Is Europe Trying to Build a Fundamentalist Islam?

People with a Muslim background living in Europe are often reduced to their religious identity by the authorities in their countries. "Muslims" are seen as a problem group. But many immigrants do not identify themselves by religion. The American historian Philip Jenkins says that this religious identification by the authorities has highly damaging consequences

​​Most Europeans recognize that the arrival of immigrant communities over the past few decades will change their societies, although they disagree just how radical those changes will have to be. Usually, the debate lies between those who want to accommodate Islam, and those who try to limit its impact.

At one extreme, Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, attracted national fury in Britain when he declared that the establishment of a parallel Sharia law system in that country was "unavoidable".

But a more basic issue is at stake: when European governments try to respond to a "Muslim problem", are they actually making communities much more solidly Muslim? Do they not realize that in practice, they are helping create a monolithic Islam?

Of course, Europe has a large population drawn from traditionally Muslim societies, probably some 24 million people in the lands west of the Russian frontier, or 4.6 percent of the whole. But we have no idea how many of those regard themselves primarily as Muslim by faith and culture.

In all societies, people have multiple identities from which to choose, and religion may or may not occupy a primary place. Class, culture, nationality, region, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity and age can all present rival loyalties.

Just because many Germans or Italians describe themselves as Christian does not mean that this religious identity trumps all others, and we cannot make the same assumption about Muslims.

Who are the Muslims?

Since the 1970s, people of Muslim background have featured prominently in reports of social problems, of crime and rioting, violence and poverty, in many European cities. But we need not see these problems in religious terms.

Normally, in this context, the word Muslim is actually shorthand for "a member of ethnic communities established in Europe quite recently, and drawn from African or Asian nations where Islam represents the default religion."

​​ To say that Muslims in this broad sense face persistent unemployment or poor housing conditions, or that they resent police maltreatment by police, says nothing about their religious attitudes or beliefs.

In Muslim areas of Britain, people of Pakistani descent define themselves not against Christians or infidels but against whites, and the term need not have hostile intent. Many French "Muslims" see themselves first and foremost as black, and that racial term largely decides how they identify themselves.

Although this is now hard to recall, it is only very recently indeed – just some seven years - that European countries have understood social unrest in religious rather than racial terms.

Through the 1980s, French and British cities especially suffered from repeated urban violence, and many of the rioters were of Muslim background. Yet we always heard of "youth" riots or "immigrant" riots, never of religious clashes. The rioters had the ethnic composition they did because those groups happened to predominate in poor sections of inner cities.

The media have learnt the language of intifada

When rioting struck northern British cities in the summer of 2001, many of the participants were Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Even so, religious labels or grievances made very little appearance in the unrest, which was mainly driven by racial anger, and by resentment against the police. In the words of the official report, these were "the worst racially motivated riots in the UK for fifteen years."

Yet only a few years later, French authorities responded to mass urban rioting as if they were facing a Muslim uprising. The chief difference between Britain in 2001 and France in 2005 was that in the interim, the September 11 attacks had focused attention on the supposed clash of religions and civilizations.

​​ The media learned the language of intifada, and looked for opportunities to apply it in Europe. Almost overnight, Europe's social problems became religious.

Facing threats of unrest and social division, European governments have understandably tried to build relationships with groups and federations that claim to speak for the "Muslim population."

Often, though, these organizations are much more pious and orthodox than the people they claim to speak for, and many follow a traditional and hard-line kind of faith, which is reactionary in matters of gender and sexuality.

When governments recognize particular clerical and religious groups as the official spokesmen for their communities, they are treating ordinary people as members of collective religious/cultural entities, holding rights as members of those groups, not as citizens and individuals.

Ethnic and class conflicts have become religious problems

Moreover, people of Muslim background are by definition now seen as Muslims, and presumed to operate under religious and clerical authority. While that assumption might not be true at first, it could easily become so over time.

The media assist this process when they report on ethnic communities through the lens of religious leaders, who naturally have their own agendas. Ethnic or class issues become religious problems, and viewers and readers tend to see them in that guise. Minority communities themselves are more likely to frame their grievances in religious terms.

Europe's Muslims represent a huge diversity of practice and devotional styles, to say nothing of social and political attitudes. Yet treating all under the single inflexible label of "Islam" encourages a sense of supranational religious identity that runs flat contrary to goals of assimilation.

It also consecrates the role of religious leadership within those communities. Could Muslim fundamentalists have designed things more to their purpose?

Philip Jenkins

© Philip Jenkins 2008

Philip Jenkins is Professor of Humanities at Pennsylvania State University and author of God's Continent: Christianity, Islam and Europe's Religious Crisis, Oxford University Press 2007.

Qantara.de

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