On 20 January 2026, Portugal’s Polícia Judiciária (PJ) announced a sweeping national security operation with an ominous name: Operação Irmandade. Dozens of searches. Thirty-seven detainees. An alleged violent extremist organisation.
According to the PJ, the operation targeted a network associated with hate crimes, incitement to hatred and violence, threats and coercion, aggravated assault, and prohibited weapons. The official statement is public and unequivocal. Press coverage echoed the same framing. Euronews reported 67 searches and 37 arrests in what authorities described as a major crackdown on anti-immigrant and extremist crime.
At first glance, this sounds straightforward. States should investigate violence. No serious person disputes that. But once you look past the headlines and into the legal reasoning, the picture shifts. Because Operação Irmandade is not just about violence. It is about something much more consequential: the quiet transformation of speech into evidence of future criminality, and the growing use of “Islamophobia” as a legal theory of dangerousness.
From Crimes to Ideology
In the case materials, the prosecution’s narrative does not focus solely on concrete acts or operational plans. Instead, it repeatedly centres on expression. One phrase appears over and over: “Islão fora da Europa” - “Islam out of Europe.”
The slogan is treated as central to the state’s argument. It is paired with references to banners and Charlie Hebdo-style caricatures of Muhammad - crude, deliberately offensive depictions portraying him as a paedophile and associated with violence. Court documents quote the demonstrators’ messaging directly:
“Estas comunidades que idolatram um profeta pedófilo e praticam atos terroristas…”
(“These communities who idolise a paedophile prophet and commit terrorist acts…”)
Placards reading “Stop Islam” and “Islão fora da Europa” are explicitly cited as evidence. One can find this rhetoric vulgar, inflammatory or morally repellent. That is not the issue. The issue is legal. Is the state treating this as protected, even if offensive, political expression? Or as proof that the speakers are inherently dangerous? Because those are radically different constitutional positions.
The Mechanics of Pre-Crime
At least one written pre-trial judicial decision reportedly makes the reasoning explicit. The expression “Islão fora da Europa” is described as discriminatory and embedded in a broader narrative of hostility toward Muslims. The decision grounds this interpretation in European human-rights jurisprudence, citing Norwood v. United Kingdom, the well-known European Court of Human Rights case involving a poster that read “Islam out of Britain”:
That reference is revealing. It shows the mechanism at work: speech is not treated merely as offensive. It is treated as an indicator of potential violence, a predictor of dangerousness. In other words, ideology itself becomes evidence.
At the same time, the PJ’s public messaging leaned heavily into a preventive logic. Reporting of the director’s press conference in ECO quotes him saying:
“Quem trabalha neste tipo de criminalidade, procura sempre que se investigue e se ponha termo à atividade criminosa no momento em que não há ainda crimes de resultado…”
Translation: investigators aim to intervene when there are not yet “result crimes”, when no concrete harm has occurred.
Prevention is legitimate. Of course it is. But prevention becomes legally dangerous when it detaches itself from tangible preparation - weapons, plans, coordination - and attaches itself instead to slogans, satire and political posture. That is not prevention. That is pre-crime. Punishment based on what the state thinks you might do, rather than what you have done. Once that threshold is crossed, the presumption of innocence becomes a formality.
How “Islamophobia” Became a Legal Category
At the centre of this shift sits a word that has expanded far beyond its original meaning: Islamophobia. Originally, the term described hostility or discrimination against Muslims as people. Any liberal legal order should oppose that. But in practice, the term is increasingly operationalised to cover something much broader: criticism of Islam itself.
Not harassment of believers. Not violence against communities. But criticism of doctrine, history, symbols, and political manifestations. In other words, speech about a religion. That collapse erases a crucial distinction: hostility toward individuals or communities (wrong, often criminal), versus criticism of a belief system (offensive perhaps, but core political speech in a secular democracy).
If category two becomes legally suspect, the state is no longer protecting people. It is shielding a religion from scrutiny. And once the law begins protecting beliefs rather than citizens, it drifts toward something Europe supposedly rejected centuries ago: blasphemy enforcement by another name. The contradiction is starkest in the Charlie Hebdo paradox.
After the murders in Paris, European leaders insisted that mocking religion, including Muhammad, was a non-negotiable element of free expression. Yet materially similar satire can now be cited as extremist propaganda supporting coercive measures. Europe cannot hold both positions at once. Either satire is protected, or it isn’t. If the answer depends on which religion is being criticised, then the principle is not freedom of expression.
Why This Matters
Portugal is not typically portrayed as a country sliding into illiberalism. It is a mainstream EU democracy. That is precisely why Operação Irmandade matters. Because it shows how easily expansive hate-speech enforcement can morph into a model where: strong criticism of Islam is coded as “hate,” hate is treated as a predictor of violence, and prediction substitutes for proof.
Once that structure is normalised, pre-trial detention, reputational destruction, and years-long prosecutions become punishment in themselves. And the targets will not remain fringe nationalists. Tomorrow it could be: journalists, ex-Muslims, feminists criticising religious law, artists, satirists, secular reformers. Anyone whose speech offends the wrong constituency.
None of this requires defending the rhetoric at issue. Much of it is crude and unpleasant. But liberal law was never designed to protect polite speech. It exists precisely to protect speech we dislike. The line is simple and must remain simple: Speech is not violence. Belief is not a crime. Criticism of religion is not extremism.
If “Islamophobia” becomes a criminal-theory umbrella under which dissent is treated as dangerousness, then Europe is not fighting hate. It is criminalising thought, and calling it prevention. And once the state acquires the power to punish people for what they might become, rather than what they have done, the word “liberal” has already lost its meaning.
João Pereira dos Santos
Lawyer
