The findings document not a collection of isolated incidents but a structural phenomenon embedded in European governance. Here is what the data shows.
The numbers
In 2025, the CCIE recorded 876 reports across Europe, 85% of which concerned incidents in France. These covered discrimination (686 cases), provocation and incitement to hatred (316), physical assaults (178), defamation (229), and insults (153).
These figures almost certainly represent a fraction of reality. The EU's Fundamental Rights Agency estimates only 6% of Islamophobia cases are ever reported. Distrust in institutions, normalisation of discrimination, and lack of awareness of available redress all suppress reporting rates.
Muslim women bear a disproportionate share. They represent 80% of reported victims, with 41% of incidents involving discrimination or violence linked to wearing the headscarf.
Across all eleven countries studied, the report identifies Muslim women as consistently among the primary targets - at the intersection of racism, sexism, and state control of minoritised women's bodies.
What the report says about France
The France chapter was submitted anonymously. The researchers cited significant risks to their personal safety and professional careers. That fact is itself part of the story.
The chapter documents what it calls the shrinking of civic space for Muslim human rights defenders - a process in which judicial and administrative tools are used to restrict and dissolve Muslim organisations, including those working in human rights.
Since 2022, French authorities have conducted 24,887 inspections of Muslim associations and structures, resulting in 718 administrative closures of mosques, schools, publishing houses, and cultural and charitable associations. The 2021 anti-separatism law significantly expanded the administration's powers to carry out these closures, often on the basis of vague and malleable criteria.
The dissolution of the CCIF - the leading organisation documenting and providing legal support to Islamophobia victims in France - is described as a turning point that created a lasting institutional vacuum in victim support.
The report documents a diffuse criminalisation of ordinary Muslim associative activity. Rights advocacy, community solidarity, and criticism of discriminatory public policy are regularly framed as separatism or entryism. Imams are required to sign a charter stating that "allegations of so-called state racism, like all victim-based postures, amount to defamation."
The Interior Ministry itself recorded a 75% rise in anti-Muslim acts in 2024, from 83 to 145. The report notes these figures appear largely unreadable in public debate - acknowledged but not acted upon.
The broader European picture
The report's central argument is that Islamophobia across Europe now operates primarily through what it calls differential governance - continuously redefining which forms of Islam are acceptable and which are suspect, rather than simply excluding Islam outright.
Three country findings stand out.
In the UK, the Prevent counter-radicalisation programme referred 8,778 individuals to authorities in 2025 - a 27% increase on the previous year. Muslims remain six times more likely to be referred than non-Muslims despite representing 6% of the population. Over the past decade, approximately 200 children under the age of three were referred to Prevent, two thirds for alleged Islamist extremism.
In Denmark, rights are explicitly made conditional on Muslim conformity. One party proposed measures intended to make it "difficult to be Muslim in Denmark." Only one in fourteen Islamophobic incidents is reported to police.
In Belgium, anti-discrimination law is among the most comprehensive in Europe and largely ineffective for Muslim victims. The research attributes this not to legal shortcomings but to implicit political choices within the bodies tasked with enforcing the law.
What the CCIE recommends
The report makes eight formal recommendations to European institutions:
1. Explicitly recognise Islamophobia as a specific form of racism within EU anti-racism frameworks, moving beyond terminological debates that hinder data collection and victim recognition.
2. Reduce the gap between formal law and effective enforcement, developing indicators measuring not just legal standards but actual outcomes - litigation rates, access to legal aid, and burden borne by victims.
3. Subject counter-radicalisation programmes to independent evaluation focused on fundamental rights impact, with common standards preventing disproportionate surveillance of Muslim communities.
4. Improve harmonised data collection on anti-Muslim discrimination across member states, including support for independent reporting bodies and civil society data.
5. Ensure frameworks based on secularism or civic neutrality are not used disproportionately to restrict Muslim religious freedom, particularly in education, employment, and civic participation.
6. Integrate a gender and intersectional approach into all European anti-racism policies, with specific support for Muslim women's rights.
7. Guarantee the full participation of Muslim civil society in consultation and evaluation of European policies on racism and security.
8. Treat anti-Muslim racism as an indicator of democratic backsliding, on a par with other forms of systemic discrimination, within European rule-of-law monitoring mechanisms.
The report's overarching conclusion is that it is no longer sufficient to strengthen legal frameworks on paper. Combating Islamophobia must be treated as a central democratic issue - requiring the recognition of its institutional forms, transparency in enforcement bodies, and the full integration of civil society voices in the policies that affect them.
The full report is available at ccieurope.org.
Sources: CCIE Annual Report on Islamophobia in Europe 2025 / EU Fundamental Rights Agency / French Interior Ministry