Islam in Europe

Public Spaces and Civic Networks

S. Sofos, R. Tsagarousianou

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137357779
• eBook ISBN: 9781137357786
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Drawing upon extensive fieldwork and suggesting novel ways of approaching the phenomenon of European Islam and the continent's Muslim communities, Islam in Europe examines how European Muslims construct notions or identity, agency and belonging, how they negotiate and redefine the notions of religion, tradition, authority and cultural authenticity.

1

Muslims in Europe: Balancing between Belonging and Exclusion

An Overview

Over the past decade, Islam has gradually assumed an unenviable position in European public debate as it has been represented and understood as equivalent, or conducive to, cultural and religious fundamentalism, political extremism and terrorism. This has affected significantly European Muslims and their communities as, by being systematically posited at the antipodes of Western culture and the values of liberal democracy; in domestic debates, it has been seen as a religion and culture that stubbornly hinders the cultural and social integration of Muslims in European societies. In addition, the ongoing debates on the desirability and usefulness of immigration have often converged with those focusing on Islam, giving rise to discourses defining Muslim immigration as a problem and contributing to the formulation of distinctions between ‘manageable’ and ‘unmanageable’ immigration, the latter often comprising immigration from Muslim countries.¹ Seen as a threat to social cohesion (in the United Kingdom), or to the secular character of European societies (in France but also elsewhere), adherence to Islam or declaration of some sort of Muslim identity by Muslims in Europe has come to be viewed as a deficiency, as something that had to be rectified through adaptation to European cultures or to be contained through various forms of exclusion. Featuring prominently in the processes of construction of societal insecurity in most European societies, Islam, and more specifically, Europe’s Muslims, have unavoidably borne the brunt of public scrutiny and condemnation.

Although in the 1980s and early 1990s, the encounter of European populations with Islam was rather localized, soon, Islam and European Muslims acquired broader visibility in European societies and presence in public debates. In areas of settlement of Muslim migrants their initially ‘exotic’ presence gradually gave way to closer interaction, cooperation and, not uncommonly, competition between Muslims and non-Muslims in various public spaces dedicated to work, education, welfare and consumption. Different approaches to an array of issues such as gender relations, aspects of schooling and the creation or use of buildings and public spaces informed, or perceived to be informed, by Islamic principles, especially in domains characterized by scarcity of resources, often were construed in terms of a clash of cultures and led to disputes and confrontations. Instances of such perceptions of cultural clash and incompatibility are discernible in the various disputes around the construction of mosques or community centres in European cities, the visibility of Muslims in public spaces through the construction of minarets or the wearing of headscarves or the face veil, the provision of halal school dinners for Muslim students or the negotiation of acceptable school attires taking into consideration Muslim sensitivities.

As migrants of Muslim backgrounds became more settled in Europe and as the predominant pattern of settlement shifted from that of single guestworkers to families, these, initially localized, disputes progressively gave their place to more general debates and, not surprisingly, confrontations between Muslims and non-Muslims. The settlement or formation of Muslim families confirmed in many ways in Muslim and non-Muslim minds alike that their presence in Europe was no longer temporary and brought to the foreground a number of issues, concerns and aspirations linked to their social and cultural reproduction. Interaction between European Muslims and the broader societies which they formed part of, eventually revolved around symbolic issues such as blasphemy and the limits of free speech, the visibility of Islam as an element of European societies and cultures, as well as more practical matters such as the right to religious schooling or to sharia governing personal status law. Whereas conflict between ‘the mainstream’ of European societies and European Muslim communities has traditionally been latent or of low intensity, only occasionally disrupted by more manifest and widespread disputes, during the past couple of decades or so it became much more visible and pervasive. During this period, together with a host of other themes such as unemployment or immigration, the compatibility of Islamic and European cultures and the alleged ‘islamization’ of European societies became a staple ingredient in the articulation of societal insecurity throughout the continent.

