Muslim Population in Europe

This is a rough draft to a small research paper I did sometime ago on the Muslim population in Europe. Although it is somewhat old, I think it still is very apropos.

Today, there are around 15 million Muslims in the continent of Europe (Douthat 1). The Muslim population is the largest minority group within Western Europe. Immigrating from not only Africa and South West Asia, but also coming from the Balkans and Central Asia. With the rise of bombings and riots in Western Europe recently, the European conscienceness has been focused on this large Muslim minority.

To fully understand the Islamic tensions within Western Europe, one must examine the Muslim groups in its historical and current context. The Muslim population first appeared as a noticeable group in Europe post-World War II. Western Europe, in order to accelerate the rebuilding process, permitted groups of Muslims from around the world to come into the different European states and work. Much of the Muslims hailed from a former or what was a current colony of a European state. In other words, much of Britain’s Muslims came from Pakistan while much of France’s came from North Africa (most notably Morocco and Algeria). To the European countries, this situation was permissible believing the Muslims workforce would only be temporary. But soon the Muslim groups began to settle in. For various reasons, the rich Middle-Eastern states began investing its oil money in the Muslim infrastructure, financing mosques and other Muslim organizations, making the Muslim population more integrated within Western Europe (Grillo 863). This led to the 1980s, where Muslims slowly started to push Islam into the public sphere. The push was, and still is, resisted by the Western Europe, seeing it as an expansion of ‘fundamentalism.’ But mostly, these issues include: the effective integration of Muslims into European society, participation in local and national government, equal representation in education, separate schools and cultural institutions, separate burial sites in cemeteries (Karic 440).

Examining the Muslim group as a whole is very problematic. Islam, like Christianity, is very diverse religion giving way to alternate views. Someone who claims to be ‘Muslim’ might be contested by other Muslims. But even with this problem, there seems to be a ‘Transnational Islam,’ or a larger Muslim community. “Transnationalism refers to social, cultural, economic and political relations which are between, above and beyond the nation-state, interconnecting, transcending, perhaps even superseding, what has been for the past two hundred years their primary locus” (Grillo 864). This concept connects Muslim migrants who live across borders with something higher than a seen government or a society.

There are three different ways which Islam may be defined as transnational. The first is Islam within transnational circuits. Meaning those who are involved are circulatory migrants with families in Asia or somewhere else rather than Europe. These people, mostly all men, live and work temporarily in Europe on a long term basis, eventually returning to their country of origin which they maintain social, economic, and religious ties. The second is Islam within a bi-national/plurinational framework. Meaning those who work “abroad and are bound-legally, economically, politically-by the circumstance of two nation-states: where they reside, and whence they came” (Grillo 865).

The third and most important concept of transnational Islam is the idea of the umma. The umma is “the imagined community of Muslims at large either within one society or across many,” making it “a global socioreligious fraternity without a normative structure” (Grillo, 866; Malik, 2). Even the non-Muslims have inherited the concept of the umma. In the past, Muslims were often identified by their ethnicity, where as now, Muslims are classified as ‘Muslim’ (Malik, 70). The umma is especially important for Muslims in Europe who have little else to relate to. Since the umma is based solely around being ‘Muslim,’ it allows relationships outside ethnicities. In fact, European Muslims rather marry a Muslim not of their ethnicity, than to marry a non-Muslim of their own ethnicity (Malik, 3). Not only is the umma a source of identification for new migrants and old people, but also for second and third generation youths who are trying “to find their place between the culture of their parents and the indifference, rejection and sometimes outright racism of their country of birth” (Statham 3).

Within the umma, many Muslims are slowly moving to uniting Islamic ideals and European values forming what has been called ‘Euro-Islam’ (Karic 437). In Islam, some critics argue, lies the notion of compromise or negotiation called dar-al-sulh. With the dar-al-sulh, Muslims can use ijtihad or “independent judgment,” which involves two conditions: one, he must devote time and energy to study the Quran; and two, he has to be familiar with the customary law of the land and “exigencies of human life” (Malik, 8). But the Islamic fundamentalists believe the Shari’ah, Islamic law, always overrides the concepts of dar-al-sulh and ijtihad. Overall, most European Muslims are “reconciled to the idea of working and operating within the system” (Grillo, 837). In fact, some “Turkish Muslims often report finding it easier to live as a Muslim in Germany […] than in Turkey” (Grillo, 875).

