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Is there a place for Islam in Europe?

Sami ZEMNI*

Nederlandse versie

When trying to find an answer to the question of Islam in Europe we can roughly distinguish two approaches. The first one we can label as the "traditional or orientalist approach". In this approach Islam is taken as a research subject in order to find out in what way Islam is concordant with presumed guiding principles of European societal organisation. Thus, in this approach, we find researchers, politicians and social field workers asking questions such as "Is Islam compatible with democracy? With human rights? With tolerance?". 

A second approach we can label as the "genealogical-pluralist approach". In this approach, Islam is seen not as a "foreign body" that is new to Europe but as an integral part of European history. In this view there is no place for a study of Islam as such. Instead we look at what role, place and significance Muslims and Islam have within Europe both today and in history. In this text I will apply this second approach along with a thorough critique of the "traditional-orientalist approach". 
 

1. As a consequence of the nationalist histories that developed over the last three centuries, it is often forgotten or denied that Islam has been part of Europe ever since the 7th century. Islam was (and is) present in Western and Eastern Europe. From the 7th until the 17th century Islam was integral part of the Iberic Island especially during the autonomy of al-Andalus. Between 1609 and 1614 the Moriscos - so-called because of their compulsory conversion to christianity - were deported outside the ‘Christian empire’. Up until the 19th century, the religion survived in a sort of crypto-islamic form. In the Eastern part of Europe it is needless to dwell on the centuries long control of the Ottoman empire over substantial parts of the Balkan. After World War II, Islam become more and more visible again in Europe as more and more immigrants from the Mediterranean bassin were asked and invited by European governments to compensate for the lack of labor force. 

However, if we want to understand something about the place of Islam in Europe we should not look at Islam but at ourselves. We should ask the question what the guiding principles and ideals of European democracies are and whether the whole debate about Islam is necessary. I want to argue the whole debate about Islam is more problematic that Islam itself and that questions about the place of Islam in Europe are useless and unnecessary. 
 

2. European countries see themselves as being modern. A modern state is based on the idea of human rationality as an ordering principle of society. A modern state rejects the idea of societal organisation based on some sort of transcendent referent outside of society. God is not considered manifest within the social order (as in the Medieval State) but religion and belief as such do not need to disappear. The modern European state sees itself as a secular state and it’s guiding principle can be summarized in the well-known words of the French scholar Ernest Renan: "l’état neutre entre les religions, tolérant pour tout les cultes". The juridical basis for the societal consensus around secularism in Europe is its neutrality concerning worldviews. The philosophical and humanist principle which lies at the core of this ideal, gives the freedom of religion to every individual. But that freedom is not endless nor without boundaries. What exactly is this boundary? 
 

3. The limit of freedom of religion is (without taking into account the differences between the different European countries) formulated negatively. Belief and religion of an individual are tolerated as long as they do not infringe on the freedom of another individual. For example, the use of coercion for spreading ideas is prohibited and not tolerated. The idea of justice in European secular states leads it to give as much as freedom possible to every individual so that he or she can peacefully practice his/her religion in a tolerant and pluralistic society within the boundaries of national and international law. These ethical-philosophical principles have found their way into every constitution of the European states, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the European Treaty on Human Rights. All these instances of law preserve and defend the ‘freedom of religion’. 
 

4. In spite of these arguments and these legal rights we still witness a prejudicial treatment of Islam in Europe and a continuing discrimination of Muslims. Until now, albeit with several differences, Muslims are discriminated in several ways. In Belgium, for example, Muslims still don’t get money from the national state to organize its cult, young Muslim women are prohibited of going to school with a headscarf, employers do not want to engage Muslims when they’re "too brown-skinned" or when they wear a scarf, etc. The question we want to turn to then is: Why is there a presumed problem with Islam? How come that the Jewish and Protestant believers do not encounter the same problems as Muslims? What is it, in European culture, which prevents logical rational thinking towards Islam? 
 

5. It is my thesis that the European identity is based on what I call an "asymmetrical universalism". This is a discourse in which Europe sees itself as the paragon of universality with all it’s positive avatars (tolerance, human rights, democracy,…) while, at the same time, denying the Other the right to his Otherness. In order to clarify this mechanism, I want to elaborate on two major themes which, in my opinion, help to understand the phenomenon. The first line of thought revolves around the idea of "the uniqueness of Islam" as mirror image of the Christian West. The second line of thought, which is of course interdependent with the first one, revolves around the idea that Islam equals fundamentalism and terrorism. 
 

6. With the "uniqueness of Islam" I refer to the idea that Islam is totally different, and opposed to a presumably Christian Europe. By now, it is a well known fact that identities do not exist in themselves. Identities are always a construction of social contingencies and individuals in a given context. The idea of Europe is such an identity and it is clear that it also a constructed and not a given, immanent one. In order to exist as an identity, it is always obliged to look for an "external Other". Without an Other there is no conscious self-identity. With the birth of the European nation-states within the larger idea of a European totality, Islam played the role of the "external Other". From the Renaissance on, Europe constructed its identity not on geographical boundaries, but on the idea of modernity and its universalism. The distinction between modern and non-modern is also the criterion European scholars have used until recently to contrast between the West and the Rest. The West became synonymous with "civilization, democracy and rationality" while the ‘Other’ became synonymous of "barbarism, despotism and slavery". The ‘Other’ for Europe was in the first place, but not solely, Islam as it was its closest neighbour and even a military, economical, political and cultural challenger of Europe. 

