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THE MUSLIM QUESTION IN EUROPE Peter O’Brien THE MUSLIM QUESTION IN EUROPE Political Controversies and Public Philosophies TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS Philadelphia • Rome • Tokyo TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122 www.temple.edu/tempress Copyright © 2016 by Temple University—Of Th e Commonwealth System of Higher Education All rights reserved Published 2016 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: O’Brien, Peter, 1960– author. Title: Th e Muslim question in Europe : political controversies and public philosophies / Peter O’Brien. Description: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : Temple University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifi ers: LCCN 2015040078| ISBN 9781439912768 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781439912775 (paper : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781439912782 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Muslims—Europe—Politics and government. | Islam and politics—Europe. Classifi cation: LCC D1056.2.M87 O27 2016 | DDC 305.6/97094—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015040078 Th e paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992 Printed in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Andre, Grady, Hannah, Galen, Kaela, Jake, and Gabriel Contents Acknowledgments ix 1 Introduction: Clashes within Civilization 1 2 Kulturkampf 24 3 Citizenship 65 4 Veil 104 5 Secularism 144 6 Terrorism 199 7 Conclusion: Messy Politics 241 Aft erword 245 References 249 Index 297 Acknowledgments have accumulated many debts in the gestation of this study. Arleen Harri- son superintends an able and amiable cadre of student research assistants I without whose reliable and competent support this book would not have been possible. Special thanks go to Ana Esparza and Alyssa Alfaro, who compiled the reference lists. Trinity University thrice awarded me summer research stipends as well as academic leaves in 2011 and 2015. In 2011, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) gave me a Research Visit Grant. Gökçe Yurdakul graciously hosted the visit at the Institute for Social Sciences at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Dagmar Vinz also deserves thanks for arranging the “Politics of Diversity” seminar that I off ered in 2011 as part of the Gender and Diversity Masters Program at the Free Uni- versity of Berlin. Th e students gave me valuable feedback for what amounted to an initial presentation of the general argument of the book. For inviting me to give guest lectures about the book’s themes at their universities, I am indebted to Sieglinde Rosenberger (University of Vienna), Nermin Abadan- Unat (Boğaziçi University), Gökçe Yurdakul (Humboldt University of Ber- lin), Karin Goihl and Schirin Amir-Moazami (Free University of Berlin), and Sheila Pantlind (Aquinas College). Special thanks go to Gary Freeman, Gökçe Yurdakul, Schirin Amir-Moazami, Sieglinde Rosenberger, Tina Olteanu, Matt Barrusso, Stanley Fish, Jocelyne Cesari, and Bonnie Honig for providing critical readings of all or some of the manuscript. Th e seren- dipitous ways in which my scholarship intersects with that of Garth and Elizabeth Key Fowden make our annual visits (whether in Limni, Berlin, or x Acknowledgments Cambridge) highly stimulating. Jane Key continuously provided a delicate balance of critical feedback and reassuring encouragement, not to mention mastering “the awful German language” (Mark Twain) while accompany- ing me during frequent protracted stays in Berlin. Th ose stays would never have been as delightful as they were for us without the indispensable assis- tance and dear friendship of Doris Th ürmann and Frank Gottsmann and Barbara and Gottfried Gügold. Finally, I dedicate the book to the younger generation of our loving extended and blended family. May these fi ne young adults devise and implement more constructive and congenial ways to live with diversity than my generation has! 1 Introduction: Clashes within Civilization Th e most striking feature of contemporary moral utterance is that so much of it is used to express disagreements, and the most striking feature of the debates in which these disagreements are expressed is their interminable character. Th ere seems to be no rational way of securing moral agreement in our culture. —Alasdair MacIntyre, Aft er Virtue n our times political controversy seems to follow Muslims wherever they go. Th is is no less true of Europe, where an estimated twenty million Mus- Ilims now reside mostly as a result of large-scale postwar immigration. Non-Muslim Europeans acrimoniously debate how best to handle these “new” Europeans of Muslim heritage. For their part, the Muslim Europe- ans, comprising approximately 4 percent of the European Union’s (EU’s) population, hardly speak with one voice. Indeed, a central conclusion of this book is that European Muslims disagree vehemently but generally along the same ideological contours of discord that generate controversy among non- Muslim Europeans. To wit, there exists no great, let alone