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mohammmad
20-08-04, 03:05
Muslims and European multiculturalism
Tariq Modood

Anti-Muslim sentiment in post-9/11 Europe contends that Muslims compound their 'alien' status by claiming special treatment from their 'hosts'. But what if the aspiration to a recognised 'Muslim' identity is itself characteristically European? In the British context, Tariq Modood argues that a healthily multicultural society needs to accommodate religion as a valid social category - and rethink Europe so that the Muslim 'them' becomes part of a plural 'us'.


There is an anti-Muslim wind blowing across the European continent. One factor is a perception that Muslims are making politically exceptional, culturally unreasonable or theologically alien demands upon European states. My contention is that the claims Muslims are making in fact parallel comparable arguments about gender or ethnic equality. Seeing the issue in this context shows how inescapably European and contemporary is the logic of mainstream Muslim identity politics.

Muslims in Europe: a question of belonging

European anxieties and phobias in relation to immigration and cultural diversity focus on Muslims more than any other group. This however begs the question: in what way are Muslims a group and to whom are they being compared? Here I can do no more than note that there is no satisfactory way of defining those people of non-European descent whom Canadians call 'visible minorities', and therefore no way of listing the constituent groups that make up this category. Nevertheless, it is clear that the estimated 15 million people in Europe who are subjectively or objectively Muslim, whatever their additional identities, form the single largest group of those who are the source of public anxieties.

Muslims are not, however, a homogeneous group. Some Muslims are devout but apolitical; some are political but do not see their politics as being 'Islamic' (indeed, may even be anti-Islamic). Some identify more with a nationality of origin, such as Turkish; others with the nationality of settlement and perhaps citizenship, such as French. Some prioritise fund-raising for mosques, others campaigns against discrimination, unemployment or Zionism. For some, the Ayatollah Khomeini is a hero and Osama bin Laden an inspiration; for others, the same may be said of Kemal Ataturk or even Margaret Thatcher (who helped create a swathe of Asian millionaires in Britain, brought in Arab capital and was one of the first to call for Nato action to protect Muslims in Bosnia).

The category 'Muslim', then, is as internally diverse as, say, 'Christian' or 'Belgian' or 'middle-class', or any other category helpful in ordering our understanding of contemporary Europe. But just as internal diversity does not lead to the abandonment of social concepts in general, the same is true of the category 'Muslim'.

My contention, then, within the limitations of all social categories, is that Muslim is as useful a category for identifying 'visible minorities' as country of origin - the most typical basis for data collection and labelling. It points to people whose loyalties, enmities, networks, norms, debates, forms of authority, reactions to social circumstances and perception by others cannot all be explained without invoking some understanding of Muslims.

Muslims in Europe do not form a single political bloc or class formation, although they are disproportionately among the lowest-paid, unemployed and under-employed. Muslims also have the most extensive and developed discourses of unity, common circumstance and common victimhood among peoples of non-European Union origin within the EU. This sense of community may be partial, may depend upon context and crisis, may coexist with other overlapping or competing commitments or aspirations; but it is an actual or latent 'Us', partly dependent upon others seeing Muslims and partly causing others to see Muslims as a 'Them'.

For many years, Muslims have been the principal victims of the bloodshed that has produced Europe's asylum seekers (think of Palestine, Somalia, Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan) and so are vulnerable to the anti-refugee mood and policies in the EU today. This, of course, also affects Muslim residents and citizens, and the situation has been thrown into sharp relief by 11 September 2001 and its aftermath.


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