The Impact of the resurgence of the Palestinian Cause on the Epistemology of Islam and the Reshaping of Islam-Related Policies paradigms in Europe

This article examines how the revival of the Palestinian cause, especially in the wake of the international attention towards the war in Gaza, is generating a significant shift in the epistemological foundations of Islamic studies and in the evolution of Islam-related policies and paradigms in a state-centered laic Europe. The paper analyzes these epistemological transformations through two original concepts: the Gaza effect and the Palestine paradigm. On one hand, the “Gaza effect” refers to a set of discursive and institutional shifts triggered by the 2023–2025 Gaza war, revealing interactions among solidarity mobilizations, political propaganda, and Islamophobic narratives across Eu-ropean societies. These shifts can be observed in public discourse, academic debates, and policy frameworks. It describes the discursive consequences of Gaza-related events on how Islam and Muslims are spoken about and prob-lematized. On the other hand, the Palestine paradigm, refers to an emerging epistemic and political lens through which Islam in Europe is increasingly analyzed. It positions Palestine as a symbolic and analytical reference point that reshapes the production of knowledge and the representation of Muslim subjectivities. Thus, the study of Islam in The article is structured in two parts. The first explores the Gaza War and the Reconfiguration of European Knowledge Regimes on Islam explaining how the re-emergence of Palestine as a central issue is contributing to a shift in dominant epistemological and institutional approaches to Islamic Knowledge in Europe. In conclusion, this article asks whether we are witnessing the early contours of a shift toward a more reflexive and decolonized epistemology of Islam in Europe, an episte-mology shaped as much by transnational crisis as by academic scholars.