• DOI:10.1080/13602000802080486
• Corpus ID: 144021468

Modernization, Identity and Integration: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Islam in Europe

@article{Jacoby2008ModernizationIA,
  title={Modernization, Identity and Integration: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Islam in Europe},
  author={Wade. Jacoby and Hakan Yavuz},
  journal={Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs},
  year={2008},
  volume={28},
  pages={1 - 6}
}

• W. Jacoby, H. Yavuz
• Published 1 April 2008
• Political Science, Sociology
• Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs

Despite a recent flurry of publications, Muslim communities in Europe remain one of the least studied areas in European politics. While earlier studies on Muslim communities were mostly carried out by political scientists, in recent years sociologists and historians have begun to join the debate. Moreover, in the past decade, scholars have started to examine both the demands of Europe’s Muslim communities and the responses of the host societies. Three major real world turning points have stimulated this upsurge of interest. First, the Bosnian War – a war against a largely Muslim community – helped politicize European Muslims. It raised the larger community’s political consciousness and mobilized many Muslims on behalf of the endangered Bosniaks. The second major turning point was the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States. Notably, several of the attackers had lived in Europe prior to entering the United States. A third turning point was the London andMadrid bombings in 2004 and 2005, each perpetrated apparently by freelance groups with a mix of firstand second-generation Muslim immigrants. Collectively, these turning points all provoked scholars to investigate European Islam as a source of radical politics. Post-2001 studies have typically framed the demands ofMuslim communities as a security challenge, and almost all recent studies in political science have tried to understand Muslim communities’ ties either to terrorism or radicalism. In recent years, anthropologists and legal scholars have taken somewhat broader approaches in their studies of the Muslim communities in Europe. Several studies examine the evolution of Islamic identity in different European institutional contexts. These studies have revolved around political identity, the “ethnicization” of religious identity, political participation, citizenship, and the legalization of Muslim demands. However, there remain very few studies that examine and interpret the demands and practices of diverse Muslim communities in Europe. Thus, a key question is how can we study the diversity of Muslims in Europe?