The concepts of ‘Assimilation’ and ‘Integration’ for the Muslim and non-Muslim population raises many issues. Assimilation involves the cultural and structural merger of ethnic or religious categories, while integration involves cultural but not structural blending (Malik, 4). Assimilation into Western European societies has never appealed to Muslims. Most Western societies today do not demand assimilation, while the umma helps resist any pressure that does remain. What is ironic is the fact that most European Muslims resist the idea of assimilation, but have a very faint concept to “many cultural norms and values of the Muslim world” (Malik, 7). With integration, Muslims are allowed to acquire full political rights while retaining some cultural, ethnic, and/or religious identification.

But even today, much of Western Europe is having a difficult time integrating the Muslim population. There having been strives to allow some rights to Muslims, but “the presence of Muslims has often been depicted by politicians and commentators as a challenge to the norms, values, and principles of liberal democracy” (Statham 1). In fact several radical right populist parties, such as the Front National in France, the Lijst Pirn Fortuyn in the Netherlands, the Vlaams Blok in Belgium, and the Det Konservative Folkpartei inn Demark, have made Muslim immigration an electoral issue (Statham 2). Even though European societies see themselves as secular, the Christian religion plays an important institutional social and political role (Statham 3).

Each Western European state has taken a different stance with the issue of the Muslims with in their boundaries. Before 2000, migrants had no political rights in Germany; and Muslims today, have little access in the political process, except for the local foreigners’ councils which is considered powerless. Germany remains relativity against any open to public expressions of Islam.

France on the other hand, is one of the few countries who is trying to have the Muslims assimilate into “Frenchmen.” Muslims must “renounce all particular identities in favor of allegiance to secular values of the French republic” (Statham 4). France values its stance of being aggressively secular, seeing public displays of faith a challenge to French ideology. In fact, President Jacques Chirac passed a bill in 2004, banning Muslim headscarves and other religious symbols from schools (Statham 4).

The British and the Dutch have been relatively opposite from their German neighbors when it comes to Muslim polices. Migrants are allowed to publicly express certain aspects of their identities, and are sponsored to do so by core institutions, including local authorities, schools, the military, and the media (Statham 4). Britain has anti-discrimination laws but they are based on ethnic minorities not religious ones. Lately, Britain has decided to start funding Islamic faith-based schools, which before was only allotted for the Judeo-Christian schools. The Dutch has allowed a great deal of autonomy for their Muslim minorities. For example, the Dutch government has an Islamic broadcasting network, Islamic school board, and Islamic schools.

Cultural isolation experienced by European Muslims is a problem facing every European state. The Muslims, keeping themselves segregated, try to stay away from the decadence of Western society and its temptations (Grillo 870). Seven in ten French people, two in three Germans, and nearly as many of the British and Dutch believe a sense of separation is growing among Muslims in their country (Stokes 2). The Economist reports:

“Muslims tend to come from poor, rural areas; most are ill-educated, many are brown. They often encounter xenophobia and discrimination, sometimes made worse by racist politicians. They speak the language of the wider society either poorly or not at all, so they find it hard to get jobs. Their children struggle at school. They huddle in poor districts, often in state-supplied housing. For all these reasons they tend to withdraw into their own world, which is relatively easy, since their numbers are great enough to enable them to form a fairly self-contained community”

This isolation, especially in the ghettos, leads to a group of angry Muslim youth, who find the country they live in responsible for their problems. The youth see Islamic extremism, nurtured by radical clerics, as the answer to their problems.