The 1989 Satanic Verses controversy in the United Kingdom that saw British Muslims engage in highly visible and vocal protests calling for Salman Rushdie’s novel to be banned for blasphemy, and even some threatening the author and his publishers, constituted an important moment of ‘awakening’ for many Muslims in the United Kingdom as well as far beyond its borders.² More importantly, in the United Kingdom, the controversy prompted a process of rethinking the position of Islam in British society and started a debate on whether their relationship entailed merely the progressive adaptation of British Muslims to the mainstream, dominant culture, or a much more mutual process that involved cultural exchange and dialogue (Parekh 1998). One of the most visible instances of the transformation of the mood among the Muslim community was the campaign for the rethinking of the blasphemy law to encompass Islam in the definition of blasphemy in addition to the Anglican Church (Cesari 2009).

Across the Channel, the affaire du foulard,³ which erupted in France in the late eighties over the alleged threat headscarves posed to the principle of secularity (laïcité) in French schools and public institutions, focused on a visible item of clothing and transformed it into a symbol of cultural alterity and of a cultural clash. The controversy lasted several years and subsequently informed public debate throughout Europe; it cast European Muslims in an unflattering light representing their faith and cultures as backward and misogynistic, while giving rise, at the same time, to a more critical approach towards the assumed neutrality of secularism within Muslim communities.

The dress codes observed by some Muslim women in Europe have continued to provide fertile ground for the mobilization of a motley constellation of xenophobic, right-wing forces only too happy to jump into the bandwagon of the secular, liberal and feminist opposition to Muslim women’s practice of covering. Over the past decade public attention was directed to the practice of a relatively small minority of Muslim women to use variations of the burqa or niqab (full body and face cover), again a visible and quite alien item of clothing for the majority of the Western European population. In Spain, campaigns were initiated by local authorities. By 2010 several municipalities introduced bans that effectively prohibit women who wear the niqab to enter public buildings. The bans were prompted according to municipal government spokespersons for allegedly security reasons. However, many politicians suggested that one of the main goals of such measures was the protection of ‘the dignity and freedom of [Muslim] women’ (Sofos and Tsagarousianou 2010) as they considered the niqab demeaning and a sign of oppression. In the United Kingdom too, the niqab, has been posited in public discourse as the visible symbol of the perceived lack of integration of the Muslim community into British society and has therefore been associated with the whole debate over the perceived failures of multiculturalism as Jack Straw’s (who was at the time leader of the House of Commons) 6 October 2006 column in the Lancashire Telegraph indicated when he described the veil as ‘such a visible statement of separation and of difference’. In all these debates proponents of such bans have used arguments that identify in the veil patriarchal oppressive practices that are detrimental to the dignity of Muslim women, or safety and security problems or, finally, barriers to intercultural communication and social cohesion. As we will argue later on, these discourses are often articulated within the context of xenophobic and indeed islamophobic⁴ definitions of the situation, under the cover of concerns over security, community cohesion and women’s rights.

In the summer of 2001, a more explicit campaign against the ‘belated’ and ‘barbaric’ culture of Islam was unleashed in the Netherlands in the wake of homophobic statements made by the Moroccan imam El-Moumni and became a typical precursor of Dutch (and, more broadly, European) responses towards the ‘backwardness’ of Islam that were to be rehearsed on several occasions over the past decade. The tension between an otherwise libertarian and tolerant Dutch society and its uncompromisingly negative attitude towards Muslim communities in the country was renewed after the assassination of Theo van Gogh by Dutch-born Mohammed Bouyeri, in November 2004.⁵ Close by, the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy that arose in Denmark in September 2005⁶ rapidly mobilized Muslims all over Europe and beyond and opened a window of opportunity for some marginal yet vocal minorities within European Muslim communities to express their total rejection of an ‘uncompromising’ and ‘Islamophobic’ West as exemplified by the offensive affront of Jyllands-Posten against Islam. But the controversy also prompted more moderate Muslims to question the value of unfettered freedom of speech and to draw attention to the need on the part of the media to exercise this right responsibly and, in the process, became the catalyst for the formation of a disparate coalition of political and social forces around the issue of freedom of expression. On the other hand, Muslim protests have been routinely dismissed as irrational and regressive, primarily due to the visibility afforded to the most radical and intransigent views and mobilizations by the media. Indeed, whereas questions about freedom and its potential limits have been posed time and again in debates around the concept of Western democracy by theorists, politicians, jurists and ordinary citizens alike, their articulation within the confrontational and polarized context of the Muslim protests dissimulate the potential legitimacy of such an intervention and stifle moderate Muslim voices that do not manage to compete with their radical counterparts who enjoy public visibility and audibility, reinforcing the perception of an irreconcilable cultural rift in European societies. Ordinary Muslim voices remain thus in a subaltern position, unable to gain a voice in a confrontation between islamophobic mainstream and radical Muslim voices.

