This document is an introduction to the edited volume "Islam and Political-Cultural Europe." It provides brief biographies of the editors and contributors and acknowledges their institutions and organizations. The introduction also lists abbreviations used in the volume and provides a short overview of the contents and topics covered in the various chapters.

2. Islam and Political-Cultural Europe

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4. Islam and Political-Cultural
Europe
Edited by
W. Cole Durham, Jr.
Brigham Young University, USA
David M. Kirkham
Brigham Young University, USA
Tore Lindholm
University of Oslo, Norway

5. III
Printed and bound in Great Britain by the
MPG Books Group, UK.
© W. Cole Durham, Jr., David M. Kirkham,Tore Lindholm and the contributors 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
W. Cole Durham, Jr., David M. Kirkham and Tore Lindholm have asserted their right under
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
Published by
Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company
Wey Court East 110 Cherry Street
Union Road Suite 3–1
Farnham Burlington, VT 05401–3818
Surrey, GU9 7PT USA
England
www.ashgate.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Durham, W. Cole, 1948–
Islam and political-cultural Europe.
1. Muslims – Europe – Social conditions – 21st century. 2. Muslims – Cultural
assimilation – Europe. 3. Islam and civil society – Europe.
I. Title II. Kirkham, David M. III. Lindholm, Tore.
305.6’97’094–dc23
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Islam and political-cultural Europe / edited by W. Cole Durham, Jr., David M. Kirkham
and Tore Lindholm.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–1–4094–5299–7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Islam – Europe. 2. Muslims – Europe. 3. Political culture – Europe. 4. Muslims –
Legal status, laws, etc. – Europe.
I. Durham, W. Cole, 1948– II. Kirkham, David M. III. Lindholm, Tore.
BP65.A1I646 2013
305.6’97094–dc23
ISBN 9781409452997 (hbk)
ISBN 9781409453000 (ebk – PDF)
ISBN 9781409472315 (ebk – ePUB)

6. Contents
List of Contributors vii
Acknowledgments xiii
List of Abbreviations xv
Introduction 1
David M. Kirkham
Part I Islam and Legaland Political Culture in
European Society: An Overview
1 Liberal Secularism and European Islam: A Challenge to
Muslims and Non-Muslims 7
Heiner Bielefeldt
2 Muslim Minorities and Democracy: Battle of Memories versus
Genuine Integration 21
Guy Haarscher
Part II Law and Politics: Country Case Studies
3 Islam and the Law in Germany and Europe 47
Mathias Rohe
4 Muslims in Belgium 71
Rik Torfs
5 Private International Law: When Choice of Law Principles
Invoke Islamic Rules—A French Perspective 87
Isabelle Barrière Brousse
Part III Education and Finance
6 The Training of Imams 107
Silvio Ferrari

7. Islam and Political-Cultural Europevi
7 Secularism, Schools and Religious Affiliation: For a
Demanding Account of Law no. 2004-228 of March 15, 2004 117
Alain Garay
8 Religion, Education, and the Turkish Constitution: A Critical
Assessment 147
Levent Köker
9 Islamic Religious Education in Bosnia and Herzegovina:
Between Coexistence and Segregation 165
Önder Çetin
10 Islamic Banking and Finance: Transplantable Models from
Malaysia to the EU?
189
Stefan Messmann
Part IV Extremism and Security
11 The Danish Cartoons Crisis Revisited 217
Lisbet Christoffersen
12 Islam, Muslims and Islamism: On Culturalization and
Securitization 229
Petra Weyland
13 Countering Extremist Ideological Foundations for Terrorism:
Some Reflections 245
Sharyl Cross
Bibliography 265
Index 281

8. List of Contributors
Heiner Bielefeldt is the present United Nations Special Rapporteur for Freedom
of Religion and Belief and a professor of human rights and human-rights policy
at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He has also served
as the director of the German Institute for Human Rights, the Chair of Public Law
and Legal Philosophy at the University of Bielefeld, and worked at the University
of Mannheim. Professor Bielefeldt is involved in interfaith dialogue and is a
member of the Trustees of the Muslim Academy in Germany and the Trustees of
the Christian-Islamic society. He studied philosophy, theology, and history at the
Universities of Bonn and Tübingen (Germany) where he received a Ph.D. Among
his publications are several books on political philosophy and human rights. He
is also currently a member of the advisory board of the Journal of Human Rights.
Isabelle Barrière Brousse is a professor at Paul Cézanne UniversityAix Marseille
II and Deputy Director of the Peter Kayser Center. She is also an associate
member of the CREDIMI Centre du droit des marchés et des investissements
internationaux, Dijon, France. Her main field of research is private international
law. Professor Brousse recently published “Le Traité de Lisbonne et le Droit
International Privé” in the Journal du Droit International (1/2010, 3–34) and “Le
juge civil français face aux règles religieuses,” in Annuaire Droit et Religions, Vol.
4, 2009–10 PUAM, 399–412.
Önder Çetin is a professor at Fatih University in Istanbul. He is a member
of the Islam in South East Europe Forum and the Association for the Study
of Nationalities. He received his bachelor’s degree in international relations
from Faith University, his MA in conflict analysis and resolution from Sabanci
University, and his Ph.D. from Leiden University in the Netherlands. Professor
Çetin has published numerous scholarly articles and contributed books on ethno-
religious conflicts, religious peace building, religious nationalism in the Balkans
and Islam in South-East Europe.
Lisbet Christoffersen is a professor of law, religion and society at the Department
of Society and Globalization at Roskilde University. She is also adjunct professor
of law and religions with ecclesiastical law at the University of Copenhagen.
Professor Christofferson has published over 100 articles and edited various books
on issues of law and religion.
Sharyl Cross is a professor at the George C. Marshall European Center for
Security Studies where she directed a multi-year project on countering violent

