European born Muslims and their identity – developments and formations

Overview

The arguments and frameworks presented in preceding chapters offer a valuable structure for comprehensive analysis of European Muslim identities, their formation, developments and shifts. The focus of this chapter will be on European Muslims, particularly those born or raised in Europe, thus primarily children of Muslim migrants who constitute the second or in some cases third and fourth generation. Currently, Muslims represent the largest religious minority in Europe,

predominantly in Western Europe with countries such as France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK where Muslim communities represent a sizeable proportion of the population. Discussions about Muslim integration are flooding European media and politics, debating the value of multiculturalism and Muslim propensity to remain insular. As AlSayyad and Castells (2002) point out ‘Muslims are not

77 only the most numerous of the new immigrant populations, but culturally, they seem the most distinctive, and to many (in the host cultures, at least) they seem the most difficult to absorb’ (2002: 54). European Muslims are often charged with split loyalties, safeguarding hybrid identity,

constructed along the lines of religion and cultural heritage. Indeed, this perception of European Muslim population is not entirely unjustified. The hypothesis (H1) presented in this thesis illustrates that identities, or the ‘self’, always create the ‘other’, but also that they are conditioned by internal and external perceptions. Thus, how we perceive ourselves is inherently conditioned by how we are seen by the others around us, and European Muslims are no exception to this.

It is often argued that social and economic conditions of Muslim populations are comparatively weak and below that of local populations. By and large, evidence suggests that European Muslims are often marginalised, live in relative poverty in comparison to home communities, and experience racial or religious discrimination; hitherto, many European Muslims move within a lower end of social strata. The matters are interrelated and exacerbated with young Muslims frequently charged with being impervious to integration. There is a pattern evolving in the Western nation states centred on the integration of young European Muslims and their allegedly increasing participation in Islamic political organisations and structures, such as Muslim Brotherhood or Hizb ut-Tahrir which are connected to the Salafi tradition. Frequently, Muslim loyalties are questioned with religious belonging as an overarching form of their identification. This argument is often embedded within the concept of return to ‘traditional’ Islam, claiming that increasing number of young European Muslims search for a new meaning within Islam in its traditional form. Salafi and Tabligh organisations in particular are charged with encouraging the young European Muslims to return to traditional Islam, free from Western influence, fostering segregation of young European Muslims from the rest of the community. The question of traditional Islam has arguably become increasingly important in the identification and self-understanding of European Muslims therefore its precise role and meaning will be examined throughout the chapter and tested in the empirical research. Expanding on the premise of traditional Islam, Parekh puts forward another important argument suggesting that some young Muslims are increasingly resenting the cultural heritage of their parents and see it as

submissive and weak. As Parekh explains, ‘the fact that many young Muslims were embarrassed by some aspects of their parental culture reinforced the desire to return to the ‘true principles’ of Islam’ (Parekh, 2008: 101). Indeed, the difference between identity of young Muslim generation born or raised in Europe and that of their parents is pivotal in our understanding of identity shifts and developments.

78 Different approaches, different Muslim groups

Essentially, one of the common denominators recurring in the disciplines seeking to uncover

developments and formations of European Muslim identity is a perception of homogenous European Muslim population. This is in addition to increasing number of Muslim and non-Muslim organisations who claim to speak on behalf of, or about, all Muslims in Europe and across the world. European Muslims can be hardly labelled as a homogenous group, but this common misconception distorted numerous governmental policies and research reports. In fact, European Muslims replicate a cultural mosaic containing several fragments, each representing a unique culture and identity in addition to the shared Muslim identity. There are Muslims of diverse ethnic origins with distinct customs, languages and fundamentally, depending on the country of origin, with distinct Islamic traditions. Shia and Sunni are two main factions within Islam, with the latter compromising a majority of Muslims in the world, and specifically in Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia and most of the Arab Middle East and Africa, with some smaller factions such as Salafis and Wahhabis located in Saudi Arabia. Shiites, on the other hand, comprise the majority in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Azerbaijan and Bahrain. Critically, within the European context the widely applied label, or category, of a ‘Muslim’ is in itself misleading. It assumes a certain level of devoutness which goes hand in hand with the expectation of regular mosque attendance and other prescribed religious activities. The self-identification as a Muslim, however, comprises a diverse group with some of its members attending mosques regularly, others attending rarely or only during religious festivities.

European perceptions of Muslim communities reflect a mixed picture whereby Muslim communities fail to be integrated and often hold on to what are perceived to be clashing values and traditions. Moreover, European Muslims are frequently questioned on their loyalties, in particular their attachment and belonging to the country of their residence, with some claiming that Muslim loyalties are split and compromised due to their faith. Crucially, as will be explained, it is common for Europeans to criticise religion through literature or art, most Europeans become wary of

communities resisting what is in the European context seen as one of the key democratic principles, the freedom of speech. European history has its moments of shame such as Crystal Nacht when the Nazis burned books or when totalitarian regimes forbade books, films and art. Hence, Europeans are suspicious of any such behaviour and therefore it is very difficult for them to accept actions of some of the European Muslim communities, for instance the book burning of Satanic Verses or murder of Dutch film maker Theo Van Gogh. As will be explored in the next chapter, the scale to which are these suspicions embedded within the European society vary and often depend on historical

79 connections and ties with the specific Muslim group. Anwar (2008) for instance, explains that existence of colonial links was pivotal for new arrivals from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or West Indies and significantly conditioned the identity formation of future generations. These historical connections are at the heart of identity related frictions between the individual Muslim communities in Europe.

