Muslims in the West after 9/11

Religion, Politics and Law

Jocelyne Cesari

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780415776554
• eBook ISBN: 9781135188733
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This book is the first systematic attempt to study the situation of European and American Muslims after 9/11, and to present a comprehensive analysis of their religious, political, and legal situations.

Since 9/11, and particularly since the Madrid and London bombings of 2004 and 2005, the Muslim presence in Europe and the United States has become a major political concern. Many have raised questions regarding potential links between Western Muslims, radical Islam, and terrorism. Whatever the justification of such concerns, it is insufficient to address the subject of Muslims in the West from an exclusively counter-terrorist perspective. Based on empirical studies of Muslims in the US and Western Europe, this edited volume posits the situation of Muslim minorities in a broader reflection on the status of liberalism in Western foreign policies. It also explores the changes in immigration policies, multiculturalism and secularism that have been shaped by the new international context of the 'war on terror'.

This book will be of great interest to students of Critical Security Studies, Islamic Studies, Sociology and Political Science in general.

Jocelyne Cesari is an Associate at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Center for European Studies, teaching at Harvard Divinity School and the Government Department, specializing in Islam and the Middle East.

Part 1
Overview

Muslims in Europe and the US

1
Securitization of Islam in Europe

Jocelyne Cesari

Introduction

European discourse on Islam is a microcosm of the debate on Islam’s compatibility with the West. Because Western countries generally associate Islam with the Al-Qaeda movement, the Palestinian issue, and Islamic Iran, their discussion of the religion involves an essentialized approach to a multifaceted faith. In his book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, Mahmood Mamdani¹ refers to this slant as “cultural talk,” or representing the religion as a unified ideology whether in Europe, Iraq, or Afghanistan. According to this perspective, Islam is steeped in history and absolutely incapable of innovation, and Muslims are defined by an almost compulsive conformity to their past and an inability to address the current challenges of political development and religious liberal thinking. Therefore, cultural talk justifies the artificial divide between modern and pre-modern religions and between secularism and Islam.² Cultural talk has become prevalent in modern international relations discourse, in part because it refers to stereotypes that are familiar to the historical consciousness of Western politicians and intellectuals.

The use of these trite depictions of Islam in professional debates has established a paradoxical policy of European governments both fearing and fostering radicalization in a process I call the “securitization” of Islam. The conditions that lead to this development have already occurred: European states view Muslim groups as threats to their survival and take measures to reassure citizens that they will not allow the incubation of terrorism. However, the politicization of religion essentially impoverishes and threatens its survival,³ leading devout Muslims to feel resentful of the interference of non-religious actors. Thus, the measures intended to prevent radicalization actually engender discontent and prompt a transformation of religious conservatism to fundamentalism. This is the process of securitization. It involves actors who propose that Islam is an existential threat to European political and secular norms and thereby justifies extraordinary measures against it. Ole Waever best explains repercussions of such actions: “When mobilized as politics, religion represses the transcendence of the divine. Fear and trembling is replaced by absolute certainty.”⁴ As an existential concept, faith is easily securitized, and it can incite a proclivity for violence in place of pious concepts.

Most acknowledge that the politicization of Islam started in Muslim-majority countries and was intensified and radicalized by Muslim actors before spreading to Europe. In this condition, the situation of Islam in the West cannot be disconnected from the political and religious contexts of Muslims in the Muslim world.⁵ The research conducted among Muslims in Paris, London, Berlin, and Amsterdam during the years 2007–2009, analyzes the conditions and outcomes of the securitization of Islam in the European context.⁶

The research is established on a paradox that many nations face: although they seek to facilitate the socioeconomic integration of Muslims, anti-terrorism and security concerns fuel a desire to compromise liberties and restrict Islam from the public space. As domestic and national concerns converge, these factors result in cultural talk that tends to overemphasize the role of religion in the process of integration. Unfortunately, the characterization of Islamin the current debate has encouraged a process of institutionalizing the notion of Islam as a security threat. In both political rhetoric and policy areas, politicians and academics are conflating factors such as immigrant background, ethnicity, socio-economic deprivation, and the war on terror with Islam as a religion. This research shows that the confusion has exacerbated the securitization process.

In order to analyze this phenomenon, we proceeded with the research in two ways. First, we looked at both the political discourses and rhetoric of policy makers that contribute to the securitization of Islam in a top-down manner. Next, we collected data on the attitudes of Muslim populations on issues such as religious identity, political participation, and discrimination. This field research was conducted among Muslims of diverse ethnic, national, cultural, generational, educational, and gendered identities. It took place in four European cities – Paris, London, Amsterdam, and Berlin – in order to provide a representative picture of this multi-faceted issue. We organized 12 focus groups per city, in which more than 500 Muslims participated. We also organized at least two control groups per city to discuss the same topics with non-Muslim immigrants.

Most Muslims are immigrants or have an immigrant background

According to the best estimates, Muslims currently constitute approximately 5 percent of the European Union’s 425 million inhabitants. There are about 4.5 million Muslims in France, 3 million in Germany, 1.6 million in the UK, and more than half a million each in Italy and the Netherlands. Although other nations have populations composed of fewer than 500,000 Muslims, these can be substantial minorities in small countries like Austria, Sweden, or Belgium. In general, these populations are younger and more fertile than the domestic populations, prompting many journalists and even academics to hypothesize that these numbers will become even more significant in the future.