9. Islam and Political-Cultural Europeviii
and extremist ideology, involving participation from more than 60 nations. She
lectures at the NATO school in Germany, is a tenured full professor in political
science at San Jose State University, and was a visiting distinguished professor of
political science at the United States Air Force Academy. Professor Cross earned
a Ph.D. in political science from UCLA and held a post-doctoral fellowship at
the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. She has consulted for the US State
Department, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and United States European
Command on terrorism and other international security topics. She has co-edited
on international security topics with specialists from Russia and China, and she
has published books and articles in various journals in several countries.
W. Cole Durham, Jr. is the director of the International Center for Law and
Religion Studies and the Susa Young Gates University Professor of Law at J.
Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University. Professor Durham’s
multiple responsibilities include serving as member of the OSCE/ODIHR
Advisory Council on Freedom of Religion or Belief, and as vice president of the
International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies. A graduate of Harvard
College and Harvard Law School, Professor Durham has been heavily involved
in comparative constitutional law and church-state relations throughout his career.
He has published widely on comparative law and has served as secretary of the
American Society of Comparative Law and as the chair of both the Comparative
Law Section and the Law and Religion Section of the American Association of
Law Schools. He is a member of several US and international advisory boards
dealing with religious freedom and church-state relations.
Silvio Ferrari is a professor at the Universities of Milan and Leuven, where he
teaches Law and Religion and Canon Law. He has been visiting professor in Paris
(École Pratique des Hautes Études) and Berkeley (University of California) and
works for many international organizations, including the European Union and the
Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is the President of
ICLARS (International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies) and a co-founder
of the European Consortium for Church and State Research. Professor Ferrari is
a member of the Scientific Committee of the Institut Européen en Sciences des
Religions (EPHE, Paris) and of the Board of Expert of the International Religious
LibertyAssociation. His main fields of interest are law and religion issues in Western
Europe, comparative law of religions, and relations between Israel and the Vatican.
Alain Garay is a French lawyer at the Court of Appeals of Paris and teaches
religious affairs law at the University of Aix-Marseille III. He is the French expert
for the OSCE/ODIHR and a member of the OSCE steering committee. He has also
had consultative status with the United Nations and Council of Europe. Professor
Garay is a member of the editorial boards of the Directory of Law and Religion and
Consciousness and Freedom. He graduated from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques
de Bordeaux, is a Graduate of the National Tax, and is a Master of Science, Law

10. List of Contributors ix
and Social Change from the University Aix-Marseille III. Professor Garay has
published over 40 articles in various scholarly journals.
Guy Haarscher is a professor of philosophy and law who has taught in his native
Brussels at the European Academy for the Theory of Law and at the Central
European University in Budapest. He also lectured as a visiting fellow at both the
Australian National University and Duke University in North Carolina. Professor
Haarscher is the author of several articles and books. He received the Belgian
Academy prize in 1981 for his book on Marx and the prize from the French-
Speaking Community of Belgium in 1989 for his book on human rights.
David M. Kirkham, Ph.D., J.D., is Senior Fellow for Comparative Law and
International Policy at the BYU International Center for Law and Religion
Studies, BYU Law School, and BYU Associate Professor of Political Science.
David has served as Associate Dean and Professor of International Politics and
Democratic Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security
Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany; as Director of International Plans
and Programs, Director of International History, andAssociate Professor of History
at the United States Air Force Academy, and as a Senior Humanitarian Affairs
Officer at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
in Geneva, Switzerland. He has published numerous articles and edited several
books on various aspects of international affairs, human rights, democratization,
and religious freedom.
Levent Köker is a professor of public law and political theory atAtilim University
in Turkey. He has also taught at the Gazi University, Middle East Technical
University, Billkent University, Ankara University, and Near East University Law
School. He graduated from Ankara University in law and political science. He was
a visiting scholar at Mansfield College, Oxford University and a Fulbright fellow
at Princeton University Center of International Studies. He has published many
articles on democracy and governance in both Turkish and English.
Tore Lindholm is emeritus professor (philosophy) at the Norwegian Centre for
Human Rights, University of Oslo and a board member of the Oslo Coalition on
Freedom of Religion or Belief and of the Human Rights Committee of the Church
of Norway. His research interests focus on (1) the grounds for embracing universal
human rights, and in particular the right to freedom of religion or belief; and (2)
the two-way traffic between human rights and religions (especially Christianity
and Islam). He co-edited, with Cole Durham and Bahia Tahzib-Lie, Facilitating
Freedom of Religion or Belief: A Deskbook (2004), published also in Indonesian
and Russian with a Chinese translation under way. Lindholm co-initiated and sat
on the steering committee of the Norwegian Research Council Research Program
in Ethics 1990–2001. He also co-edited Islamic Law Reform and Human Rights:
Challenges and Rejoinders (1993) and co-published Religious Commitment and

11. Islam and Political-Cultural Europex
Social Integration: Are There Significant Links? A Pilot Study of Muslims in
the Oslo Area with a Family Background from Pakistan (2011). He has written
numerous other articles on ethics and human rights.
Stefan Messmann, Professor of International Business Law at Central European
University (CEU) in Budapest since 1998, is currently head of the CEU Legal
Studies Department. He also served as Academic Pro-Rector of CEU between
1999 and 2003. Professor Messmann was born in Serbia, educated in Germany and
Switzerland and is of German nationality. He obtained his License en droit 1970
in Geneva and his Doctorat en droit 1978 in Fribourg. Before joining CEU, he
held senior international legal and executive positions with Volkswagen in China
and Germany and with Umformtechnkik GmbH in Germany. Speaking several
languages, Professor Messmann has extensively written and lectured on finance,
business and international law in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, including
on foot-binding practices and Jews in China. In 2006, he received the Dr. Elemér
Hantos Prize (http://www.hantosprize.org) for co-editing, with Professor Tibor
Tajti, the book “Investing in South Eastern Europe”. He is also Co-Editor and a
member of the Advisory Board of the European Journal of Sinology.
Mathias Rohe is a professor of civil law, private international and comparative
law at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg where he has
served in the Office of the Dean of the Faculty of Law. He was also judge on the
Court of Appeals at Nuremberg from 2001 to 2007. He is the founding director of
the Erlangen Center for Islam and the Law in Europe, is a trustee of the Christian-
Islamic Society, and is the co-founder and former president of the Society for
Arab and Islamic Law (GAIR). Professor Rohe studied law and Islamic studies
in Damascus and Tubingen and earned a Ph.D. in private international law. His
research interests focus on the legal status of Islam in Germany and Europe.
Rik Torfs is a member of the Belgian Senate and a professor at the Catholic
University of Leuven (Belgium), where he was Dean of the Faculty of Canon Law.
He has been a visiting professor at both the University of Strasbourg in France and the
University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. In 2009 he became a member of the
Commission for Intercultural Dialogue (Assises de l’Interculturalité) of the Belgian
government. Professor Torfs is the author of nearly 350 articles and numerous books
dealing with canon law, law, and Church and State relationships. He is also the
editor of the European Journal for Church and State Research, is a member of the
Board of Directors of the European Consortium for State-Church Research, and is a
newspaper columnist and has been the host of his own television program.
Petra Weyland is a professor of Middle Eastern affairs in the George C. Marshall
Center’s College of International and Security Studies. She has also been a
professor at the German Armed Forces Command and Staff College and a lecturer
and research fellow at the Universities of Bielefeld and Hamburg. Earlier Professor

12. List of Contributors xi
Weyland was a research fellow at the German Orient Institute in Istanbul and at
the American University in Cairo where she researched Egyptian labor migration
to Iraq. She received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of
Bielefeld, Germany and a Master of Arts degree in Islamic Sciences from the
University of Bonn, Germany. Her expertise is in Islam, the peace process in the
Middle East, civil-military cooperation, and intercultural competence.

