10 Managing Transnational Islam: Muslims and the State In Western Europe1 (original) (raw)

Reinventing Integration: Muslims in the West

Harvard International Review, 2007

As the sixth year of the U.S.-led war on terror rages on, it would appear that few constructs are more self-evident than the one dividing Islam and the West. Muslim minorities in the West are often scrutinized through this paradoxical prism: On which side of the divide do they fall? The signs don't look good-some say. The results of several recent polls have set off alarm bells in a tense Europe, still shaken by the July 7, 2005, bombings in London. For example, the Pew poll found that given a choice of identifying themselves as first Muslim or Christian or as first a citizen of their country, the majority of British, French, and German Muslims choose their faith, while the majority of British, French, and German Christians choose their country. Some have taken these results as witness to the danger of over-accommodating religious differences, and have advocated that Muslims in Europe be persuaded or forced to forsake their Islamic identity Speech delivered by Dalia Mogahed,

European Islam : challenges for public policy and society

2007

This book analyzes the place of the new Muslim minorities in society within the European Union. The authors explore the root causes of rising tensions and conflict between the new immigrant population and native Europeans over issues of Muslim identity, Islamist doctrines, and Islamophobia. They also provide integration models for the various EU countries and discuss the short- and long-range problems caused by socioeconomic discrimination against Muslims. Contributors include Imane Karich (International Crisis Group, Brussels), Isabelle Rigoni (Paris VIII University), Sara Silvestri (Cambridge University and City University, London), Valeria Amiraux (European University Institute, Florence), Chris Allen (University of Birmingham, UK), Tufyal Choudhury (Durham University, UK), and Bernard Godard (Ministry of Interior, Paris).

Accomodation of Islam in the West

This article discusses a new social and political phenomenon in Europe, which has become evident along with the visibility of Islam in the European public space. Revealing the current social-political context in Western Europe, which is mainly characterized by a growing drift of securitization of Islam and migration, this paper argues that there are two simultaneously running processes regarding the changing nature of Euro-Islam, which seem to are antithetical: individualization of Islam vs. institutionalization of Islam. Drawing upon the findings of the field research in Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, this article shows that while the processes of globalization seem to prompt younger generations with Muslim background to liberate themselves from the constraints of their patriarchal parental and community culture, western states as well as ethnocultural and religious brokers tend to reify, or reinforce, their existing communal and religious boundaries. That is to say that the descendants of migrants seem to have been squeezed between individualization and institutionalization of Islam.

Reasons making Muslim Integration in Europe Impossible - by Prof. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

In this article, we describe the existing Incredible burden on the minds of the Europeans when trying to develop a theoretical approach to the issue of the possibility of social integration of the Muslim immigrants in the average European societies. In an earlier article entitled 'Integration of Muslims means Disintegration of Europe', we evoked first the impossibility of politics devoid of Moral Principles, and we partly described the existing Incredible Burden on the minds of the Europeans when trying to develop a theoretical approach to the issue of the possibility of social integration of the Muslim immigrants in the average European societies. We enumerated five points, namely 1) Centuries long European Hatred of Islam, 2) Fallacious Academic – Intellectual Background and Fake Identity of Modern Europe (Hellenism), 3) Misperception of the World History through the Scheme West vs. East, 4) Execrable Disfigurement of the 'Other' (Orientalism), and 5) Demolition of the Ottoman Empire. In this article we will advance and describe other basic pillars that bear the aforementioned burden. http://www.aramnaharaim.org/English/Muslim\_Integration\_Europe\_12\_8\_2007.htm