 2022, pp. 906–907).

In cases where groups, such as Britain First, have been deplatformed and migrated to alternative social media platforms such as Telegram, studies have indicated that Telegram is frequently deployed like Twitter and Facebook, “in a broadcasting mode, with short (and frequent) posts put out on public channels” (Rogers 2020, p. 226). This fits with the Bible-posts that can be observed on Britain First’s Telegram channel. Between October 2020 till the time of writing in August 2022, their public Telegram channel has numerous, almost daily, Bible-references. Typical of Britain First’s Bible-use in this time period is the sharing of a single biblical verse, with the text displayed on a pretty background image, such as clouds, forests and mountains. This trend is in no way unique to Britain First, but is a social media trend for groups and organisations such as the Bible Society (De Bruin 2020). The verses that are shared on Telegram by Britain First are brief and often only sparsely commented on. Even when they are commented on there is very little in the way of interpretation and they do not set any alarm bells going as to “bad” religion or extreme content. A common Britain First post on Telegram, then, is a pretty image with a Bible-verse superimposed on it, with the comment underneath: “HAVE A GREAT DAY FELLOW CHRISTIAN PARIOTS.” The bit of Bible-text is not commented on further and seems to bear no obvious relation to the other posts shared that day.

This type of sharing of biblical texts seems to have been instigated by Paul Golding on 16 October 2020, when he shared an image of a Bible, and commented: “Just purchased myself a brand new Bible. At a minimum, I’d suggest to other Christians to read at least one Proverb per day. Nourishment for the soul!” Golding shares verses from Proverbs but in the ensuing posts where biblical texts feature between 2020 and 2022, he diversifies, and shares biblical verses from across the Christian canon. To give a sense of why this Bible-use is present in the social media communication of Britain First I would like to highlight three posts, all from December 2020. These posts are focused on here because they provide instances where some further, albeit sparse, commentary is given to the Bible-quote in the post and because they articulate a message that is typical of Britain First’s Bible-use more generally. This message, also expressed on their official webpage, is that the Bible is the source of British culture and politics, and that Christianity is the foundation for Britain.

5 Britain First and the Bible

On the public Britain First Telegram channel on December 19, 2020, Proverbs 3:3 was quoted: “Don’t let kindness and truth forsake you. Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart.” Underneath the text-image, the comment reads: “The Bible includes 66 separate books written over thousands of years by dozens of authors. But these disparate writings all tell a single story and narrative, a remarkable feat! Nothing else like it exists. It is a truly remarkable document and Western civilisation is based upon it ….” The citation from Proverbs does not appear to have much to do with the reflection about the Bible and its supposedly unified narrative. The main point of the post seems rather to be to emphasise the remarkable identity of the Bible as a set of texts gathered together. The comment can be read as a theological statement in the sense that the “single story and narrative” referred to is presumably the story of Christianity.

At the same time, a more secular statement is operative, namely that the Bible is simultaneously a “document” on which Western civilization is based. The Bible, here then, functions as a major influence(r) for the West. This idea is innocuous enough when it comes to the influence of Christian scripture on Western culture. After all, if new atheists such as Richard Dawkins can sign up to the enormous cultural importance of the Bible then it hardly seems controversial to post something about these Christian foundations for Britain around Christmas time (Dawkins 2012). In this way, the post could appeal both to believing Christians and more secular, non-believing followers of Britain First.

A few days later, on December 21, 2020, Jeremiah 32:17 is shared as a post: “Ah Lord! Behold, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm; there is nothing too hard for you.” Underneath this biblical citation, Golding has commented:

“I pray that the Lord blesses your families this Christmas. Christmas is a special time because of its real meaning, celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. Not because of trees, presents or lights. That calming, beautiful feeling we get at Christmas is because of the holy foundation of this special holiday. ”

As with the previous post, the biblical citation itself seems to have no obvious relation to the message underneath. The point seems to be simply to quote the Bible. The text underneath is related to the Bible-quote mostly by proximity rather than necessity. The message about Christmas could have been accompanied by a more obviously Christmassy biblical citation, or by no biblical verse at all. Arguably, the purpose seems to be here to remind the followers of Britain First of the foundational importance of Christianity and Christian scripture for Britain and its customs and traditions. On the one hand, this statement is again perhaps surprisingly theological in the reference to “our Lord Jesus Christ” (emphasis added) and the reference to the “real meaning” of Christmas as the birth of Jesus. On the other hand, the fact that the references to the Bible are not centred on theological doctrine, but on Christianity’s role as an influence—“real meaning” and “holy foundation”—underscores the point that you do not have to be a believing Christian to agree or sympathize with the point. It is hardly controversial to comment on the Christian origins of Christmas as it is celebrated in Britain, even if these origins are not uncontested.