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14. Acknowledgments
Islam and Political-Cultural Europe is the product of well-studied minds and
devoted hands. In addition to the author contributors, we would like to thank
those who over many months contributed editing, organization, translation, and
other talents to the making of this volume. Jordan Teuscher, Chris Sorensen, and
Keith Allred played multiple roles: Jordan as editor, proofreader, and technician;
Chris as editor, designer, and translator; Keith as editor and substantive content
consultant. Aaron Worthen, Rebecca Skabelund and Elizabeth Willian also logged
in untold hours with fine writing, editing, and revision skills.
Many of these contributed to this book’s forerunner, the 2012 Ashgate
publication Islam, Europe and Emerging Legal Issues. Christine Scott, an editor of
the first book, also cast a keen editor’s eye on first drafts of the Bielefeldt, Garay,
and Haarscher chapters in this volume. Chad McFadyen, Joseph Leavitt, and Julie
Slater contributed quality editing to both books. Shadman Bashir, in addition to
providing guidance on cultural sensitivities, was the inspiration behind the cover
design of both. Kristy Stewart took on the challenging task of indexing, with all its
complexities for these types of work.
We also very much appreciate the support of colleagues at the Brigham
Young University Law School International Center for Law and Religion Studies,
especially Deborah Wright, head administrative assistant, and Donlu Thayer, staff
attorney and the Center’s managing editor. Their smart contributions saved us
many hours of otherwise tedious labor.
The Ashgate editorial and publishing support team more than merits our deep
gratitude. These include (along with those whose off-stage contributions we never
saw) Beatrice Beaup, Sophie Lumley, Celia Barlow, and contract editor Albert
Stewart, all of whose work came together under the ever steady guidance of Sarah
Lloyd who has led the way for the production of both books.
MembersoftheStrasbourgConsortiumforFreedomofConscienceandReligion
at the European Court of Human Rights (http://www.strasbourgconsortium.org/)
and the Norwegian Center for Human Rights (http://www.jus.uio.no/smr/english/)
also contributed to the conception and completion of both works.
Finally, our families have, without complaint, stood by or retired alone during
more late nights of extra labor than good people should have to endure from those
who love them. Yet support us they have and we thank them from our hearts.
W. Cole Durham, Jr.
David M. Kirkham
Tore Lindholm

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16. List of Abbreviations
AIDLR National Office of the International Association for the Defense of
Religious Liberty
AKP Justice and Development Party, Turkey
BAFIA Banking and Financial Institutions Act of 1989
BBC British Broadcasting Company
BGB German Civil Code
BNM Bank Negara Malaysia
CASD Center for High Defense Studies
CESEDA Code Entry and Stay of Foreigners and Asylum
CIST Countering Ideological Support for Terrorism
COE-DAT Center for Excellence Defense Against Terrorism
DITIB Diyanet Isleri Turk Islam Birligi
DOD Department of Defense
DM Deutschemark
ECHR European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights)
ECTS European Credit Transfer System
EGBGB Introductory Law to German Civil Code
EMB Islamic Cultural Center of Belgium
EU European Union
EUR Euro
EUMC European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia
GE General Electric
GWOT Global War on Terrorism
HKD Hong Kong Dollar
IBA Islamic Banking Act of 1983
IC Islamic Community
ICC Belgian Islamic Cultural Center
ICPR International Convention on Civil and Political Rights
IDB Islamic Development Bank
IHF International Helsinki Federation of Human Rights
IICA Investments Company of the Gulf (Bahamas)
LIBOR London Interbank Official Rate
NATO North American Trade Organization
NGO Non-governmental Organization
NSAC National Sharī’a Advisory Council on Islamic Banking and Takaful
OHR Office of the High Representative of the United Nations in Bosnia
and Herzegovina

17. Islam and Political-Cultural Europexvi
OIC Organization of the Islamic Conference
OSCE Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
PFE Partnership for Financial Excellence
PIL Private International Law
RS Republic of Serbia, within Bosnia
SGB Social Code of Great Britain
TCC Turkish Constitutional Court
TGNA Turkish Grand National Assembly
UAE United Arab Emirates
UCC Universite Catholique de Louvain
UDBA Bosnian State Security Directorate
UDHR Universal Declaration on Human Rights
UK United Kingdom
UN United Nations
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
US United States
USD United States Dollar
VRT Flemish Public Radio and Television
WMD Weapons of Mass Destruction

18. Introduction
David M. Kirkham
The “Arab Spring” of 2011 and its continuation, now a year later, into summer,
autumn, winter, and spring again, have highlighted to observers the world
over what Europeans have been seeing for many years: the significant forces
of democratic and Islamic culture meeting together on the same playing field.
Whether this meeting will ultimately be as allies or cultural rivals remains to be
seen. “What happened in the Arab world in 2011 was stunning,” writes Kenneth
M. Pollack. “Wondrous things happened. Tragic things happened. Other things
happened that only time will tell if they were good, bad, or something else
entirely. The result is that the Middle East will never be the same.”1
And likely neither will the rest of the world. But in Europe these forces
have been at play now for decades, often (though not always) without the drama
and flair of events in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, or Syria, but steady and in
deeply significant ways nonetheless. For observers, these developments can lead
to a certain amount of cognitive dissonance. The conceptions of side-by-side
Islamism (or political Islam) and an increasingly secular Europe can be difficult
for Western minds to reconcile, and yet they have come together for twenty-first
century Europeans in ways that demand understanding and accommodation—as
anything less would prove unhappy for all.
Islam and Political-Cultural Europe, a follow-up to Ashgate’s 2012
publication Islam, Europe and Emerging Legal Issues, takes on the challenge
of seeking and explaining real keys to this understanding. Whereas Emerging
Legal Issues focused primarily on Islam before the European Court of Human
Rights, however, this volume extends the discussion beyond law alone to other
political and cultural forces, the understanding of which is prerequisite to a long-
term, congenial cohabitation of modern European and Islamic societies.
The contributors to this book have made every effort to be fair and
complete in their analyses of those forces currently manifest within European
borders. Politics, law, education, macro-finance, and security questions feature
prominently in the discussions here entertained. The writers, keen observers who
include some of Europe’s foremost scholars on the subject, have spared neither
criticism nor commendation of both the secular and religious forces at work in
the post-World War European transformation. The book begins, in fact, with an
assumption that Islam, though not the lone cultural holdout, is certainly most
1
Kenneth M. Pollack, The Arab Awakening: America and the Transformation of the
Middle East. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2011, xi.