According to Walter Laqueur, Western Europe has become the main base of terrorist support groups or “jihadist” (Leiken, 1). The tedious process has been facilitated by growth of tensions within Muslim communities and the relative freedoms with which radicals could organize (55). A “feeling of deep resentment” grew within the second-generation of immigrants because they felt they could not compete with the rest of the country. With these mind-set and feelings of being excluded, the young Muslims began to take out their aggression against the authorities and its supporters, often called inscurit by the French (a code word for the combination of vandalism, delinquency, and hate crimes stemming from Muslim immigrant enclaves) (Leiken 2). This only led the government and non-Muslims to isolate and restrict the Muslims more, adding to the cycle of violence.

The jihadist networks span all across Europe, but mostly in Western Europe where freedom allows for free association and movement. According to Leiken, there are two types of jihadist in Western Europe: “outsiders” and “insiders”. The outsiders are typically asylum seekers or students, among them are radical imams. The insiders are the alienated citizens, and the second generation children of immigrant Muslims. Within these two groups there are two social classes: the educated who are the leaders, and the ghetto dwellers who provide the muscle to the movement (4). These extreme groups are not just limited to traveling freely around Europe, but they also can visa-free travel to the United States.

Examples of large attacks against Western Europe include the July 7 bombings of London, the Madrid bombings, and the assassination of van Gogh. Theo van Gogh, a film-maker, who made an anti-radical Islamic film, was assassinated by a Muslim Dutch extremist. The act was a shock to Europe, especially to the Netherlands, which made them toughen certain social policies related to the Muslim population. The London bombings of July 7 were carried out by four British citizens who were connected to Al Qaeda (Powell 2). After this attack, in a backlash against the Muslim community, support for Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Iraq policy greatly increased (Baker 1). Ironically, much of the Muslim animosity for the West comes from the conflict in Iraq, thus perpetuating the circle of violence. The British government, in reaction to the bombings, enacted legislation that would be able to expel preachers who expel hate speech (Yew 1).

The feeling of outrage by the non-Muslim British community can be seen in this excerpt of the British newspaper, The Weekly Standard:
“By far the biggest challenge the government will now face in this new phase of the war on terror will be to redress the damage done by years of a policy of politically correct multiculturalism that has allowed alternative subcultures to grow like tumors in British society” (Baker 3).

Works Cited
Baker, Gerard. “The London Effect” The Weekly Standard. Jul 25, 2005. Vol 10, Iss 42. pg 9

Douhat, Ross. “A Muslim Europe?” The Atlantic Monthly. Jan/Feb 2005. Vol 295, Iss 1. pg 58

Fetzer, Joel S. Muslims and the State in Britain, France, and Germany. 2005. Cambridge Press: New York

Grillo, Ralph. “Islam and Transnationalism” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Sept 2004. Vol 30, No 5. pg 861-878

Karic, Enes. “Is ‘Euro-Islam’ a Myth, Challenge or a Real Opportunity for Muslims and Europe?” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. 2002. Vol 22, No 2. pg 435

Laqueur, Walter. “The Terrorism to Come” Policy Review. Aug/Sept 2004. pg 49-64

Leiken, Robert S. “Europe’s Angry Muslims” Foreign Affairs. Jul/Aug 2005. Vol 84, Iss 4. pg 120

Malik, Mustafa. “Muslims Pluralize the West, Resist Assimilation” Middle East Policy. Spring 2004. Vol 11, Iss 1. pg 70

Pauly, Robert J. Islam in Europe: Integration or Marginalization? 2004. Ashgate: England

Powell, Bill. “Generation Jihad” Time. Oct 3, 2005. Vol 166, Iss 14. pg 56

Statham, Paul. “Resilient Islam” Harvard International Review. Fall 2004. Vol 26, Iss 3. pg 54

Stokes, Bruce. “Easing Muslim Alienation in Europe” National Journal. Jul 16, 2005. Vol 37, Iss 29. pg 2304

The Economist. “Europe: After Ven Gogh; Islamic terrorism in Europe” Nov 13, 2004. Vol 373, Iss 8401. pg 44

The Economist. “Leaders: Europe’s Muslims” Aug 10, 2002. Vol 364, Iss 8285. pg 10Yew, Lee Kuan. “Homegrown Islamic Terrorsists” Forbes. Oct. 17, 2005. Vol. 176, Iss 8. pg 37