unbridgeable, gulf in outlook or lifestyle forever separating “Islamic” from “Western” civiliza- tion. We should be wary of the “clash of civilizations” thesis originated by Samuel Huntington (1996), popularized by the Western media, and applied on European soil as a microcosm of the global clash by an array of best- selling authors (Sarrazin 2010; Fallaci 2006; Ye’or 2005). I urge instead that we start from the premise of clashes within West- ern civilization. I have in mind profound philosophical-turned-political fi ssures that have emerged in the modern era. Th ese rift s may have been briefl y smoothed over (or suppressed) during the generation immediately following World War II (WWII), during the so-called “end of ideology” (Bell 1960), which coincided with the original wave of postwar immigration to Western Europe (Messina 2007: 188–89). Mass immigration of Muslims to Europe presented a particularly salient (but hardly the lone) occasion for these strains to resurface and intensify beginning in the 1960s in Britain and on the Continent in the 1970s and 1980s. Heightened salience involved what Miller (2000) observed as the shift of immigration issues from low to 2 Chapter 1 high politics from little noticed or discussed to highly salient, appearing regularly in headlines, political speeches, international summits, and so on. One common way of reading this switch from low to high politics is to con- tend that the newcomers caused the problems that merited the heightened attention. Th is is the reading I want to counter. Th e controversies swirling about immigration—“this cauldron of political and policy debates” (Hol- lifi eld 1997: 40)—are better understood as deep-seated intra-European tensions rather than as clashes between a preexisting, presumably largely unifi ed Western Europe and a recently settling (invading) non-European “Other” (“Islam”). Before I outline (and label) the outlooks generating the tensions, let us take a moment to look concretely at some of the political controversies surrounding European Muslims. Th is will allow the wider contours that I want to stress to come into visible relief, including why these intense con- troversies are not likely to be resolved any time soon. Consider the heads- carf fl ashpoint (O’Brien 2009). Th ose who support banning the veil (as the French government has done in public schools since 2004) contend that the sartorial religious practice not only exemplifi es but also proselytizes for the oppression of women. Others endorse the ban less out of an interest in women’s rights than because they see it as the most visible symbol of the dilution of their culture by immigration. Given higher fertility rates among Muslims, so goes the argument, immigration will purportedly culminate in making the majority (culture) a “minority in its own land.” Others see the right to cover as a litmus test for the sincerity of the much-touted freedom and tolerance of Western democracies. Many feel that Western European publics and governments fail the test miserably. Some critics don the veil as a sign of resistance to and condemnation of a long history (since the Cru- sades) of the domination of “Orientals” by Europeans. Consider additionally the issue of secularism. In contrast to the Unit- ed States, with its legal separation of church and state, most European governments have long-standing formal or informal relationships with Christian and Jewish denominations. Th ese arrangements in one way or another channel state resources to promote recognized religious commu- nities’ undertakings. For example, most European governments help fund private confessional schools and/or subsidize the provision of religious, denomination-specifi c education in the public schools. It is only natural that European Muslims would seek to gain similar state aid for Islam, and they have done just that in virtually every European land where they com- prise a critical mass (Laurence 2012). Typically, Muslims have demanded that they alone should determine the form and content of publicly sub- sidized Islamic instruction. Aft er all, must one be a devout, even erudite Muslim to know what is most important about Islam to impart to pupils? Introduction: Clashes within Civilization 3 Many critics of Islam (including convinced secularists of Muslim descent) severely doubt Islam’s democratic credentials and even go so far as to maintain that Islam and liberal democracy are fundamentally incompat- ible. While some want offi cials to spurn any relationship with Islam al- together, others call on the state to monitor and regulate public Islamic education in order to ensure that its form and content do not transgress liberal democratic tenets (for instance, gender equality). Most European states have, in fact, opened up dialogues with Muslims aimed at gestat- ing so-called “Euro-Islam,” an interpretation of the noble creed that is compatible with and conducive to liberal democratic mores and customs purportedly prized in Europe. Several Muslim organizations have taken umbrage at this paternalistic supervision, assailing it as thinly veiled cul- tural imperialism of the most insidious variety.