19. Islam and Political-Cultural Europe2
prominent in its resistance to the amalgamation of ideas and ideals taking place
in modern Europe. The violence, unjustly blamed on but irretrievably associated
with Muslims in the minds of many Europeans, has all the more underlined the
need for the perspectives of mutual understanding found here.
Those perspectives fittingly begin with Heiner Bielefeldt, UN Special
Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, who, in Chapter 1, sheds light
on Muslim understanding, even appreciation of the secular state, refuting the
stereotype that Islam is per se opposed to secularist governmental and social
constructs that provide religious freedom for all. Bielefeldt’s analysis creates
a link between a stronger secularism and freedom for religious minorities. In
Chapter 2, Professor Guy Haarscher carries forward the theme of religious
freedom, addressing the complicated issues, now manifest in Europe, which
arise from an inevitable tangle of religion and state.
While Europe as a whole faces the challenges addressed in these introductory
chapters, individual states are deciding, under the influence of their own unique
cultures and governments, the extent to which the law should influence or be
influenced by Islamic subculture. Case studies in the second section of the book
examine this process for three key countries. Professor Mathias Rohe discusses
alternative approaches that European Muslims have taken to their societies and
calls for optimism in Germany, where he sees a broad space for religious life and
norms, and where majorities of both Muslims and non-Muslims strive for peaceful
coexistence. Belgium, on the other hand, as explicated in Chapter 4 by Belgian
Senator and Professor Rik Torfs, is struggling to establish effective relations
between Islam and the government. In the context of an extensive chronology of
Muslim efforts towards official recognition, Professor Torfs explains how Islam
was forced to construct a representative body, unnatural to its organization as a
non-hierarchical religion, in order to interact with the government. Though Islam
is one of six legally recognized religions in Belgium, the recognition process
inadvertently marks it as a second-tier religion. Similarly, within a framework
of private international legal analysis, Professor Isabelle Barrière Brousse finds
conflict between French, African and Islamic law, as France attempts to balance
cultural concerns surrounding issues such as divorce and polygamy.
An understanding of Europe’s laws and political culture with regard to Islam
must consider more than governmental and legal structure, however. In any
developing subculture, two needs invariably arise: needs for education and for
financial security. In Part III, Chapter 6, Professor Silvio Ferrari examines the
training of Muslim imams in Western Europe. Religious training alone, he notes,
as in the case of non-Muslim clergy, will not suffice. State education for imams
improves assimilation as local language, history, and culture are passed down
within the Muslim community. This sort of cultural understanding, says Ferrari,
is critical. Without it, flare-ups and antagonisms occur of the kind addressed by
Alain Garay in Chapter 7. Garay discusses how, in hindsight, the 2004 French law
restricting the wearing of religious dress and symbols in public elementary schools

20. Introduction 3
poses major obstacles for Muslims, revealing the almost inevitable conflict that
occurs when two cultures living side by side do not understand one another.
Turkey also finds itself at a crossroads when it comes to religion and education.
Professor Levent Köker, in Chapter 8, examines alleged violations of freedom of
religion in educational provisions of the Turkish Constitution. Though the governing
document provides for both compulsory and optional religious instruction, the
relevantclauseisleftopentoaninterpretationthatoftenexcludesreligiousminorities.
For such countries, at a seeming stalemate regarding the intersection of religion and
educational issues, Dr. Őnder Çetin holds up a more optimistic example in Bosnia
and Herzegovina. A country which of necessity already has integrated traditional
Islamic education with modern educational structures, Bosnia and Herzegovina
provides a roadmap that other nations might adapt and adopt. By way of further
example, Professor Stefan Messmann urges in Chapter 10 that the finance world
take advantage of the tried and proven practices and policies of Malaysia.According
to Messmann, Malaysia offers the best model for transplanting Islamic banking and
finance to the European Union because this model is not exclusively Muslim; rather
it embraces coexisting legal and financial systems.
Beyond these institutional issues posed by Islamic growth in Europe the
concerns that weigh most on many Western minds are the potential or supposed
threats of religious extremism. Professor Lisbet Christoffersen initiates a dialogue
on this topic by revisiting the Danish cartoon crisis of 2005 and its aftermath. She
argues that the resulting debate about freedom of speech and blasphemy contributed
to a schism between secularists and religionists in Europe and, perhaps unfairly,
marked Islam as a national security issue. Further challenging Europe to reexamine
its relationships between religion and society, Professor Petra Weyland, in Chapter
12 traces the alienation of Muslim communities in Europe to Western (and some
Muslim) attitudes that Islamic traditions are simply incompatible with modern,
secular culture. Professor Sharyl Cross concludes the discussion with suggestions
for countering ideological support for extremism, noting that Europe must not
alienate moderate Islam and can avoid doing so through “unprecedented levels of
agreement regarding major objectives, communication, and coordination among
nations committed to protecting the world community” from terrorism. Such
cooperation will require greater international and inter-cultural communication,
interfaith dialogue, and consistency in policy application, which will in turn
produce more meaningful, respectful and effective counterterrorism efforts.
The Arab Spring has revealed turmoil in the domestic politics of Middle
Eastern nations unknown on such a scale since perhaps the end of the First
World War. When Western democracy and traditional cultures come together,
there must be adaptation on both sides for either to survive. It has been noted
that in many Middle Eastern countries, “mainstream Islamist groups operate as
a kind of state within a state with their own set of parallel institutions, including
hospitals, schools, banks, businesses, cooperatives, day care centers, social clubs,
facilities for the disabled and even boy scout troops. Millions of people across the

21. Islam and Political-Cultural Europe4
region depend on these vast social infrastructures.”2
The question remains how
far Europe is willing and should be willing to accommodate similar developments
in its midst. Either too much or too little assimilation of cultural subgroups can
threaten democratic institutions. Islam and Political-Cultural Europe presupposes
a need for reasoned, informed dialogue and introduces the thinking and interests
of peoples of goodwill to this multi-faceted question.
2
Shadi Hamid, “Islamists and the Brotherhood: Political Islam and theArab Spring,”
in Pollack, 31.

22. Part I
Islam and Legal and Political
Culture in European Society:
An Overview

23. This page has been left blank intentionally

24. Chapter 1
Liberal Secularism and European Islam:
A Challenge to Muslims and Non-Muslims
Heiner Bielefeldt
A Contentious Concept
Few political concepts have been subjected to more contentious interpretations than
the term “secularism.” This is due not only to the long and complicated history of
that concept,1
but also to the fact that for a period of more than a century positive
or negative attitudes towards secularism used to mark the watershed between
conflicting political and ideological camps in Western European societies. Whereas
some associated the process of political secularization with civilizational progress
and liberation from religious authoritarianism, others feared a general loss of
traditional religious values in society or even the advent of an era of nihilism. During
the German “Kulturkampf,” which peaked in the 1870s, the concept of secularism
functionedasthe“Shibboleth”betweenthefightingmovementsofliberalnationalism
and political Catholicism, as Hermann Lübbe has pointed out. Similar ideo­logical
battles occurred in other European countries as well, most notably in France, a
country which during the nineteenth century was heavily torn between the Catholic
tradition and the anti-clerical heritage of parts of the French enlightenment.2
In the course of the twentieth century, the situation changed considerably as
political secularism became more and more commonly accepted as an inherent part
of the self-description and self-understanding of European political culture. It is
meanwhile largely supported by mainstream Christian churches as well. And yet,
it would be a mistake to assume that the concept of secularism has altogether lost
its function as a marker of a particular political identity. What has in fact changed
is that, instead of serving to distinguish ideological and political camps within
Western European societies, secularism is now often invoked to define Western
political culture as a whole. At times, this leads to placing the “secularized West”
in a more or less irreconcilable antagonism to “non-Western” political cultures
based on religious values and norms. For instance, in Samuel Huntington’s global
political map, the secular state is located as an exclusive characteristic of what he
1
Compare H. Lübbe. Säkularisierung. Geschichte eines ideenpolitischen Begriffs.
Freiburg: Alber, 1965.
2
Compare J. Baubérot. La Laicité, Quel Heritage? De 1789 A Nos Jours. Geneva:
Labor et Fides, 1990, 37.