In addition to such controversies which were instrumental in representing the diverse cultures of European Muslims as ‘backward’ and ‘unsophisticated’, events such as those of the 1995 Paris Metro bombings, the September 11 attacks in the United States, the 11 March 2004 bombings of the commuter train network in Madrid and the 7 July 2005 London bombings⁷ or the controversy that surrounded the murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh introduced another crucial element in the public discourse about Islam and have given European Muslims further unprecedented and rather unwelcome visibility.

As Burgat aptly points out, another facet of the progressive transformation of the term Islamism, from one merely referring to Islam to one tainted by a ‘quasi-criminal connotation’, is the misrecognition of otherwise legitimate forms of social action and protest.

Therein perhaps lies the source of the real difficulty experienced by the West in hearing what they [those who assert the right to ‘speak Muslim’] have to say. Preceded by an ‘Islamic’ formula, a protest against some military occupation here, against the absolutism of a leader there, against the American superpower everywhere are so easy to dismiss!

(Burgat 2008: 8)

Although his examples come from instances of protest relating to interstate relations and politics in Muslim majority societies, the kernel of his argument applies equally to attempts to ‘speak Muslim’⁸ in European and, more broadly, Western societies. These incidents of terrorism and political violence have virtually indiscriminately coupled Islam and Muslims (in and out of Europe) with uncompromising and irrational terrorist violence and given rise to concerns of public safety. They have decisively contributed to the ‘securitization’ of anything related to Islam as the religion, its followers and the communities and cultures informed by it, are no longer merely viewed as an ‘irritating anomaly’ in the European social landscape but hitherto seen and ‘administered’ through the lens of a significant societal threat. Thus Islamic militancy, fundamentalism, jihad and terrorism have become part of the staple vocabulary used by policymakers, politicians, commentators and ordinary people in everyday contexts when discussing Islam and Muslim communities.⁹

But, it should be stressed that this misrecognition is not accidental or ‘innocent’. It is premised on a long tradition of misunderstandings, of selective appropriation of the past, of particular ways of viewing the present, on the construction of particular regimes of truth (Said 1978) and ultimately on the exercise of the power to construct and regulate the Muslim world as we will see in some detail in Chapter 2.

This misrecognition posed questions about the place of Islam in Europe (or, more broadly, the West), or the possibility of accommodation of Islam in secular societies and gave rise to intense and broader debates on multiculturalism and its consequences, on the feasibility of integrating European Muslims into contemporary European societies as well as the social and material cost of such an endeavour.¹⁰ And, as the spectre of terrorism cast its shadow over Europe, politicians and commentators pinpointed what they perceived to be inextricable links between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism, anti-Westernism or even terrorism. Islam became a religion of terror, and Muslims were systematically represented as virtually prone to irrational, violent behaviour. Naturally, the particular social–historical conjecture in which such questions were posed and revisited and the urgency attached to them further contributed to the predominantly negative framing of the debate on Islam. In this context, disputes about Islam and Muslims have, more often than not, acquired racist overtones, whereby secularly minded commentators have been readily stigmatizing Islam as a profoundly anti-modern religion and way of life and European Muslims as bearers of the associated burden that this ‘unsavoury’ cultural baggage entails. It would be fair to say that the dominant perspectives on Islam and Muslims in Europe, reinforced by the visibility and near monopoly of the ‘Muslim voice’ by radical Muslim activists and groups,¹¹ have severely undermined the possibility of creating spaces for a constructive encounter and exchange between non-Muslims and Muslims in the current moment.

