Dynamics of contestation over Islamic religious rights in Western Europe

Abstract

All European countries are confronted with claims by Islamic groups for religious rights in the public domain, as well as counterclaims by those who want to deny Muslims such rights. Examples are controversies over mosque construction, religious education and the right to wear headscarves and burqas. We show that across European countries there are striking differences in the kind of rights for Muslims around which public conflicts centre. Issues that are highly controversial in some countries are entirely absent from the debate in other countries. We explain these differences with reference to national path dependencies resulting from existing church–state arrangements and immigrant integration policy traditions. Using the method of political claims analysis, we conducted analyses of the German, Swiss, Dutch, Belgian, French and UK media debates on religious rights for Muslims, based on a selection of 30 national newspapers for the period 1999–2008.

Islamism and gender relations in the Muslim world as reflected in recent World Values Survey data

“…A data oriented study, what accepting "wearing the veil" implies and what it does not, is all the more necessary, since many earlier studies on the subject (Carol and Koopmans, 2013;Ghumman and Ryan, 2013;Göle, 2014;Helbling, 2014) by and large eluded the question on what actually proponents and opponents of the veil among Muslim publics actually think on the subject themselves, and how these opinions correlate with other attitudes, from democracy to trust in central state security institutions, the separation of religion and state, the overall advancement of women in society and central personal values, manifesting themselves in the opinions on whether children should be educated to be tolerant or obedient.…”

How ordinary people view Muslim group rights in Britain, the Netherlands, France and Germany: significant ‘gaps’ between majorities and Muslims?

“…While in France, Muslims face very high barriers to religious rights, because Christian churches have historically been denied many privileges and rights within a context of strict state secularism. This is supported by the empirical findings of the Immigrant Citizenship Rights Indicators (ICRI) which uses a battery of 14 indicators for each country's policies for extending rights to Muslims-for example, allowing Islamic religious classes in state schools; allowing Islamic call to prayer-that are coded on a five-point scale (−1 to +1, with +1 indicating the most accommodating policy) (see, Carol and Koopmans 2013). According to these ICRI indicators, in 2008, the Netherlands (0.79) and Britain (0.64) were relatively expansive for granting religious rights to Muslims, while Germany (−0.11) and especially France (−0.25), were relatively restrictive (see also, Koopmans 2013, 156).…”

“…This requirement for formal status has proven to be a barrier that has made it relatively difficult for Muslims to gain group rights (see e.g. Laurence 2012;Carol and Koopmans 2013). In addition, a strong imprint of Christianity remains in German liberalism that has been less accommodating than the establishment Church variant in Britain.…”

“…There is not space to undertake a full analysis of public debates, so we draw on earlier findings from EurIslam (Carol and Koopmans 2013), but add a new analysis that compares the overall the degrees and forms of contestation in the four countries' national public debates over Muslim group rights. This matters for our study because it allows us to relate the way that (mostly elite) political actors contest Muslim group rights back to ordinary people's opinions on the same type of issues.…”

The Limits of European Islam: Turkish Islamic Umbrella Organizations and their Relations with Host Countries—France and Germany

“…6 Focusing on Islamic umbrella organizations is essential because as the de facto representatives of Islam in Europe they constitute the most important claims-making actors. 7 Furthermore, Islamic organizations have become especially important players in the wake of the "Islamization" of migration since the 9/11 attacks. 8 I argue that the Turkish Islamic umbrella organizations in Germany are more critical of host-state policies and policy-makers than those in France.…”