25. Islam and Political-Cultural Europe8
calls “the Western civilization,” which thereby supposedly differs essentially from
other civilizations, most notably Islam.3
Naturally, such a point of view—which,
incidentally, is shared by quite a number of Muslim authors as well—has disturbing
consequences for European Muslims, because it seems to preclude them from the
very possibility of integrating into the cultural and political framework of European
constitutions.
The purpose of this chapter is to form a non-polemical, “liberal” understanding
of political secularism based on freedom of religion or belief. I will point out that
secularism is indeed a significant component of a European liberal democratic
political order. To preserve its liberal nature, however, political secularism must
be clearly distinguished, first, from various secular “doctrines” and, second, from
cultural essentialist claims of secularism being an exclusively “Occidental” (or
Christian) achievement. Subsequently, I will give examples of an appreciation of
political secularism from religious perspectives, including Islamic perspectives.
The Liberal Concept of Political Secularism
The Secular Principle of Respectful Non-Identification
In modern liberal democracies secularism has the status of a second order
principle. This is to say that, rather than constituting a purpose in itself, political
secularism derives from a more important (first order) principle, namely freedom
of religion or belief, which itself has received international recognition as a
universal human right.4
Bearing this sequence in mind is important for preserving
the liberal essence of political secularism against ideologies which take secularism
as the paramount principle to which even freedom of religion or belief or other
human rights are to be subjected.
Against a typical misunderstanding, it should further be noted that, as a human
right, freedom of religion or belief is not confined to any particular domain of
human life, say, the private sphere or the realm of inner conviction. Beyond the
rights to choose, change and have a personal inner conviction, freedom of religion
or belief includes everybody’s right to shape their lives in conformity with the
requirements of their religious or non-religious belief systems, provided this
3
Compare S.P. Huntington. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World
Order. New York: Simon Schuster, 1996, 42.
4
Compare article 18 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)
and article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). For
a comprehensive discussion, see T. Lindholm, et al., editors. Philosophical and religious
justifications of freedom of religion or belief, in Facilitating Freedom of Religion or Belief:
A Deskbook. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2004.

26. Liberal Secularism and European Islam 9
does not infringe on the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.5
Living in
accordance with one’s religion or belief, however, in most cases involves aspects of
communitarian and public life, such as forming and joining religious communities
or conducting public processions, that is, external manifestations of a conviction
which also fall into the field of freedom of religion or belief.6
Moreover, since all human rights express respect for the equal dignity and
rights of all human beings,7
freedom of religion or belief also includes a concern
for equality. This implies, among other requirements, that states should ensure
that people of different religious or non-religious backgrounds enjoy equal rights
and have equal opportunities to participate in public debates or hold political
positions. It is for this reason that the state should not use and favor any particular
religion (or set of religions, for example, monotheistic reli­gions in general) as
the normative basis of its political order. In other words, the state is required not
to identify with any religion, which means that its order should be secular.8
The
secular principle of non-identification of state and religion thus derives from the
more general human rights principle of non-discrimination, which itself follows
from the equality in dignity and fundamental rights of all human beings.
Since it is out of respect for the religious or non-religious convictions of the
citizens that the secular state refrains from taking a par­ticular religion as the basis
of the political order, political secula­rism has a substantial moral basis in freedom
of religion or belief. Conservative critics, such as Carl Schmitt, are therefore
wrong in describing the secu­lar state in purely nega­tive terms as the result of
the modern “age of neutraliza­tion,”9
in which reli­gious and moral values, as
Schmitt argues, have ceased to play a role in public life. Rather than aiming at a
neutralization or privatization of religious values, political secularism is a second
order consequence of freedom of religion or belief which itself­­­­­­­points to the due
respect for every person’s equal dig­nity, a first order normative requirement on
which the constitu­tion of a secular democracy is ultimately based. The secular
principle of non-identification should be appreciated as deriving from a genuinely
moral concern. That is why it can be further qualified as a “prin­ciple of respectful
non-identification” of state and religion.
5
Compare D. Richter. Religions freiheit zwischen individueller Selbstbestimmung,
MinderheitenschutzundStaatskirchenrecht—Völker-undverfassungsrechtlichePerspektiven.
Beiträge zum ausländischen öffentlichen Recht und Völkerrecht, 146, 2001, 89–212.
6
Compare article 18 paragraph 3 ICCPR.
7
The starting point of the UDHR is “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the
equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” (preamble).
8
Under international human rights law, the existence of a state religion does not per
se constitute a violation of freedom of religion or belief. However, states must ensure that
this does not lead to de jure or de facto discrimination against followers of other religions
or beliefs.
9
C. Schmitt. Der Begriff des Politischen. Berlin: Duncker Humblot, 1963, 80.

27. Islam and Political-Cultural Europe10
Religion and Politics in Secular Democracy
Political secularism has often been misunderstood as implying a general
privatization of religions. By taking freedom of religion or belief as the basis
for an understanding of political secularism, it is possible to overcome that
misconception, because freedom of religion or belief no doubt includes the right
of persons and groups of individuals to publicly manifest their convictions and to
participate in public debates. Thus, the possibility for religious communi­ties to
present themselves in the public sphere is not only in accordance with political
secula­rism, it follows indeed from the very principle on which secularism, as a
liberal concept, is based.10
In addition, assuming that in a modern demo­cracy the
pu­blic sphere is the place in which poli­tics take place, it has been argued that
religious communities, being part of a society’s pu­blic life, also enjoy the right to
participate in politics.11
Indeed, what political secularism requires is not an abstract sepa­ration of
religion and politics, but a clear separation of church (or any religious community)
and state. This clarification­proves highly important. People who, in the name of
secula­rism, call for a general separation of religion and politics or a privatization of
religions or beliefs, possibly pave the way to a de facto marginalization of religion,
which some want to be completely banned from the public sphere. Such a policy,
however, would ultimately ­­­run counter to the liberal concept of politi­cal secu­la­rism
and could amount to an undue restriction of freedom of religion or belief.
Separation of reli­gion and state has a liberating effect for both sides: It gives
religious communities their independence from unwanted state inter­ven­tion, and
it makes it possible for people across religious boun­daries to enjoy their human
rights without discrimination on religious grounds. Incidentally, such insti­tu­
tional separation­does not preclude all forms of cooperation between state and
reli­gious communi­ties, as long as ­the mutual indepen­dence of both sides remains
uncompromised. Take the German example:Alt­hough in Germany an “established
religion”doesnotexist,12
atraditionofclosecooperationbetweenthestateandsome
reli­gious communities continues to be comparatively strong. Such cooperation is
10
Compare A.A. An-Na’im. Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of
Shari’a. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008, 36.
11
Compare J. Casanova. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1994.
12
T­he Weimar Constitution of 1919 abolished the system of established churches
(which had existed before on the basis of the “jus reformandi,” according to which the
territorial sovereign could decide on the official religion of his country). At the same time,
religious denominations, rather than being treated as ordinary societal associations, can
be accorded a special public corporate status (“Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts”)
connected with a number of practical, financial and institutional privileges. This status,
originally designed for Christian churches, has been opened for other denominations as
well, provided they give, by virtue of their organization and membership, some guarantee

