Muslims and the State in Britain, France, and Germany By Joel S. Fetzer and J. Christopher Soper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 208 pages.)

Abstract

The expanding Muslim communities in Western Europe have become a
source of consternation in European capitals. Central to the issue of
Europe’s growing Muslim population is how far the secular state is willing
to accommodate religious practices deemed to be antithetical to “European”
values. Fetzer and Soper’s timely comparative study effectively addresses
the issue’s historical foundations as well as clearly explains the European
Muslims’ disparate political responses.
The authors’ central focus is how three core European states have
accommodated the needs of Muslims flooding their borders since the 1960s.
Exploring Europe’s surprisingly disjointed response to Muslim immigration
proves to be both theoretically interesting and an invaluable exercise in
debating what options are available to elected governments that are being
increasingly pressured by right-wing activism when it comes to accommodate
the practice of Islam in Europe.
The questions raised in the book’s six chapters, three of which are dedicated
to the countries in question and the others to presenting the data collected
via the authors’ surveys, should prove helpful to larger discussions in
European studies about what the contemporary dilemmas facing Germany,
Britain, and France are in the context of the so-called war on terrorism.
While most studies on Islam in Europe, particularly migration and gender
studies, focus on how Muslims mobilize their socioeconomic resources,
Fetzer and Soper contend that developing a public policy on Muslim religious
(and political) rights is actually mediated in significant ways by the
different institutional church/state patterns within each country.
This move away from the assumption that Muslims, if organized in the
right way, could expect certain institutional concessions in “democratic
Europe” proves to be a helpful intervention into a sometimes doctrinally ...