The majority of Muslims in Europe come from three regions of the world. The largest ethnic group is Arab, comprising some 45 percent of European Muslims, followed by Turkish and South Asian. The groups are unevenly distributed based on European nations’ immigrant history. In France and the UK, for example, Muslim populations began arriving from former colonies in the middle of the twentieth century, leading to a predominately North African ethnic group in France and South Asian immigrants in the UK. On the other hand, the Muslim community in Germany began with an influx of “guest-workers,” mainly from Turkey, during the post-war economic boom. Although immigrants arrive in Europe from all over the world, the countries with existing Muslim populations tend to attract those from the same ethnic background. Among current European Union member states, only Greece has a significant indigenous population of Muslims, residing primarily in Thrace.

Therefore, categories of “immigrant” and “Muslim” overlap in Western Europe, unlike in the US where immigration debates center on economic and social concerns such as wages, assimilation, and language.⁷ In America, terrorism remains at the margins of such issues: in 2006, the US Congress rarely referred to terrorism when considering new immigration measures. In Europe, by contrast, the association of Islam and immigration has led to a tightening of immigration laws specifically targeting migrants from Muslim countries.

Over the last few years, European governments have greatly restricted immigration. Part of this is certainly due to the difficulties of unemployment and poor economic conditions. For the more economically developed countries, such as Germany, France, and the UK, the prospect of admitting significant numbers of low-skill workers has become economically untenable. Instead, these countries have moved in the direction of policies oriented toward the acquisition of more highly skilled immigrants, who are seen as more economically productive. In France, Nicolas Sarkozy’s call for a more selective immigration policy was supported by the legislature in May 2006. The French prime minister has alluded to the implications of the legal changes for France’s Muslim population by stating that new immigrants must accept the publication of potentially offensive or satirical cartoons in newspapers and that women must take identity photographs without head covers as well as accept treatment by male doctors. These harsher measures have been supported by representatives from both sides of the political spectrum. On October 23, 2007, the French Parliament went further by passing an immigration bill that sanctioned DNA testing, allowed for government collection of ethnic statistics, and required applicants to pass exams on the French language and French values. Although the French Constitutional Court overturned the provision allowing for ethnic statistic collecting, it upheld the other facets of the law.

Some of the proposals for immigration and naturalization changes openly target Muslim immigrants. The Netherlands and Germany, for example, insist that immigrants must espouse Western liberal values before entering the countries. The Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Department, which is part of the Dutch Ministry of Justice, produced a film intended to help screen “inappropriate” immigrants by showing them the extremes of Dutch gender relations and sexuality: the depiction of naked beachgoers, public displays of homosexual affection, and assertive female characters aim to shock and surprise socially conservative Muslims. In the German state Baden-Wurttemberg, new citizenship tests include questions concerning the willingness of parents to allow children to participate in swimming lessons, in an obvious reference to past tension stemming from Muslim conservatism. Furthermore, such tests were selectively demanded for individuals from Muslim countries.⁸ These new measures circumvent the logic of immigration preceding integration by requiring that immigrants show signs of integration before even entering the European Union. All these changes in immigration policy demonstrate changing expectations of immigrants, who are now required to show more compatibility than ever with the lifestyles of host countries.

More than just social integration challenges, focus group studies of Muslims living in four large European cities⁹ revealed that immigrant participants view their religion in particular as a major reason for discrimination and exclusion caused by new immigration policies. Having a different religious identity than the Christian majority clearly marked the immigrants as “others” or “foreigners.” Most of the Muslims interviewed said that the perception of Muslim immigrants as “foreign” greatly affected their capacity to act as legitimate social or religious actors. Thus, with all Muslims being labeled as immigrants or “foreigners,” including native-born European Muslims, they are externalized from society before even having the chance to integrate.

On the other hand, Muslims have not been specific targets in the UK, even though the issue of asylum seekers has resulted in vigorous public and political debate. Since 2003, Spain and Italy have tightened immigration policies, though it is too early to determine how these policies will be implemented with respect to Muslims. However, unlike some of the latest measures of restricting immigration, which have caused human rights groups to criticize the reduced rights of asylum seekers,¹⁰ Spain has a history of benevolence toward asylum seekers, and in the past it has even provided applicants with the right to interpreters, legal counsel, and other assistance.

The hardening of national discourse on immigration

In Europe, the pressure caused by increasing immigrant populations and the erosion of national boundaries through the transnational force of the European Union have led to a rising incidence of nationalist rhetoric and an essentializing approach to identity. In its more severe forms, the effects can be classified as xenophobia, the fear and hatred of foreigners. The Italian Forza Nuova states that Italy is essentially Catholic, implying that Muslims cannot be good citizens or Italians. In 1999, after violent riots broke out in Terrassa, Spain between immigrant Maghrebis and local youths, two responses arose: the Socialists proposed more effective methods of immigration control in order to lessen social pressures, but the center-right Popular Party diagnosed the problem as related to the immigrants’ presence rather than Spanish society’s difficulty in coping with them. As these types of incident increase, the public mood shifts to a perception of Islam – the religion and its values – as the root cause.

Anti-immigrant sentiment is common in many countries facing the difficulties of integrating culturally diverse populations. However in European countries, this degenerates into what is often termed as “Islamophobia.” Because immigration introduces such a large proportion of Muslims into Europe, the anti-immigrant rhetoric of extreme right-wing parties has become markedly anti-Muslim. The French National Front has adopted an electoral strategy that associates Islam with terrorism. Its leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was implicated for inciting hatred in his description of the potential radicalization of Muslim immigrants.¹¹ Regardless, his party came in second in the 2002 French election. Germany’s Deputy Interior Minister August Hanning only worsened this fear by telling citizens that the government believes there are roughly 700 German citizens involved in Islamic extremist...

Table of contents

• Routledge Studies in Liberty and Security
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1 Overview
• Part 2 Anti-terrorism and international constraints
• Part 3 Influence of international constraints on politics, law, and religion in the West
• Index