28. Liberal Secularism and European Islam 11
not per se a violation of the principle of respectful non-identification, provided it
remains fair and inclusive, a provision which is not easy to fulfill.13
Anti-liberal Concepts of Secularism
Doctrinal Secularism
If we assume that political secularism is a second order principle based on respect
for freedom of religion or belief, it follows that secularism cannot constitute a
comprehensive belief system of its own.14
Indeed, political secularism, in its liberal
understanding, clearly differs from various secular doctrines, most of which emerged
in the nineteenth century when secularism was often propagated as a quasi-religious,
post-religious or anti-religious weltanschauung, historically supe­rior to traditional
religions. For instance, the “Secular Society” founded in London in the mid-nine­
teenth cen­tury, and the “German Association for Ethi­cal Culture” estab­lished a few
decades later, devoted themselves to a secularist missionary work com­parable in its
purpose and structure to the missio­nary work of the Christian churches. The fact that
the “Monistenbund,” a group of secularist-minded people headed by Dar­win’s ar­
dent dis­ciple Ernst Haeckel, published their own “Monist Sunday Sermons,” reveals
the quasi-religious claims of this compre­hensive secularist welt­anschau­ung. One
of the most prominent examples of doctrinal secularism is Auguste Comte’s vision
of a new positivistic “Reli­gion of Huma­nity” (1851). Comte demands that scienti­
fi­cal­ly trai­ned sociolo­gists work as “priests of humanity” and form a quasi-clerical
of durability. Compare G. Robbers. Religious Freedom in Germany. Brigham Young
University Law Review. 2001, 643–68.
13
So far, Muslim religious com­munities in Germany have largely been ex­cluded from
the established forms of cooperation. Mus­lim organiza­tions have therefore decided to use
political and juri­dical means in order to fight for equal treat­ment. Compare H. Bielefeldt.
Menschenrechte in der Einwanderungsgesellschaft. Plädoyer Für Einen Aufgeklärten
Multikulturalismus. Bielefeld: Transcript Publishing House, 2007, 99ff.
14
To give an example: The German constitution proclaims in article 1 the inalienable
dignity of every human being which the state is bound to respect and secure. The constitution
does not con­tain any guidelines, however, as to whether the profession of human dignity
should be viewed in the light of the Bible, in accordance with the Qur’an, or by reference
to non-reli­gious huma­nistic principles. It may be helpful to refer, in this context, to the di­
stinction between the “liberal concept of political justice” and “comprehensive doctrines”
which John Rawls has proposed. J. Rawls. Political Liberalism, New York City: Columbia
University Press, 1993. Political secularism, I would argue, is part of the libe­ral concept
of justice, but should not be turned into a comprehen­sive doctrine, as often happens. For
a systematic integration of Rawls’s idea of “overlapping consensus” into the discussion
of freedom of religion compare Lindholm, T. Philosophical and religious justifications of
freedom of religion or belief, in Facilitating Freedom of Religion or Belief: A Deskbook,
edited by T. Lindholm, et. al. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2004, 19–61.

29. Islam and Political-Cultural Europe12
secular hierarchy in order to propagate the post-Chri­stian Trinitarian creed of “love,
order and progress.”15
What is problematic from a human rights perspective is that
Comte wants to actively involve the state apparatus for the purpose of implementing
his world view. Indeed, his political goal of bringing about a “so­cio­cratic” unity
of the state and the new secular doctrine mirrors the “theocratic” ideal of the
French Catholic coun­ter-revo­lution, an ideal to which Comte extended respect and
admiration, although he, at the same time, aspired to over­come Catholicism and
traditional religion in general. Expressing a techno­cratic and authoritarian ideology,
Comte’s doctrinal secularism is the opposite of the liberal concept of political
secularism. For all his progressive rhetoric, Comte’s post-religious ideo­logy is in
fact­anti-liberal. It is desi­gned to replace supposedly “subversive” human rights with
a codex of universally binding duties, and to submit the indivi­dual to the worship of
the collective whole of humani­ty.
Relics of the nineteenth-century type of doctrinal secularism continue to play
a role in contemporary political debates on reli­gious issues. In Germany and
other Western European countries, such tendencies most notably occur in current
controversies about Islam. For instance, politicians opposing the spread of Islam
and its visible­sym­bols in European societies often invoke the secu­la­r nature of the
state as an argument to re­ject demands for an active parti­cipa­tion of Muslims in
the public sphere. Some go even farther by demanding that the public sphere be
generally free from religious symbols. In that context, the notion of secularism can
take on a more or less obvious authoritarian flavor.
The existence, past and present, of different forms of doctrinal secularism
constitutes a major source of confusion in the controversy about the secular nature
of the modern liberal state. In the interest of clarity, it is all the more important to
keep the two concepts of secularism strictly apart. Whereas some forms of doctrinal
secularism, such as Comte’s positivism, aspire to overcome religion altogether
by placing themselves at the same time in the stead of religious traditions, the
liberal-secular principle of respectful non-identification of the state with any
particular religion or belief aims at facilitating­­equal freedom and participation for
all individuals in a religiously and philosophically pluralistic democratic society.
­­It is a political fairness principle in dealing with modern diversity and pluralism.
­Far from purging the public space of religious manifestations, political secularism
further opens up opportunities for religious or belief communities to present
themselves in the public realm and participate in general political debates.
Cultural “Occidentalization” of Political Secularism
As far as we know, secular constitutions were historically first established in North
America and Western Europe. Hence it is quite natural to assume that the history
15
Compare A. Comte. Système de politique positive ou traité de sociologie, in
Instituant la Religion de l’Humanité. Vol. 1. Osnabrück: Otto Zeller, 1967, 321–99.