Further, the post fits into broader far-right attempts to determine what is British about Britain in contrast to Islam, such as bacon sandwiches and cups of tea (Crossley 2018, p. 70). Islam is not, and perhaps does not need to be, explicitly mentioned. Discussions about protecting and even defending bacon sandwiches and Christmas plays into ethnocentric notions of Britishness. “Islamification” and immigration are the unspoken threats here. The threat is of course also not exactly unspoken, as these posts are surrounded by stories and rhetoric that lambasts Islam and stunts that are offensive to Muslims. It is crucial to note the way references to the Bible may be a way to not reference Islam or present outright anti-Islamic content while nonetheless playing into anti-Islamic sentiments more obliquely. In Shani Burke’s (2018, p. 367) analysis of Facebook posts by Britain First in 2015, she demonstrates the way anti-Islamic rhetoric is “concealed and revealed simultaneously.” Burke shows how Britain First use the concept of solidarity and protection of Jews to make its anti-Islamic rhetoric seem convincing and reasonable (Burke 2018, p. 374). Christians and Jews are presented as groups under attack from Islamic extremism. They use verbal and visual communication to distance themselves from the antisemitism associated with far-right ideology and to drive home an anti-Islam agenda (Burke 2018, p. 375). In an even more subtle manner, references to Christmas and an oblique defence of its “real meaning” could be a way of excluding Muslims while concealing this exclusion.

The following day, on December 22, 2020, a verse from Psalm 91 is quoted, “he will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler” (Psalm 91:4). Underneath, Golding has added: “God teaches us to do what is right, not what is convenient. But there is a limit to what we can achieve on our own. The Bible teaches us to trust in God with a sincere heart and he will strengthen us in our hour of need. Deus Vult!” With this post, the biblical citation is somewhat more related to the message, in that the biblical verse alludes to God’s care and refuge for his creatures. The cry of the medieval crusades, “Deus vult”—God wills it, is added to the biblical verse. This is a battle cry that has been taken up by other far-right groups in recent years and comes up in several of Britain First’s Bible-posts on Telegram. In his analysis of English far-right social media posts, James Crossley (2018, pp. 73–74) comments on the tendencies for militaristic and muscular Christian imagery to be invoked, for instance, popular memes featuring crusaders, with the obvious anti-Islamic connotations, as well as quotations from St Augustine, and images of the cross and of Jesus. With this “Deus vult” post, then, there is a more overt allusion to the Islamophobic discourse that has characterized the European far right in the last decades, although any overt reference to, or commentary on, the crusades as a battle between Christianity and Islam that is being re-staged today is avoided.

These references to the Bible are not isolated. Nor can they be seen in isolation from the wider rhetoric and practice of Britain First and from broader far-right trends and tendencies in Europe. The Bible-use I have briefly discussed here might appear banal. It might even appear fairly benign in its comments on Christmas and a culture characterized by Christianity. But it is arguably playing into far more toxic ideas than is obvious at first glance. It is necessary to see the Bible-use of Britain first as part of larger trends, particularly since 9/11, to construct Christianity and Islam as oppositional cultures and identities.

6 Crusades and Clashes

Although he later tried to unsay it, George W. Bush’s reference to a “crusade” in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks came to signify a perceived rift between a Christian world in the West and an Islamic world in the East. Even if Bush later used more cautious language, Hans Kippenberg (2011, p. 182) highlights the way the impression nonetheless remained that the United States was engaged in a crusade. The terrorism of 9/11 was emblazoned as a form of political violence against an “us” in which the references to “us” and “our” signified Western democracies and the fundamental Western values (Kippenberg 2011, p. 183). Kippenberg points out that with the help of Evangelical advisers, Bush’s speeches in the early years after 9/11 operated with a theological, premillennialist, framework in which a Christian U.S. was fighting absolute evil (Kippenberg 2011, pp. 186–187).