The first generation of Muslim immigrants often settled in poor and deprived areas where many of them, years later, still live today. It was common for this generation to keep close ties with home countries and hold on to their cultural traditions and collective identities which were confined to the private sphere, away from the state. As chapter 1 outlined, the notions of cultural attachment, national loyalties and belonging are deeply embedded within each individual and collective, and thus are inherently difficult for any nation state to shift or replace with a different identity. Hence, identity of the first generation was utterly immersed in their home culture and traditions. Indeed, the first generation settling in Europe regarded themselves as the ‘other’ in juxtaposition to the home population, and as argued by Malik (2009) in his rather cynical view, ‘the first generation of post-war immigrants had largely accepted racism as a fact of life, they had kept their heads down and got on with the job of survival’ (2009: 40). This argument underpins the hypothesis (H2) of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ where the self-perceptions of the first generation are largely parallel to the outer perceptions of the home population. In this instance, the two are congruent. Identity formation of the second and third generation is, however, removed from the congruent, no less because the second generation was born and/or raised in Europe and its members consider themselves part of the wider society with equal rights and opportunities. This growing disparity is abundantly evident as explained in Parekh’s statement:

Having grown up in a European society, young Muslims did not share their parents’ inhibitions and diffidence, and well know how to find their way around in the political system. More importantly, they increasingly began to define themselves in exclusively religious terms, not as Pakistani or Algerian Muslims, as their parents had done, but simply as Muslims (Parekh, 2008: 101).

Shaping of religious identity

Crux of this thesis centres on European Muslim identity in the social and political realm which is ultimately shaped by perceptions of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’. These perceptions perform the role of mirrors, whereby on one hand they offer us a glance of ourselves which is vital to our own

80 understanding of the world around us and who we are. On the other hand, they act as platforms through which we recognise and characterise the others. This argument characterises the strengths of group belonging, where we feel strong connection or a bond with the ‘self’, while the ‘other’ often represents those who are different to ‘us’ ethnically, racially or culturally. Indeed, this twofold perception is essential in the framework of European Muslim identity formation, notably the construction of Muslim belonging and religious identity (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000; Amghar, Boubekeur & Emerson, 2007; Malik, 2009; Triandafyllidou, 2001; Yuval – Davis, 2006).

Drawing on their case study of Muslims born in France and Germany, Duderia (2008) and Hashmi (2000) refer to the nexus between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’. Duderia suggests that in the case of European Muslims, the idea of the ‘self’ developed into the socio-religious identity similar to the principle of ummah as opposed to the ‘other’ which refers to the broader socio-cultural identity of the West based upon the Judeo-Christian tradition. Duderia’s argument implies fixed identities which are clearly categorised into ‘us’ and ‘them’. The analysis presented throughout this thesis, however, proposes that identities are constructed and as such are constantly shifting. To this end, discourses of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ suggest that mutual perceptions are pivotal in European Muslim identity construction and community cohesion and most importantly that these can changed. It is essential to understand that Muslim identity is conditioned by the perceptions of the local population, the mechanisms in place by the state but also by the Muslim community

themselves. Thus, tying this argument with the concept of national identity, stressing the religious identity over and beyond any other form of identification and assigning negative association with it, will contribute to such self-perceptions.

Examining Muslim self-perceptions is a subjective and arbitrary task, running the risk of false conclusions. Construction of the European Muslim identity has been extensively debated in the public and academic domain particularly in connection with radicalisation and terrorism. No doubt, analysis of European Muslim identity formation can provide useful answers to these critical issues. Previous chapters, however, addressed the complexities of identity formations and its nuances highlighting the importance of identity analysis within the realm of the nation states and to an extent the European Union. The question of Muslim radicalisation is simply a by-product of these complex issues and should not overshadow them. It is these developments that shape and underpin future formation of Muslim identity, whereby depending on the policies of the country of residence and country of origin, European Muslims develop identities combining a mix of their parents’

81 culture, which they may resist, together with the culture of their host country and the religious tradition.

Tibi (2010) has made some interesting observations in relation to Muslim religious identity, and the paradigm of ummah in particular. Ummah is an ethnically blind concept, uniting all Muslims regardless of their ethnicity or country of origin. Nonetheless, as outlined by Tibi ‘in the European diaspora ummah becomes an ethnicized community on which the constructed identity rests’ (2010: 131). Indeed, Roy (1999) expands on Tibi’s argument by putting forward interesting hypothesis exploring the nexus between religion, ethnicity and new forms of identity:

Religion allows one to start from noting: it is a code, not a culture; one can learn to be a believer, using any language and living in any society; religion is now the maker of a new invented ‘ethnicity’, void of culture, but expressing a

reconstructed identity in search of recognition (Roy, 1999: 63).

Roy’s argument suggests a multi-layer level of analysis, probing deep into the core of identity formation. Assessing European Muslim identities as a standalone concept framed only within Islamic radicalisation bypasses a number of dynamics from within the identity equation. Ummah is

perceived as an organic community which operates as one body, thus if one finger hurts, the whole arm hurts and therefore the whole body hurts. This has significant consequences for cultural clashes or controversies between the European Muslims and Europeans as by default they involve all of Europe’s Muslim population and in some instances reach Muslims worldwide. The challenges tied in with analysis of Muslim communities in Europe therefore relate to the heterogeneous character of European Muslim population complicated by the binding concept of ummah. This also includes the nation state policies which are frequently conditioned by historical and recent events, often in the form of controversies or ‘clashes’ between the local and Muslim communities. The following section explores some of the recent or most prominent disputes between European Muslims and European populations. The focus is on controversies leading to clashes of values or cultures, contributing to public debates on Muslim integration in Europe. Equally, it centres on controversies which support shifts in Muslim identity as the ‘other’. It also investigates the role of media in portraying European Muslims as different, opposed to European values or as anti-liberal. Hence, this chapter aims to critically evaluate these claims and controversies of recent years and frame them with the proposed hypotheses (H1 and H2) of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’.

82