30. Liberal Secularism and European Islam 13
of secularism in the West has something to do with the dominant religious and
cultural traditions of the West, including above all the tradition of Christianity.
Elements within Christianity which, in one way or another, are often said to have
fostered the development of secular political constitutions include the Protestant
critique of political clericalism, the conceptual distinction between “spiritual”
and “temporal” authorities as it was worked out in the aftermath of the medieval
Investiture Contest. The most frequently cited quotation in this context, however,
is the words of Jesus: “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto
God the things that are God’s.”16
This Biblical verse has often been invoked as the
decisive “root” of what later developed into the separation of state and church.
However, without denying the significance of these and other elements of
the Christian tradition within the historical development of political secularism,
it would be problematic to turn them into indispensable cultural preconditions
of modern secular constitutions. The history of political secularism cannot be
appropriately described, in quasi-biological terms, as the process of a more or less
organic “ripening process” of concepts deeply “rooted” in the Occidental tradition.
Against such a quasi-biological interpretation of history, it is worth recalling that
long-lasting political, cultural and religious conflicts in Europe were necessary
to form a broad societal consensus on freedom of religion or belief, that is, the
decisive human right on which modern secular constitutions are normatively
based. For instance, the Catholic Church for more than a century pursued a course
of fierce resistance to freedom of religion, which was condemned in the “Syllabus
Errorum” of 1864 as one of the grave errors of the modern age.17
It was as late as
during the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) that the Catholic Church officially
endorsed freedom of religion or belief and the principle of political secularism.18
And it was only then that the majority of representatives of Catholicism could
cite the word of Jesus, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” as a
retrospective theological justification of the modern secular state.
Besides leading to an oversimplified concept of history, the quasi-biological
understanding of the genesis of political secularism harbors a number of systematic
problems. The most serious problem is the particularization of the concept of
political secularism. The “root” metaphor—as well as the way of reasoning
it represents—actually suggests that political secularism remains essentially
connected to a particular cultural “territory,” that is, the very territory in which
the roots of what later developed into the first secular constitutions originally had
16
Matthew 22:21.
17
H. Denzinger. Enchirodion Symbolorum Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus
Fidei et Morum. Freiburg: Herder, 1965, 576.
18
An English translation of the Vatican Council’s 1965 Declaration on Freedom of
Religion (“Dignitatis humanae”) is available at: www.vatican.va/.../ii_vatican_council/
documents/vat-ii_decl (accessed July 20, 2011).

31. Islam and Political-Cultural Europe14
gained ground.19
According to such an interpretation, it might seem that people from
non-Western cultural backgrounds cannot have full access to political secularism,
unless they are ready to adopt some supposedly “Western” achievements. To turn
once more to the root metaphor, the recognition of political secularism outside of
the West thus seems possible (if at all) only as the result of the “implantation” of
achievements, whose exclusive cultural roots are said to lie in the West. It is not
surprising that such an understanding actually constitutes a serious obstacle to the
recognition of political secularism outside of the West.
Such an essentialist approach may in the end even lead to a “baptized” version
of secularism by which the latter is simply, and exclusively, integrated into the
Christian heritage and thus turned into a theological category. Examples of
such “baptized” versions of secularism actually exist. For instance, the German
Protestant theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg has suggested an understanding of
political secularism that relates to the Christian tradition as not only the historical
origin but also the cultural sine qua non of the modern secular state.20
Pannenberg
argues that since it was the Christian tradition that has facilitated a culture of
political secularism, Christianity should be recognized as the cultural center of the
modern secular state. It may be an irony that, as a result of such a “dialectical turn,”
it is the very secularism of the modern liberal state that becomes an argument for
claiming privileged treatment of the Christian tradition as the cultural basis of the
modern state and law.
Rather than constituting the result of an organic cultural “ripening process,”
political secularism, based on freedom of religion or belief, can be more
appropriately described as the specifically modern result of unfinished societal
learningprocessesbroughtabout,aboveall,byreligiouspluralismandconcomitant
political conflicts. From such a perspective, it is possible to focus on systematic
insightswhich,fromtheoutset,areopentointerculturaltranslationandexchange.21
Regardless of whether the liberal concept of political secularism was first spelled
out historically in the framework of Western culture, what ultimately counts is the
insight into the significance of respectful non-identification as a prerequisite for
a non-discriminatory implementation of the right to freedom of religion or belief.
Since this right has received international recognition as a universal human right,
19
For such an understanding see for example, B. Lewis. Islam and the West. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1993, 135.
20
Compare W. Pannenberg. Civil Religion? Religionsfreiheit und pluralistischer
Staat: Das theologische Fundament der Gesellschaft, in Die religiöse Dimension der
Gesellschaft. Religion und ihre Theorien. Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1985, 63–75. A similar
interpretation, mixed with elements of modern systems theory, has recently been proposed
by I. Augsberg and K. Ladeur. Toleranz—Religion—Recht. Die Herausforderung des
Neutralen Staates Durch Neue Formen von Religiosität in der Postmodernen Gesellschaft.
Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007.
21
H. Bielefeldt. Western versus Islamic human rights conceptions? A critique of
cultural essentialism in the discussion on human rights, in Political Theory, 2000, 90–121.

32. Liberal Secularism and European Islam 15
however, it must also be possible to argue for the adoption of political secularism
beyond the specific cultural confines of the West.
There is yet another reason for rejecting any exclusive “Westernization” of
political secularism. One can reasonably argue that such Westernization eventually
jeopardizes the liberal spirit of political secularism even in those Western countries
in which secular constitutions have been more or less firmly established. That is,
if political secularism in Europe is chiefly portrayed as epitomizing an exclusively
“Western” achievement, it can easily be turned into an ideological weapon against
immigrants from non-Western cultures and their claims to a non-discriminatory
enjoyment of freedom of religion or belief. We can actually observe a tendency
in many Western European states to confront immigrants, especially those
stemming from Muslim majority countries, with demands that they should either
submit to a thorough cultural assimilation into their receiving societies or content
themselves with a position at the margins of society.22
Ironically, such anti-liberal
policies of enforced assimilation or discrimination against religious minorities
are sometimes propagated in the name of secularism. In order to preserve the
liberal spirit of political secularism, it is thus all the more important to deconstruct
cultural essentialist readings of political secularism and point to the core insight
of the liberal-secular constitution, which is the universalistic claim of freedom of
religion or belief.
Muslim Attitudes toward Political Secularism
A Loss of Religious Values?
It took the Christian mainstream churches a long time before they were ready
to subscribe to the concept of political secularism, a concept which they had,
over a long period of time, equated with religious indifference, atheism and a
general decline of religious values in public life. In the meantime, the major
Christian denominations in the West have clearly espoused the secular state—with
a somewhat ambiguous result; however, that political secu­larism is sometimes
por­trayed as an exclusive heritage of Occi­dental Chri­stianity. Both of these
problematic attitudes can sometimes also be found in statements of contemporary
Muslim thinkers.­
For instance,AbulA’la Mawdudi, an influential theoretician of modern political
Islam, has propagated the programme of an Islamic “theo-demo­cracy” in which
the community of believers is supposed to act as God’s collec­tive representative
on earth in order to imple­ment the Islamic sharī’a politically and legal­ly.23
The
22
Compare H. Bielefeldt. Muslime im Säkularen Rechtsstaat. Integrationschancen
Durch Religionsfreiheit. Bielefeld: Transcript Publishing House, 2003.
23
Compare A.A. Mawdudi. The Islamic Law and Constitution. 3rd Edition. Lahore:
Islamic Publications, 1967, 147f.

