Muslim Youth and Women in the West: Source of Concern or Source of Hope?

Appendix VI: Background Paper

Introduction

The year 2005—2006 has been a particularly difficult period for the Muslim world and for Muslims in the West as well. The period began in October 2005 with three weeks of violence in predominantly immigrant urban areas of France and ended with the trial in London of seven young British Muslim men accused of conspiracy to commit murder.¹ These were some of the worst moments in an ongoing crisis. In between was a series of events in Europe that included clashes and lawsuits in reaction to cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. First published in a Danish newspaper and then reproduced in other publications, the cartoons raised sensitive issues of religious offense and free speech.² This was followed by a bitter debate across Europe that began when a teacher’s assistant was suspended from a British school for wearing a niqab, or face veil, which former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw publicly declared to be off—putting because it was “such a visible symbol of separation.”³ Then there was the airline crisis in August 2006, and the detention of 19 young Muslim men—all with deep British roots—accused of plotting to blow up transatlantic airliners; the speech by Pope Benedict XVI quoting a 14th—century Byzantine emperor who characterized Islam as “evil and inhuman”; and the threats against a French high school teacher who had been critical of the Prophet Muhammad in a newspaper column.⁴ Finally, there was the national election campaign in The Netherlands, in which a consensus developed among political elites and the electorate that definitively put an end to the multicultural approach to the integration of Muslim populations, and local elections in Belgium, where the anti—immigrant Vlaams Belang party increased its share of the vote by 5 percent to more than 20 percent.⁵

The year 2006 appears to have marked a turning point in the crisis. During the year the focus of anti—immigrant sentiment, particularly in Europe, seemed to move sharply toward a focus on Islam. Perhaps more important, doubts and questions about Muslim integration have, for the first time, been expressed by a broad spectrum of political leaders—Tony Blair, Angela Merkel, and Romano Prodi, for example.⁶ In this context, naturalization requirements in many countries in the West have become more demanding.⁷

As new generations of Muslim immigrants are being incorporated into Western societies, questions related to the presence of Islam in the West have clearly become salient. Figures on the Muslim population in the West vary, but it is believed that there are as many as 15 million Muslims presently living in the European Union ⁸ and as many as six million in the United States. ⁹ Moreover, the Muslim presence in the West is growing. The U.S.—based National Intelligence Council predicts that the Muslim populations in the EU will more than double during the next 20 years.¹⁰

With policy makers increasingly preoccupied with issues of identity, integration, and security, there has recently been much discussion about the failure of Western countries—and those of Western Europe in particular—to integrate their Muslim populations. Cycles of urban riots in France and Britain, for example, and the debate on the integration of women are often cited as a measure of the failures of socioeconomic integration in Europe.¹¹ Assertions of Muslim religious and cultural traditions have clashed with established norms of Western culture. In France, the 15—year struggle over the right of young Muslim girls to wear headscarves in public schools has focused on French secularism versus religious expression. Well—publicized cases of forced marriages and “honor killings” among the Turkish population in Germany have led to outspoken criticism of the role of women in Muslim culture, and similar human rights violations in France have resulted in the formation of an organized movement among French Muslim women.¹²

Questions involving the integration of Muslim populations are also related to a heightened sense of internal and external security threats. Militant Islam and the growing alienation of young men of Muslim origin have been linked by the press to urban unrest in Britain, France, and Germany. ¹³ More troubling, however, have been the links between young Muslim men born and raised in Europe to terrorist attacks in the West since September 11, 2001. Most of the young men who participated in the attacks in the United States, Spain, and Britain were either born or educated in the West.

