Western Europe And Its Islam

This book, based on interdisciplinary research, examines the establishment of Muslim institutions in Western Europe, and particularly focuses on the role played by agents from the host society and the political and ideological positions adopted by them in reaction to claims from Muslims.

Nielsen describes the history of early European Muslims and outlines the causes and courses of twentieth-century Muslim immigration. Explaining how Muslim communities have developed in individual countries, the book examines their origins, their present-day ethnic composition, organizational patterns, and the political, legal and cultural contexts in which they exist. The book also provides a comparative consideration of issues common to Muslims in all Western European countries, namely the role of the family, and questions of worship, education, and religious thought.In the third edition, all country-related chapters have been substantially updated. A new chapter has also been added on southern Europe, where the maturity of a new generation has seen moves toward political integration.

The voices in this book belong to parliamentarians, city councillors, doctors and engineers, a few professors, lawyers and social workers, owners of small businesses, translators, and community activists. They are also all Muslims, who have decided to become engaged in political and civic organizations. And for that reason, they constantly have to explain themselves, mostly in order to say who they are not. They are not fundamentalists, not terrorists, and most do not support the introduction of Islamic religious law in Europe - especially not its application to Christians. This book is about who these people are, and what they want. This book is based on three hundred interviews with European Muslim leaders from six European countries: Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Great Britain, France, and Germany. The question of Islam in Europe is not a matter of global war and peace but raises difficult questions about the positions of Christianity and Islam in public life, and about European identities. Europe's Muslim political leaders are not aiming to overthrow liberal democracy and to replace secular law with Islamic religious law. Those are the positions of a minority. There is not one Muslim position on how Islam should develop in Europe but many views, and most Muslims are rather looking for ways to build institutions that will allow European Muslims to practice their religion in a way that is compatible with social integration.

A useful introduction to the social, political, cultural and religious position of Muslims living in contemporary Europe. It describes the history of early European Muslims and outlines the causes and courses of twentieth-century Muslim immigration.

In this timely work, Robert J. Pauly, Jr. looks in detail at the impact of Islam’s presence in Europe. He examines five areas of particular importance: the effect of the growth of Muslim communities on the demographics of Western Europe generally, and France, Germany and the United Kingdom in particular; the consequences of the marginalization of Muslims on domestic and international security within and outside of Western Europe in the post-11 September 2001 era; the impact of the issue of Islam in Europe on the European Union’s ongoing deepening and widening processes; the potential correlation between the increased visibility of Islam in Europe and the growth of far-right political parties across the continent; and the broader relationships between the issues of Islam in Europe, Islam and Europe, and Islam and the West.

How do Muslims in Europe acquire discursive and practical knowledge of Islam? How are conceptions of Islamic beliefs, values and practices transmitted and how do they change? Who are the authorities on these issues that Muslims listen to? How do new Muslim discourses emerge in response to the European context? This book addresses the broader question of how Islamic knowledge (defined as what Muslims hold to be correct Islamic beliefs and practices) is being produced and reproduced in West European contexts by looking at specific settings, institutions and religious authorities. Chapters examine in depth four key areas relating to the production and reproduction of Islamic knowledge: authoritative answers in response to explicit questions in the form of fatwas. the mosque and mosque association as the setting of much formal and informal transmission of Islamic knowledge. the role of Muslim intellectuals in articulating alternative Muslim discourses. higher Islamic education in Europe and the training of imams and other religious functionaries. Featuring contributions from leading sociologists and anthropologists, the book presents the findings of empirical research in these issues from a range of European countries such as France, Italy, the Netherlands and Great Britain. As such it has a broad appeal, and will be of great interest to students and scholars of Islamic studies, anthropology, sociology and religion.

The permanent presence of Islam and Muslims (approximately 7 million) is a comparatively recent phenomenon in most countries of the European Community. By far the greater majority of them consists of former inhabitants of the Muslim world who migrated to the West for economic or political reasons after the Second World War. Over the last decades many initiatives have been launched by Muslim communities to create infrastructural provisions for their religious life, within the existing legal and social frameworks. In fact, all countries of the European Community share the principles of religious freedom and non-discrimination in their respective Constitutions. However, the precise way in which these principles are interpreted and applied to Islam depends largely on the historical traditions concerning the relations between State and Religion, which differ from one country to another. The present book is mainly based on the numerous articles and books concerning the public status of Islam in the various countries of Western Europe which were published between 1987 and 1994. First of all, a comparative study is offered of the relation between State and Religion, according to the constitutional traditions of the member states of the European Community. Secondly, the authors discuss the opportunities and obstacles in the realization of an organizational structure by the Muslim communities. Attention is paid, among others, to the foundation of mosques, the position of imams, and the attempts to create representative bodies on the national level which can serve as negotiating partners with the national governments. In a separate chapter, attention is paid to Islam as a minority religion from a theoretical point of view. Then follows a discussion of the possibilities for the observance of islamic customs and rituals, such as religious holidays, dietary laws and dress rules. With regard to Islamic religious education attention is paid in the last chapter to religious education within mosques, public, Christian and Islamic schools. At the end there is an extensive bibliography with an index of subjects and countries.