Of course, Bush’s reference to a crusade did not come out of nowhere. The idea of an interminable conflict between a Christian civilization and an Islamic enemy, reaching back to the middle ages, was already aired in the early 1990s, by figures such as Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington. Citing historian Bernard Lewis’s (1990) account of Islam as an “ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage,” Huntington (1993) claimed that after the Cold War confrontation between global communism and global capitalism, religion had returned into politics as a volatile factor. A civilization, according to Huntington, is marked by the cultural inheritance and cultural identity of a people who share historical, territorial and linguistic characteristics. But what is central to the civilization is: religion (Huntington 1993, pp. 24–25). Western civilization is founded on Christianity (Huntington 1993, p. 27). According to Huntington, the “centuries-old military interaction between the West and Islam is unlikely to decline” but will rather become “more virulent” (Huntington 1993, p. 31). The “clash of civilizations” thesis has become popular—particularly since 9/11—despite its problematically simplified narrative (e.g. Bottici and Challand 2010). As Hans-Georg Betz (2007, p. 37) points out, it is not fair to call Huntington a right-wing extremist but the arguments he has advanced are taken up by far-right figures in Europe to aid their anti-immigration campaign, particularly against Muslims.

What Britain First does with its Bible-use is to make use of the Bible in a seemingly innocuous way to gesture towards these ideas of a crusade and a clash between Christian civilization and Islam. Britain First are tapping into, and fuelling, a trend of invoking Christianity and Islam as oppositional cultural identities more generally in right-wing populist discourse. As Olivier Roy (2016, p. 186) has shown, claims that “the Christian identity of European nations is being threatened” by Islam are rife across Europe. In this way, the Islamophobic and other offensive material propagated by Britain First is masked by, or at least mixed in with, an image of benign Christianity. Crossley (2018, p. 73) too demonstrates in his analysis of references to religion in the English far right that oppositions constructed between Islam and Christianity are common. Crossley remarks that Christianity in this English far-right discourse functions as “a marker of white nativism” and as oppositional to Islam (Crossley 2018, p. 73). The Britain First posts about Christian scripture as the foundation for Western civilization, the idea of the “holy foundation” for Christmas, and the call “Deus vult,” are all emphasising a particular religious heritage and identity for Britain which excludes Muslims.

Read against this backdrop, the Bible verses cited on social media are not accidental then, or merely risible. Rather, they serve to mask racist ideas and Islamophobic messages under the guise of seemingly banal references to Christian scripture and its role as a foundation for Western civilization. This plays into conspiracies about a clash of civilizations and anxieties about a defence of culture and tradition from “alien” influences without having to explicitly articulate such viewpoints. What the Britain First Bible-use demonstrates is the increased tendency amongst far-right actors to replace references to race and racial difference with references to religion and religious difference.

7 Religion over race

Far-right movements have increasingly in the last two decades turned towards the language of culture and religion to avoid charges of racism. Pietro Castelli Gattinara (2017, p. 346) discusses the way the shift in far-right rhetoric from biological to cultural racism has resulted in less rhetoric around the “other” as inferior, and more rhetoric centred on the culture and religion of the “other” as incompatible with Western values. Religion rather than race becomes the primary boundary-marker. Ethnocratic language is sometimes overt, but it is frequently clothed in the language of “culture” and “religion,” particularly in far-right parties that have reformed with the intention to appear more respectable in order to participate more successfully in mainstream politics, such as the French National Rally (Rassemblement national) under Marine Le Pen (Benveniste and Pingaud 2016).

This does not mean that racism has disappeared or dissipated, however. Instead, references to religion and culture replace race and mask racialized constructions of Muslims and immigrants more generally. Hafez (2014, p. 481) argues that the “far right’s ‘differential racism’ or ‘cultural racism’ incorporates notions of religion and culture as by-products of a biological determinism that merely hides the notion of race that has become taboo in contemporary public discourses.” Raymond Taras (2013, p. 419) too argues that Islamophobia “draws from a historical anti-Muslimism and anti-Islamism and fuses them with racist ideologies of the twentieth century to construct a modern concept.” It can be characterized as “a cryptic articulation of the concepts of race and racism even if overtly it appears as a form of religious-based prejudice” (Taras 2013, p. 422). Whether it is by religious or racial markers, or a mixture of the two, an “essentialist framing” of Muslims takes place that fixes all Muslims as dangerous or as “other” to Europe (Taras 2013, p. 422).

Similarly, although antisemitism seems to recede into the background in many contemporary European far-right groups, and groups such as Britain First seek to present themselves as in solidarity with Jews against Muslims, as already mentioned, antisemitism is by no means absent. For one, as Burke (2018) has shown, Britain First manipulate Jews to appear moderate and mainstream in ostensibly “defending” Jews against Muslims and linking Nazism with Islam. As Jayne Svenungsson discusses in this special section, the logic of Christian culture in opposition and superior to Islam, relies on “supersessionary ways of thinking” honed in early Christian theology in relation to Judaism. These “inherited supersessionary tropes” have been generalized and become “part of a broader narrative of progress, enlightenment and emancipation” in the story of “Christian Europe.”

