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THE ISLAMIC CHALLENGE This page intentionally left blank The Islamic Challenge Politics and Religion in Western Europe JYTTE KLAUSEN 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With oYces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Jytte Klausen 2005 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd. King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–928992–1 978–0–19–928992–9 13579108642 Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction: Islam in Europe 1 1. Europe’s New Muslim Political Elite 15 2. How Do Muslim Leaders See the Problems? 52 3. Belief and Politics 81 4. From ConXict to Culture War 107 5. Christian and Muslim Europe 136 6. Sexual Politics and Multiculturalism 171 Conclusion: Liberal Muslims and the Emergence of European Islam 204 Appendix: Methodology 213 Bibliography 223 Index 231 Acknowledgements I could not have completed this book without the goodwill of the people who funded me, my employer, Brandeis University, and my family and friends. My family earns my gratitude for their unwavering encouragement. I am grateful in particular to the following colleagues and friends, who have helped and encouraged me: Erik Albæk, Steven Burg, Michael Bommes, Desmond King, Adam Kuper, Claus OVe, and Bhikhu Parekh. I am indebted to Fiyaz Mughal for educating me in British politics and to Mohamed Alibhai for tutoring me in Islam. My research assistants, Andre Amtoft, Martin Steinwand, Maria-Soledad Amador-Cuadro, Marianne van Steekelenburg, and Anna Bo¨hning, helped me organize my research and interviews, and put up with my occasional confusion and desperation, and rewarded me by becoming engaged and insightful advocates for the research and the book. In Paris and Lyon, I am thankful to Moussa Khedimelllah, Hakim El Ghassassi, and Redouane Abouddahab for their generosity and assistance. I am grateful to Levent Ermek for taking care of me in Rotterdam. Michael Blume and Riem Spiel- haus generously helped me out in Stuttgart and Berlin. I owe special thanks to my hosts. In Copenhagen, Peter Abrahamson and the Institute of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen provided a home throughout the project. My thanks go to Trine-Louise Andersen for admin- istrating my grant. I am thankful to my friend, Lotta Hedberg, and to Kay Glans, the editor of Axess, and the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation, for space and help in Stockholm, and to Gerhard Baumann, Jan Rath, and the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies for assistance in Amsterdam. NuYeld College, at Oxford University, housed me as a British Academy Visiting Professor. Anna Coote was wonderfully kind to put me up many times at short notice. A semester spent at the American Academy in Berlin enabled me to Wnish the manuscript. Gary Smith and the Academy’s staV earned my deep appre- ciation for their extraordinary hospitality and eYcient help. They helped deliver the manuscript on time, but like all midwives they cannot be blamed for how it turned out. The Danish Social Science Research Council provided generous funding for my research. I am grateful to the Council and to the British Academy, the American Academy in Berlin, the United States Institute of Peace, and Acknowledgements vii Brandeis University for funding my leaves from teaching and for additional grants in support of the research. Finally, I want to thank my husband, Alan wolfe, for his patience and support and also I want to thank Dominic Byatt and the OUP staff for making it a pleasure to produce this book. JK This page intentionally left blank Introduction: Islam in Europe The voices in this book belong to parliamentarians, city councilors, doctors and engineers, a few professors, lawyers and social workers, owners of small businesses, translators, and community activists. They are also all Muslims who have decided to become engaged in political and civic organizations. They are Europe’s new Muslim political elite. And for that reason, they are in the special role of constantly having to explain themselves, mostly in order to say who they are not. They are not fundamentalists, not terrorists, and they mostly do not support the introduction of Islamic religious law in Europe, and they deWnitely do not support applying it to Christians. This book is about who these people are, and what they want. Without the willingness of these 300 people to explain themselves yet once more, for my beneWt, and to do so at great length, and under the pressure of what may have seemed undiplomatic questioning, this book would not have been possible. Many people invited me to their oYces or homes. Others I met with in mosques or coVee bars, or in the temporary oYces I borrowed from academic friends across Western Europe. Often what was supposed to be a thirty-minute interview went on for much longer. The leaders chosen for interviews were from Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Great Britain, France, and Germany. I learned to Wnd my way in every one of the legislatures in six countries. I had tea in the House of Lords and a beer in the Dutch Tweede Kamer. I saw the empty hall of the Swedish Riksdagen—‘the most boring place in Stock- holm’, the young member told me, as she showed me around—and squeezed into an oYce the size of a large broom closet in the cramped French Se´nat. The posh new oYces of the German Bundestag seemed like the parliamen- tarian’s dream until I learned that you had to petition the architect for permission to change the trash can or bring in a new chair. I was treated to coVee and cake, home-cooked dinners, and great hospital- ity. ‘You are the Wrst one to come and talk to us,’ I was often told. ‘Thank you for coming.’ Once I was scolded, and another time I was asked to leave because my presence was considered oVensive. That was it. Two incidents. Even when my presence was clearly unusual, I was treated graciously and made to feel welcome. My respondents were very largely moderate Muslims, but I did also meet some radicals. An interview with someone who presented himself as a ‘mod- erate’, but who I later discovered to be a member of Hamas, triggered my 2 Introduction memories of the occasional dishonesty of the ‘old’ New Left. (Also known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas is a political group with a terrorist wing based in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.) On another occasion, when I attended Friday prayers and heard the khutbah, the Friday sermon, being delivered in a converted nineteenth-century red brick factory building close to where, thirty years earlier, I had enjoyed a hot summer and free housing in a Copenhagen neighborhood taken over by squatters, I found myself the only woman among Wve hundred men at the service. The sermon was delivered in Arabic and English, and translation to imperfect Danish was available over a closed-circuit system. I did not like what I heard. But it was not until I met with the ‘Sheikh’, as he wanted to be addressed, that I became uncomfortable. When I asked what should be done about radical imams, the Sheikh angrily denounced the failure of Western democracy. Islam has a chance at a new start in Europe, if only Europeans would live up to the human rights they preach, he said, starting on what promised to be a diatribe. The situation was diVused by the providential appearance of Andre´, my research assistant, and next the Sheikh was giving me photocopies of a recent consumer survey he had made of the mosque members. The survey aimed to Wnd out what the attendees at Friday prayers wanted from the waqf. (A waqf is an Islamic charity, but in this case the term was used to describe the mosque community and its leader.) Should the Sheikh participate more in the media debates? (Yes) Should the khutbah address political issues of concern to Muslims? (Yes) Administered in Arabic, Danish, and English, it would have been the envy of an American Evangelical preacher aiming to hone his skills and enlarge his Xock. The current European panic about radical clerics is fueled by stories like this one, but missing from the newspaper accounts is that most Muslims are as discomWted by this kind of manipulative politicization of Islam as I was.