The rise of extreme right political parties throughout Europe is an indication of political resistance to Muslim communities. What unites such electorally successful political parties as the National Front in France, the Freedom Party of Austria, the Vlaams Belang in Belgium, and the List Pim Fortuyn in The Netherlands, as well as other parties of the populist right in Denmark (the FP) and Switzerland (the SVP), is their ability to mobilize voters around anti—immigrant and especially anti—Muslim issues. In recent years, these parties have shifted from an overall anti—immigrant focus to an emphasis on Islam and the perceived challenges to identity from large, settled Muslim populations.¹⁴ For instance, only a few years ago the question of Islam was of relatively little importance for the Austrian FPO. When the party splio, Jörg Haider, the leader of the main branch, decided to shift to anti—Islamic nativism. Against all expectations, the party made significant gains of more than 10 percent in the 2006 national elections, attributed by some analysts to this new emphasis. A similar strategy has also been successful in Belgium, Denmark, and The Netherlands in elections in 2005 and 2006. ¹⁵

The integration of Muslim populations in the West has implications for the relationship between the Western and Islamic worlds. As the number of Muslims living and settling outside the Islamic world continues to grow, Muslim—majority countries are taking a heightened interest in the experiences of Muslim communities in the West.¹⁶ For more than three generations, Muslim populations in the West have made important contributions to the postwar development and sustenance of Western societies while maintaining their links with their home countries. Such Western Muslims could be an example for those in the Islamic world who seek to reconcile their religious identity with the modern world.

The experience of modernity, manifested in schools of thought, systems of knowledge, and political models whose origins lie in the West, has left its mark on the Muslim world, as have the processes of globalization, which, through commerce and migration, have forged unprecedented ties between the Islamic and Western worlds. Similarly, Islam has become a strong and growing force within the West and another identity to which many “Westerners” ascribe through conversion. ¹⁷ But the relationship between the Islamic and Western worlds is dynamic, and neither has perfect knowledge or understanding of the other. Flare—ups like the Danish cartoon affair are likely to continue. ¹⁸

These kinds of tensions often derive from the general perception that Muslims in the West are immigrants or temporary residents, rather than citizens and integral members of civil society. Thus, the questions with which Western governments and scholars are most concerned relate to incorporation and integration. The focus of these integration issues tends to be on the younger generations, in particular young women. In this paper, we will explore the challenges of and to Muslim communities in the West through the lens of youth and women, who have emerged from traditional roles and are forging new identities for themselves, and, in some instances, are becoming leading agents of change.

First, we will look at the question of the presence of Muslims in the West—where they came from, who they are, and what they are becoming—and examine some of the problems of simply knowing how many of them there are. The diversity of Islam in the world is impressive, and it’s not surprising that there is great diversity among Muslims in the West as well.

Second, we will look at issues related to the presence of Islam as a religion in the West and the relationship between religion and Muslim communities, focusing on two dimensions. We will start by investigating the level and type of religious practice among Muslims in different Western countries, among different age groups, and between men and women. Then we will examine the evolution of practice in the West and the organization of practices within different Western states in which Islam is a minority religion.

Third, we will turn to the complex question of integration and the process through which Western societies are evolving as settled Muslim communities move from the second to the third generation.

We will focus on three aspects of this process, starting with the meaning of integration and how this is changing; proceeding to the question of whether there is a “crisis” of integration of Muslim communities in the West; and concluding with a look at the role of Muslim communities in political life, or, more precisely, the role of political life in the integration of Muslim communities in the West.

Fourth, we will consider how the presence of large Muslim communities throughout Europe has been related to questions of security on two levels. ¹⁹ First, we will raise the question of security in urban environments, as well as the issue of the relationship between security and integration. Second, we will examine the threat of “homegrown” terrorism among youth of Muslim origin with ties to transnational terrorist networks. Thus, in one of their regular meetings, European ministers of the interior and home affairs noted in October 2006 that alienation among Muslims was at the top of their agenda, and they would work together “to persuade young Muslims to reject radical ideologies and embrace democratic values.” ²⁰

Fifth, we will examine the question of whether in each of the above areas there are “best practices” that have been demonstrably effective in promoting integration and acceptance and that are most likely to have an impact on policies and practices in other countries.

The Western countries we will focus on in this review are quite different in terms of their experience with immigration and also their relationship with their Muslim communities. The United States and Canada are settlement societies that have a long heritage of dealing with successive waves of immigration. Immigration has been rooted both in labor—market needs and in the need for populations to fill a vast territorial expanse. Muslim populations that emigrated to France, Britain, and Germany, however, came from within the colonial community (France and Britain) or from countries with which there was a traditional relationship (Germany). These populations were accepted only reluctantly, with the hope or intention that they would eventually go home. This reluctance has contributed to patterns of discrimination that have made integration more difficult.

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