The Bible-use of Britain First should be understood in this context, where religion has become a way of distinguishing Muslims from Europeans or from British people without mentioning race overtly. Donning the rhetoric of ideology and religion perpetuates “inherited racial ideas and an assumption of normative whiteness deemed under threat,” as Crossley (2018, p. 73) puts it. The frequent references to the Bible in Britain First social media posts play into notions of a Western civilization that is set apart from Islam, drawing in this oblique way cultural-scriptural borders that obscure more traditionally far-right racist rhetoric. This Bible-use does not, then, easily look “dangerous” or pernicious. It looks benign. There is no whiff of the fanatic or the terrorist in Paul Golding’s seemingly benign social media posts where pretty images are overset by biblical verses. Terms such as “fanatic,” “fundamentalist” and “terrorist” are used to define “degenerate, manipulated forms of religion, certainly not genuine religious forms,” as Kippenberg (2011, p. 19) writes.

The kind of Bible-use I have discussed in far-right social media posts, do not fit such categories. They do not straightforwardly reflect confessional uses of the Bible either but play to confessional and secular audiences. Apart from a show of respectability, though, it is key to note that the Bible-use of Britain First may be more effectively communicated due to its ostensible banality as simple tropes, images and quotes are shared and disseminated widely. By simply quoting from the Bible and embracing it as a foundation for Western civilization, Christian scripture is claimed on the side of far-right actors against those they repeatedly denigrate as threatening: Muslims. The banality of the posts may be more effective as well as affective in terms of their political activism, particularly as it features on social media platforms such as Telegram.

8 Spreading the word

As Thomas Davidson and Mabel Berezin (2018, p. 487) have discussed, social media technologies have provided new opportunities for far-right movements to connect to larger audiences in fairly direct ways, providing efficient and low-cost modes of communication for activists to connect with each other. They have studied the way Britain First used its Facebook page to mix “extreme anti-Muslim content, images and videos from their protests, and an eclectic assortment of relatively innocuous content including pictures of Princess Diana, the Queen, cats and castles” (Davidson and Berezin 2018, p. 489). The innocuous content can be considered “engagement bait,” that is, content that is created to attract interaction from as many users as possible. A simple “like” to this content will cause the group’s more extreme content to appear in their social media feed. Britain First have successfully shared content that has gone viral, and as Davidson and Berezin show, this resulted in a rapid increase of online supporters (Davidson and Berezin 2018, p. 489). At its peak in October 2017 Britain First had attracted almost two million Facebook followers (Davidson and Berezin 2018, p. 489). “Britain First appears to be extremely marginal based on news coverage and even web searches, but they have been tremendously successful at using social media, building the largest online following of any political group in the UK” (Davidson and Berezin 2018, p. 494).

Of course, numbers of online supporters do not necessarily indicate full support for all of their views or that this support would translate into political action. Also, Telegram functions differently to platforms such as Facebook with less public-facing features, at least at the outset. Urman and Katz (2022, pp. 907–908) discuss the way Telegram has less reach than Facebook and so indicates perhaps less opportunity for attracting new followers but is also more conducive to radicalization due to its unmoderated content. Telegram-activity is therefore, they argue, important to scrutinize for research on the far right. Driving Britain First to Telegram as a “darker corner of the Internet” could mean a containment of their impact (Rogers 2020, p. 216). But, with the use of public channels, Telegram users can seek publicity and build a following. The Bible-content on the official Telegram channel of Britain First does not look like extreme content. The biblical verses superimposed on images and comments relating to the Bible that I have highlighted does not look problematic precisely because it looks banal, even benign. The Bible-use does not signal any particular knowledge or interpretive skill. In fact, it barely looks worthy of discussion in its appearance of superficiality.

