EUROPE AND ISLAM

By the year 2050, Europe will have 100 million Muslims

The growth of the Muslim population in Europe -currently some 20 million of the continent' s 450 million citizens and increasing fast- has highlighted the differences between conservative Islamic values and Europe' s traditionally secular liberalism. The demographic shift, assimilation difficulties, and debates over issues such as head scarves and the role of women in society, have occasionally sparked violent clashes. Concerns about terrorism -the July bombings in London and the March 2004 bombings in Madrid- and incidents like the November 2004 murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who criticized Islam, have forced countries to reconsider how to handle their rapidly growing Muslim communities. Thus far, experts say, no country in Europe has come up with the ideal solution.

Experts say there has been a range of responses among European-born Muslims. These include Assimilation, Integration, Rebellion.
* Assimilation: Some Muslims-born in Europe become secularized and adjust well enough to succeed academically and financially in their countries, says Mark LeVine, associate professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and a Middle Eastern history specialist. Some, he says, become "Muslim yuppies", join the native-born elite and are held up as success stories for their communities. However, this group makes up only a small percentage of Muslims in Europe.
* Integration: Large numbers of young people live peacefully in their host countries, while retaining the cultural and religious traditions of their ancestral homelands. Their parents and families -often first generation immigrants- still have a strong influence on them. LeVine says this quiet, relatively anonymous group, while likely the biggest percentage of European-born Muslims, attracts little public or media attention.
* Rebellion: Some Muslims keep western society at arm' s length, refusing to intermarry or mix with Europeans. Living in segregated neighborhoods with the food, culture, music and television of their home countries, "they are there [in Europe] but not there", says Shireen Hunter, director of the Islam Program at the Center of Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Most of these Muslims are poor and live in crime-prone neighborhoods like the British council estates or the French banlieues. Experts say that some young Muslims grow allenated from both their parents' culture and the culture of Europe and seek a sense of community and identity in conservative Islam. A small percentage of these -including, perhaps, the four suspects on the London attacks- eventually embrace terrorism.
Terrorism: The London attacks, which killed at least 52 and wounded about 700, again put a spotlight on the threat of terror in Europe. After the Madrid bombings, which killed 191 people, Spanish authorities arrested more than 100 people suspected of links to Islamic terrorism. Several of the September 11 hijackers, including Mohammad Atta, were part of the "Hamburg cell" of radicals in Germany. In recent months, members of the Iraq-based terror group Ansar-al-Islam were arrested by German and Swedish authorities and accused of recruiting Muslims in Europe.
Demographics: The Muslim birth rate in Europe is three times higher than that of non-Muslim Europeans, which is declining, writes Omer Taspinar, the co-director of The Brookings Institution' s project on Turkey. The Muslim population has doubled in the last ten years to 4% of the European Union' s (EU) population. About 1 million new Islamic immigrants arrive in Western Europe every year and, by 2050, one in five Europeans will likely be Muslim.

Turkey: Turkey is currently discussing entry procedures with the EU that could allow it to join the EU in 10 to 15 years. This would increase the Muslim population in Europe by some 70 million. Some experts hope that traditionally secular Turks, who have strictly enforced the separation of mosque and state in their own country, will temper Islamic radicalism on the European continent. Others say the addition of so many more Muslims will push Europe toward increasing religious radicalization.

Cultural Polarization: Many Christian and secular Europeans have grown increasingly wary of Muslim immigration. Meanwhile, some European Muslims respond to the perceived moral permissiveness of Western culture by trying "to assert Muslim culture aggressively and maintain the boundaries around Islam", says Akbar Ahmed, chairman of Islamic Studies at the American University in Washington D.C.

How have European states dealt with their Muslim citizens? Generally by promoting assimilation which has a long history in Europe. Many Europeans, who are aware of the historical repression of the Catholic Church and the divisive wars over faith that raged across Europe for centuries, see religion as a fundamentally unreasonable force, some experts say. Therefore, many Europeans don't understand why anyone would be religious and argue that governments should urge immigrants to accept the tradition of secular humanism that has held sway in most of the continent since the Enlightenment. Europeans ask, "Why do you need religion? Why can't you live like us?" says Jocelyn Cesari, a French expert on Islam who is a visiting professor at Harvard University and author of When Islam and Democracy Meet. French leaders, who enacted a ban on religious clothing in French schools in 2004, acted according to a national tradition that promotes a secular identity for all citizens, says Gilles Kepel, a French scholar of Islam and a member of the commission that supported the ban.
How have European countries dealt with the practise of Islam? European countries have historically "outsourced" the funding, management and teaching of Islam to imams and organizations from their immigrants' countries of origin, says Jonathan Laurence, visiting fellow at The Brookings Institution and co-author, with Justin Vaisse, of Islam in France: The Challenge of Integration. "Morocco, Algeria and Turkey all have government ministries that send imams to educate their populations abroad", he says.

Now, however, many European countries are trying to combat this influence and promote a more Europe-based Islamic practice. Recent efforts include the creation of Islamic Councils in France and The Netherlands to educate arriving foreign imams in European culture, the establishment of the Dublin-based European Council on Fatwa and Research, which issues opinions on modern Muslim life in Europe, and French politician Nicholas Sarkozy' s proposal to use state funds to build mosques and train French imams. Therefore, it is important to argue that the 21st century will be a period of gradual "islamization" of Europe, with all the consequences of the fact.