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Muslim Communities in the New Europe (Ithaca Press Paperbacks)

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This book presents a comprehensive survey of Muslim communities in Europe in the mid 1990s. The volume is organized into two parts, the first part covering Muslims in Eastern Europe and the second Muslims in Western Europe. As to be expected, the first part focuses on the long-standing Muslims of Eastern Europe, how their communities were established, and how they relate to the non-Muslim communities in their countries today. The second part of the book turns to Muslim immigrants in Western Europe, their recent arrival, and their continuing identity as Muslims within societies that had expected them to assimilate. Although each chapter is written by a different author, the quality of the writing is exceptionally good and thoroughly readable throughout.

One of the strongest chapters is that by Jim House about Muslims in France, in which he analyzes the different identities that are manifest in French Muslims. It would have been very interesting if the writers on Muslims in Eastern Europe had also considered not just the political and ethnic meaning of "Muslim", but also how Eastern European Muslims demonstrate their religious beliefs. Another particularly interesting analysis is Aake Sander's analysis of how Swedes expected immigrant Muslims to assimilate and why the Muslims did not fulfill the expectations. Although well grounded in the specific instance of Sweden and Muslims, many of Sander's points could easily be extended to other countries and other minority groups as global contact increases in the future.

I hope this is informative of the contents of this fabulous book.

Table of Contents

Preface

1 Muslim Communities in the New Europe: Themes and Puzzles 3

2 Islam and Ethnicity in Eastern Europe 27

3 Citizenship, Status, and Minority Political Participation: The Evidence from the Republic of Macedonia: The Evidence from the Republic of Macedonia 53

4 Muslims, State and Society in the Republic of Macedonia: The View from Within 75

5 The Muslims of Bosnia 99

6 The Muslims of Bulgaria 115

7 Albanian Muslims, Human Rights, and Relations with the Islamic World 139

8 The Muslim Minority in Greece 153

9 Muslims, the State, and the Public Sphere in Britain 167

10 Islam in Belgium and the Netherlands: Towards a Typology of 'Transplanted' Islam 187

11 Muslim Communities in France 219

12 Muslims in Germany 241

13 The Status of Muslim Communities in Sweden 269

14 Muslims in Denmark 291

15 The Muslim Community in Spain 303

16 The Muslim Community in Italy 315

Notes on Editors 330

Notes on the other Contributors 331

Index 333

The new academic trend now is to produce books on Islam in the Western countries. It also reflects the concern which is being felt in the West about Muslims.

This an excellent study produced by the three editors, for in one volume there is comprehensive coverage of both Eastern Europe (countries like Macedonia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Albania and Greece) and Western Europe (covering Britain, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Spain and Italy). If one compares the level of analysis of the two Europes in this volume, then the analysis offered by academics in Western Europe is much more sophisticated. This may be due to the fact that there is more data on Muslims in Western than in Eastern Europe.

Islam has become a "problem" in Eastern Europe only after the demise of communism but it was always perceived as a problem in Western Europe. Nonneman's observation is correct when the observes that "Perceived discrimination and insensitivity to cultural differences led some Muslims in Western Europe to identify with some of the causes of their fellow Muslims in the Middle East, for instance the Iranian revolution. Large sections of public opinion in the host societies then reacted to these attitudes and to the perceived excesses of radicalised Islam abroad by stereotyping the Muslim communities in their midst as a threat." This is a dilemmic situation and is not going to abate.

So the question is: that if the Muslims in Europe identify with Islamic movements in the Middle East, will they be victimised more in the Western countries?

It is quite natural for Muslims to identify with problems of Muslims in the Middle East, which, it must be stated, are quite often caused by the collaboration of Western governments and their allies - the secularised dictatorships in the Middle East . So along with such studies produced by Nonneman etc - there is a need for analysis as to how much Western implication is also to be blamed. For example, the Rushdie case caused a furore, but no furore has been caused by the banning of the book by Kitty Kelly on the Royals or earlier of the Spy Catcher.

This question needs to be addressed. The head scarves affair in France became an issue - but it isn't the "human right" of a person to chose his faith and wear as he pleases. Nudity can but the covering of the lady cannot possibly trample on the sensibilities of other persons! Such questions needs to be discussed. In the other words, any discussion, debate or discourse about Islam being the "problem" in the West needs to take Western responsibilities and implications and its consequences on board.

Vertovec's excellent chapter on Britain looks at how the Muslims have become conspicuous in the "public sphere" and observes that "new structural frameworks are needed for engaging Muslims in public life". House's paper on France gives a good in-depth surveys of how Islam is perceived in that country. Karakasoglu's chapter gives a good exposition of Muslims in Germany. What is the "Muslim argument" has been unfolded very well by Sander in his piece on Sweden.

Nonneman in his excellent introduction had raised a series of questions which needed to be answered which were: "how does the situation of Muslims in Western and Eastern Europe compare? How Muslims are the Muslims in Western and Eastern Europe? How important are religious elements (rather than ethnic/linguistic elements) in these Muslim's relations with other Europeans? What role is or has been played by the variation in historical experience?" From the point of view of the questions based above by Nonneman - the papers have done justice to it within their own contexts. But questions of what is Eastern and Western European Islamic policy towards Islam still needs to be raised, deciphered and explored in other volumes.

The "New Europe" refers to a continent no longer split by cold war rivalries. How does Islam compare in its eastern and western portions? Actually, the comparison makes little sense, for in addition to their differing developments since 1945, the two parts host fundamentally dissimilar populations. The eastern peoples are nearly all indigenous converts of centuries' long standing; the western ones overwhelmingly consist of immigrants who arrived after 1960.

If the comparison of communities serves little purpose, the gathering of academic analysts within the covers a single volume does make one contrast strikingly clear: that the easterners, formerly subjects of Moscow's writ, stand up for the secular approach so long exemplified by France, while the westerners, beneficiaries of this system, are more ready to weaken it through the application of group rights and multiculturalism.

The editor calls Islam in Europe a "neglected" field of academic study, a surprising remark in light of the voluminous literature on this subject, but an accurate one in so far as the general level of writing and analysis in this volume's sixteen essays leaves much to be desired. Even so, it has some interesting points: that 23 percent of Brussel's population under the age of 20 is Muslim; that Sweden is the country most transformed since World War II by immigration; and that Mussolini not only liked to portray Italy as a "friend of the Islamic world" but even as a "great Muslim power."

Middle East Quarterly, September 1998