But as Andrew B.R. Elliott (2017) has shown in Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media: Appropriating the Middle Ages in the Twenty-First Century, the way bits of history and text are used on social media can look ignorant but is not therefore politically insignificant or ineffective. A “march to a statue, the launch of an anti-Muslim blog or the creation of a medieval meme all represent a participatory form of popular culture which has been fundamentally—and powerfully—democratised, created and promulgated by anyone with the basic software, capacity and skills to do so” (Elliott 2017, p. 7). While references to the middle ages by far-right groups on media platforms might look ignorant and banal, their power lies not in their correspondence with history but in their capacity to be retransmitted, “and it is at its most powerful precisely when there is no expertise or historical knowledge required to decode it” (Elliott 2017, p. 23). He argues that it is important to map how these media mechanisms work (Elliott 2017, p. 10). The spreadability and stickiness of tropes in the media lie in their ability “to be reported widely across a range of mass media and filtered through to a wider public while flattening the details as little as possible” (Elliott 2017, p. 8). Drawing from Hannah Arendt, Elliott points to the way the seemingly banal and everyday “can in fact mask politically sensitive, ideologically perverse or odious ideas under the guise of an ostensibly innocuous banality” (Elliott 2017, p. 17). The most toxic and extreme ideas can be “rendered banal” by being shrouded within medievalism (17). The same can be said for invocations of the Bible and banal uses of biblical texts.

It is important in this context to keep in mind that social media posts that appear to be banal do not only operate on an intellectual or rational level. Biblical scholars are most of the time trained to consider texts as objects to be interpreted. The Britain First posts about Christmas arguably tap into affective investments in customs and traditions that are felt to be defining of Britishness. In fact, to call them inane risks downplaying the affective power of such points to stoke anger, pride, nostalgia and anxiety. Sara Ahmed (2014, p. 12), amongst others, has emphasised the importance of taking account of such emotions to recognise the way both individuals and groups become invested in particular narratives and structures of world-making. A key condition for success particularly for populist versions of the far right is “the ability to play on the emotional register, to use speeches and arguments to raise the affects of the people and arouse their immediate feelings” (Lazaridis et al. 2016, 12). This is not a point about stupidity or ignorance, as if followers of the far right are only capable of operating on an emotional or affective level as opposed to “us” others who operate on an intellectual level. Rather, it is a reminder that all politics operates on several levels at the same time and that the affective level is not less (and some would argue it is more) important (Massumi 2015).

The biblical verses that are shared by Britain First on Telegram are inoffensive and banal, but their shareability as simple posts on social media may be more affectively loaded than is obvious at first glance. Commenting on the Bible as an influence on Western culture and linking biblical verses to Christian patriotism (“have a great day Christian patriots”) by using the verses as greetings to followers is a simple way of appearing moderate, while stoking a strong sense of “us” and “them” when it comes to essentialist notions of national religious culture and its “others.”

9 Dormant violence

Posts about the Bible as a foundation of Western culture, about Christmas, and references to “Deus vult” on Telegram, accompanied by a biblical verse may not appear hugely threatening. But Allen (2014, p. 360) warns of the messages that underlie Britain First campaigns and their militarism. In their so-called Christian Patrols, ex-army vehicles were used. Bibles forced onto Muslims in mosques were army-issued Bibles. Much of Britain First’s language-use is militaristic in tone and pertains to resistance, defence and invasion (Allen 2014, p. 360). Jacob Aasland Ravndal (2021, p. 1) argues that a strategic shift occurred in extreme right movements during the 2000s and early 2010s, “a shift away from armed resistance and toward trying to change how people think.” As Ravndal points out, over the last twenty years “surveillance technology has advanced considerably and extensive security measures have been implemented in most countries to prevent Islamist terrorism post 9/11” (Ravndal 2021, p. 17). These measures can hamper the opportunities of far-right actors as well. In particular, online communities can foster ideal spaces to foster unity and build networks where core values and ideas are shared and propagated (Ravndal 2021, p. 20). Ravndal warns of the “dormant violent potential” in such far-right online communities and its activism (Ravndal 2021, p. 20).

Even if the spread of far-right ideas does not lead to outright physical violence, however, it is perhaps equally important to watch out for the more insidious forms in which Islamophobia is communicated. Embracing Christianity and sharing verses from the Bible can, in the context of the far right, be one way of gesturing towards an exclusive Europe in which Muslims do not belong. Defending the “Christian” foundations of Europe becomes a way of opposing immigration and of propagating xenophobic and ethnocentric notions of a nation and more broadly of Europe as a continent. The assumption that Christian Europe is threatened by Islam is not only an idea on the extreme ends of the right. Rather, as Mattias Ekman (2015, p. 1986) has argued, notions of a Europe under attack have “permeated into public discourse.” The “imaginative power in the construction of Muslims and Islam that has made it so useful for far-right activists,” as Hafez (2014, p. 480) puts it, can be stoked by invoking a “biblical” Europe, where the holy foundations and traditions of Christian Europe can be treated as oppositional to Islam and to Muslims.