More importantly though, the process of securitization of Islam is not just a matter of a changing rhetoric but possesses, or generates, its own reality, its own ‘materiality’ and has the ability to tangibly impact on the relationship between mainstream European societies and their Muslim minorities and define and shape them both.¹²

For one, as Cesari (2009) points out, the discourse of securitization permeates the policymaking process and has tangible effects in a variety of fields ranging from immigration law to minority protection framework, schooling and health provision, security policies and broader processes of inclusion. In other words, contemporary discourse on Islam, and on European Muslims is thus not merely a way of talking about them or representing them but a means of ‘constructing’ them, making sense of them and developing relevant reactions to their presence and action. Through today’s securitized discourse therefore, Muslims in Europe are constructed, not only as culturally different, but as a significant security threat that needs to be monitored and ‘administered’, whose presence in Europe and membership to European societies is increasingly questioned and subject to terms and conditions, constraints and regulation.

On the other hand, as we will see later on, securitization also provides a lens through which European Muslims themselves see (and shape) their relationship with the broader societies which they are a part of. It impacts on their repertoire of collective representations and actions and on their attempts to gain control over the ways they become visible and they are heard. In a way, policy and societal definitions of European Muslims attempt to curtail their rights in response to the securitization of the way they are seen and understood by authorities and public opinion. These set in motion reactions on the part of Europe’s Muslim communities, which often take the form of increased assertiveness, giving rise, in the process, to what amounts to a self-fulfilling prophecy in the eyes of those recognizing in this assertiveness a threat. And, crucially, as we will show later on, these perceptions and actions of European Muslims are constitutive of their very own identities and consciousness as ‘European Muslims’.

Clashing timeless monoliths?

Several commentators readily, and we would suggest uncritically, identify in the philosophy that underlies Muslim assertiveness and mobilization in European societies and, by extension, in the values and practice of Islam that is supposed to inspire them, an authoritarian ideology that is seen as deeply inimical to the clear and unambiguous separation between religion and politics that is thought to underlie European traditions of secularism. Quite often, the presence of assertive Muslim minorities in European societies has been perceived and depicted by populist politicians and commentators as a challenge to the norms, values and principles of liberal democracy. The latter see in demands that European Muslims put forward for recognition and voice a challenge to Western liberal (or even Christian, depending on one’s standpoint) values and a threat to social cohesion. The succession of controversies and disputes such as the ones we attempted to outline earlier on and the emergence of anti-Western terrorism in the name of Islam have contributed to the construction of a framework of understanding Islam, and European Muslims for that matter, that has given rise to definitions of the situation in Europe along the lines of what Huntington has called Clash of Civilizations (1996). Indeed, many of the commentators expressing concern over the presence and rootedness of Muslim minorities in Europe claim that Muslim societies (and, by extension, Muslim communities in Europe) are markedly different in terms of history, language, culture, tradition, and, most important, religion from European societies. At best, they argue, Muslims need to adapt to the Western way of life, while many suggest that Muslims are unwilling or unable to change and therefore have no place in Europe.¹³

Mamdani argues that the implications of this trend which he calls Culture Talk, not only posit two opposing cultures but also sustain a hierarchical and unequal relationship between them by representing one of the two as reified, frozen in time, incapable of evolving and adapting to new challenges. As he characteristically points out:

According to some, our [Muslim] culture seems to have no history, no politics, and no debates, so that all Muslims are just plain bad. According to others, there is a history, a politics, even debates, and there are good Muslims and bad Muslims. In both versions, history seems to have petrified into a lifeless custom of an antique people who inhabit antique lands. Or could it be that culture here stands for habit, for some kind of instinctive activity with rules that are inscribed in early founding texts, usually religious, and mummified in early artefacts?

(2004: 18)

But does this perceived incongruence of objectives amount to a clash of civilizations as many contend, whereby Islam is viewed as a timeless, monolithic social and cultural force which is in a collision course with contemporary European societies and the values they hold dear? Are European societies really under siege, threatened by the assertion of the Islamic identity of a sizeable minority of their citizens? And are the causes of this presumed confrontation between Islam and the West (Eur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Muslims in Europe: Balancing between Belonging and Exclusion
• 2. Islam in Europe: A Genealogy
• 3. Who Are the European Muslims?
• 4. Space, Place and Social Action: European Muslim Geographies
• 5. The Politics of Contestation and the Construction of Injustice
• 6. Spaces of Identity and Agency and the Reconfiguration of Islam
• 7. Is There a Space for European Muslims?
• Notes
• References
• Index