From the moment Europe needed this external Other to strengthen itself, Islam was depicted as the mirror image of Europe and its civilization. It became the subject of scholarly attention based on a separate methodology. This methodology is a way of dealing with Islam based on the distinction that Europe is dynamic and progressive, while Islam is stagnant and backward. Therefore Europeans do not look to what actually happened (and is happening) in the Islamic world but are deciphering and reading the so-called texts of Islam, mostly the Koran and the Sunna. This leads to the everlasting but boring and most of all wrong questions of "Islam and democracy", "Islam and human rights",… The fact is that every time there is a social problem emerging in Europe which concerns immigrants, Islam is pinpointed as the "problem". For example, when a Belgian man is accused of domestic violence against his wife, then the general reaction is to look for reasons for his misbehaviour. The man was, they say, himself beaten as a child, or is a drug- or alcohol addict and so on. When we change the example and a Muslim is accused of beating his wife, then there is no more contextualization, no circumstances, no explanations. It is not the man who is bad but Islam because, as they say, the Koran "gives more importance to men than women". This means that Belgians (and Europeans) deny any structural production of "domestic violence". It is bad personal behaviour but not to be found in the functioning Western societies. Muslims, on the other hand, are only seen through a structural lens. This is of course absurd, but it still happens everyday, although with the advent of gender-studies these ideas seem to change. Europeans do not understand that Islam is what people make of it everyday and that there exist "as much as Islams as there are Muslims". It is what Muslims themselves say which is important and not what we think what it is. 

Should we then engage in a theological debate with the Muslim communities in Europe? Certainly not. If the secular and neutral European secular state would engage in such a debate it would officially and deliberately make a choice. It would choose the version of Islam which it likes best. But this brings a lot of problems with it. Who will speak for the Muslim communities? Who would define what Islam is? Who would accept it? If the definition would be designed by a European, it is obvious that a lot of Muslims would not be able to accept its content. If it is defined by Muslims in Europe, it is obvious that several Muslims would have competing definitions because in Islam there is no such thing as a clergy. What counts for Christianity, Protestantism and Judaïsm, should apply without any problem to Islam. Muslims have the right to the expression of their belief within the same boundaries as the other religions. 
 

7. The second idea, that Islam equals terrorism and ‘fundamentalism’, is part and parcel of what I have said in the first line of thought. It shows us how two distinct phenomena, namely (1) the "publication" (the entering of the public sphere) of Islam in Europe and (2) the rise of Islamism in the Arab World are conflated in such a way that Muslims in Europe are regarded more and more as a "potential threat". Between the growing visibility of Islam in Europe and the several manifestations of Islamism in the Arab World there are almost no connections. But, in a culturalist view on the world, where Islam is the new enemy No.1 after the fall of communism, these two processes are linked and combined. These simplistic generalisations are even becoming part of the academic world as is reflected in Samuel Huntington’s "The Clash of Civilizations". The growing political and social problems in the Arab World are subsumed under one determinant factor, i.e. Islam. 

Returning to my previous point concerning the European methodology of apprehending Islam, it is obvious then that for Europeans, as Islam is one and the same everywhere, always, Islamism and the growing visibility or ‘publication’ of Islam in Europe are seen as one and the same thing. The new paradigm does not revolve around the distinction progressive-backward or rational-irrational but around the dichotomy of fundamentalist versus anti-fundamentalist. It is obvious that this is in fact continuing the alleged European supremacy under a new disguise. 
 

8. In what way then does this influence the Muslim communities in Europe? Muslims are in fact blocked or halted in their emancipation. The visibility of Islam is not a growing fundamentalism. On the contrary, it are the first manifestations of the birth of what might, for lack of a better word, be called, an "European Islam". The visibility of Islam is carried by a generation of Muslims who were born in Europe or have been living here for a very long time. This is the utmost proof that Muslims feel at home in Europe. They are demanding the right to be full citizens of the European states but by defending the right to certain cultural distinctions. They are just trying to obtain the same thing as their generational European counterparts: a good future. It is obvious that the boundaries of their demands are the same as for everyone: the rule of law of the democratic state. 
 

9. Instead of stigmatizing the Other we should rely on a real societal debate, based upon the notion of "intercultural communication". The "intercultural communication" rejects the idea of integration and replaces it by another one: namely "interaction". Far too often "integration" is just a meaningless word in which conditions are put upon the Muslims in order to become part of the society in which they live. Interaction, on the contrary, involves a mutual dialogue between ‘us’ and ‘them’, between autochtones and allochtones. Interaction leads towards a real pluralist society in which the relationship between majority and minority is based on mutual respect. This means that it is not only the Muslims who must change but also the Europeans. Within such a society, there would be no clear distinction between two groups each with their own set of values and practices but only one society based on conviviality and commonality. 
 

10. From this we can conclude that Europe is still based on the idea of a tolerant, democratic universalism but this is in fact an asymmetrical universalism. What applies to us, does not apply to them. Under the guise of openness and pluralism, Muslims are still treated as second class citizens. It is as if Europe says openly and officially "The Other enriches us" in its official multicultural discourse, while at the same time thinking and acting along another saying: "Become as we so that you loose your Otherness and become part of the chosen of this World". 
 

11. There is a place for Islam in Europe and the very question is unnecessary. As long as the question remains to be put, Muslims will be subjected to all kinds of unjust discriminations. In the end Europe does not speak about multiculturalism anymore but about straightforward assimilation. It does not think of equality and justice but of "gumming out the differences". And in a world without differences ... monotony and greyness will rule a boring world. 

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