10 Conclusion

I began this article by foregrounding the way religion, and more specifically, dangerous forms of Islam, have come to dominate the public sphere since 9/11. Exacerbated by the rise of Da’esh in 2014, and the spate of Da’esh-inspired terror attacks that followed, this is perhaps not strange. In the last two decades, anxieties and obsessions around “bad religion” have been projected onto Muslims in mainstream political debates as well as in more extreme forms of the far right. Suspicions of Islam are caught up in the idea that the Qur’an is problematic—even dangerous.

One effect of the Western fixation on disciplining problematic forms of religion since 9/11, is a very particular understanding that religions and religious actors are readily identifiable (Hurd 2015, p. 29). Religion is in this sense neither complex, ambiguous, nor messy. For the Western world, it is also frequently thought about as something coming from “outside.” Spotting forms of “bad” religion becomes fixated on Muslims or what appears to look like a brand of Muslimness that is as Mahmood (2006, p. 332) argues tied to notions of “traditionalism.” It is not that only those religious actors that look “terrorist” are targeted. Rather, certain notions of traditionalist religion are themselves seen as a significant threat to “democratic values” (Mahmood 2006, p. 332). European far right movements and individuals do not obviously look like instantiations of “bad religion.” Nor do they look traditionalist or particularly fanatical in their Bible-use. Indeed, one of the features of the far right across Europe has been to seemingly champion liberal causes relating for instance to gender and sexuality while lambasting Muslims for failing to support such modern liberal values (Awad 2013; Gattinara 2017).

I suggested, however, that a less discussed but significant issue is the Bible-use that features in contemporary European far-right movements. To indicate the way such Bible-use can function, I discussed examples of Bible-use on the public Telegram account of the British far-right movement Britain First. I contextualized these examples by placing them in broader trends to construct Christian civilization in opposition to Islam and connecting current-day events to the medieval crusades. I argued that although the examples of Bible-use I highlighted might look banal and even benign, they mask more toxic prejudices and essentializations of Islam that Britain First propagate in their rhetoric and practice more generally. Attempts to mask racism and xenophobia may be part and parcel of a social media activism that seeks to draw on Christian and non-Christian followers in order to mix banal posts with more extreme content.

If 9/11 signalled a renewed focus on public forms of religion, by politicians, policy-pundits and scholars, then it is crucial that the particular ways post-9/11 religiosity are framed do not obscure forms of religion that are not immediately recognisable or obviously problematic, such as far-right Bible-use. If there has been an “unprecedented resurgence” of religion in the last decades, then it is just as clear that the ways in which religion becomes visible in the public is not evenly balanced when specific religions are invoked. As Ulrich Schmiedel (in this special section) argues, while ostensibly religion in general has been deemed risky business since 9/11, it is the myth of Muslim violence that has been propagated. When “religion” in the public sphere is generically discussed as a problem after 9/11 the targeting of Islam in the War on Terror is downplayed, as is the role of Christian political violence and extremism (Schmiedel, in this special section).

Biblical scholars are particularly well placed to identify political uses of the Bible. To do so, though, biblical scholars need to be attuned to the larger trends in which political Bible-use become a part. Here it is vital, as Atalia Omer (in this special section) argues, to not cordon off “religion” as its own separate object to be scrutinized by what she calls religiocrats and superficially fixed by those in the “harmony business.” Focusing on “religion” as if it is the sole or main cause of conflicts and straightforward key to identities, works to “conceal the racialized and gendered dynamics, not to mention the historical and geopolitical contexts and not to mention even further the hermeneutical elasticity of religious traditions themselves” (Omer, in this special section).

As my discussion makes clear, the citations of the Bible that are operative are not necessarily evidence of detailed investments in biblical texts or of traditional faith practices. That does not mean they are negligible, however. Rather, far-right Bible-use can be one way of appealing to followers through seemingly benign content and banal comments about scripture and Western civilization, about Christmas and the crusades. This Bible-use masks the racism and xenophobia that is so prevalent in the Islamophobia of the contemporary European far right, while perpetuating it. As examples of far-right terrorism show, there is no knowing when the dormant potential for violence of a far-right worldview turns to actual violence. At the same time, it is perhaps just as important to challenge the benign and banal content that propagates and perpetuates anti-Islam sentiment in mainstream society.