33. Islam and Political-Cultural Europe16
very term “theo-democracy” reveals Mawdudi’s politi­cal purpose of esta­blishing
a democra­tic ver­sion of theocracy systematically opposed to secular concepts of
democracy and human rights.­Alt­hough Mawdudi recognizes certain rights of
non-Isla­mic mino­rities, he insists that all strategic political and mili­tary positions
remain reserved to faithful Muslims in order to main­tain the “theo-democratic”
legitimacy of the con­stitu­tion. Even more radical than Mawdudi is Sayyid Qutb24
in whose dichotomized worldview the secular state repre­sents the “jahiliyya,”
that is, the world of pagan ignoran­ce. Whereas in traditional Islam the term
“jahiliyya” was used to­descri­be the darkness of the pre-Islamic era, Maw­dudi
and Qutb invoke this term to stigma­tize all those ideas and practi­ces, including
some liberal Islamic ones, which do not fit into their ideological un­derstan­ding of
political Islam. Indeed, for Sayyid Qutb the secular state epi­to­mizes an illegitimate
usurpation of God’s sovereignty.
Although polemical anti-secularist writings such as those by Mawdudi and
Qutb can also be found on the bookshelves of many Islamic organizations in
Europe, a systematic opposition against the secu­lar state seems to be confined to
a relatively small group among Mus­lims living in Europe, whereas the majority
of European Muslims apparently have been able to adapt to the secular political
or­der.25
For instance, in Germany various Islamic umbrella organizations have
repeatedly professed loyalty to the secular constitution.26
A Response to Christian Clericalism?
The second above-mentioned ideolo­gical twist concerning political secularism,
that is, its transformation into an ex­clusi­vely Chri­stian accom­plish­ment,
paradoxically also occurs in the statements of some Muslim authors. Their argu­
ment is that the secu­lar state represents indeed a specifically Chri­stian solu­tion
to a specifically Christian problem, that is, the problem of clerica­lism. Assuming
that Sunni Mus­lims never had an insti­tu­tionalized clergy compa­rable to that of
the Ca­tholic Church, it is argued that Is­lamic socie­ties, unlike the Chri­stian West,
have never even felt the need to undergo a pro­cess of political secularization.27
Based on the two assump­tions that poli­tical clerica­lism histori­cally was a typically
24
Compare Y.Y. Haddad. Sayyid Qutb: ideologue of the Islamic revival, in Voices of
Resurgent Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983, 67–98.
25
Compare M. Rohe. Das islamische Recht. Geschichte und Gegenwart. Munich:
C.H. Beck, 2009, 338.
26
An example is the Islamic Charter (“Islamische Charta”) issued by the Central
Council of Muslims in Germany (“Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland”) in February
2002. English translation available at: http:// www.zentralrat.de/ 3037.php (accessed July
18, 2011).
27
Mawdudi, too, insists that his concept of “theo-democracy” can by no means be
compared to We­stern clericalism. Compare Mawdudi (2004), 147, “ … Islamic theocracy is
something altoget­her different from the theocracy of which Europe has had bitter experience

34. Liberal Secularism and European Islam 17
Christian pro­blem and that Islam, at least in its Sunni version, has never known a
cler­ical hierarchy, some authors contend that what the West has accomplished only
in modern times has always been a reality in Islam.
This sort of affirmation of political secularism, however, remains utterly
abstract. It is not less abstract than the general rejection of secularism as a merely
Christian problem which supposedly has no bear­ing whatsoever on Muslims.
The abstract affirmation seems to be comparable to the superfi­cially “bapti­zed”
secularism which some Christian theologians have propaga­ted. What is missing
in such an attitude, above all, is a critical discus­sion of those forms of reli­gious
authoritarianism which have existed, and continue to exist, also under the auspices
of Islam. As Fouad Zakariya has pointed out: “Although it is correct to say that in
Islam an equi­va­lent to the Pope does not exist, there has in fact been, and continues
to be, a strong religious power … whose aut­hori­ty some­times exceeds the power
of the state.”28
Zaka­riya there­fo­re calls upon his fellow Mus­lims to engage in a
critical and self-criti­cal discussion about the dangers of Islamic autho­ritaria­nism
as well as the possibilities of an Islamic appreciation of political secularism.
Appreciating Secularism from an Islamic Perspective
A debate on secularism is not new in the Islamic context. One of the early Muslim
ad­vocates of political secularism was Ali Abdarraziq, who in his well-known book
Islam and the Bases of Power (1925)29
welcomes the abolish­ment of the caliphate,
an event that had stirred deep emotions throughout the Islamic world. Abdarraziq
points out that the Qur’an does not contain any detailed guidance as to how to
build and lead a state. If it is true that the Qur’an is the final and complete book
of revela­tion, Abdarraziq argues, it follows that state politics does not belong to
the core message of Is­lam. Consequently, Abdarraziq draws a clear line between
the prophe­tic and the political role of Mohammed. Where­as he agrees that
Mohammed epitomizes a timeless religious aut­hority as the “seal of the pro­phets,”
he claims that Mohammed’s role as political leader was only due to the hi­storic
circumstances of the first Isla­mic community in Medina:
wherein a priestly class, sharply marked off from the rest of the population, exer­cises
unchecked domination and en­forces laws of its own making in the name of God … ”
28
F. Zakariya. Laicité ou islamisme. Les arabes à l’heure du choix. Paris: la
découverte, 1989, 32. The significance of the distinction between sacred texts and their
inevitably contextualized human interpretation for feminist approaches has recently been
highlighted by Mir-Hoseini, Z. and Hamzic, V. Control and Sexuality. The Rivival of Zina
Laws in Muslim Contexts. London: Women Living Under Muslim Laws, 2010. This book
includes a general assessment of the need for feminist readings of Islamic sources as well
as a number of country studies.
29
A complete French translation of this book (L’islam et les bases du pouvoir),
originally written in Arabic, is availa­ble in Revue des Études Islamiques VII, 1933, 353–91
and VIII, 1934, 163–222.

35. Islam and Political-Cultural Europe18
During all his life the Prophet made no allusion to anything which could be
called an “Islamic state” or an “Arab state.” It would be blasphemy to think
otherwise. The Prophet did not leave this earth until he had entirely ac­complished
the mission given him by God and had explained to his nation the precepts of
reli­gion in their entirety without lea­ving anything vague or equivo­cal.30
Abdarraziq further argues that the caliphs’ pretension to go­vern as “the suc­cessor
of God on earth and his shadow over his servants” amounts to idolatry. Hence
his conclusion that the end of the caliphate can be considered liberation of Is­
lam: “Muslims are free to demo­lish this worn-out system (of the caliphate) before
which they have debased and humiliated them­selves. They are free to estab­lish the
bases of their kingdom and the organization of their state according to more recent
conceptions of the human spirit ….”31
Taking up Abdarraziq’s line of thought, Mu­hammad Said al-Ashma­wy
denounces the confusion of religion and state poli­tics as a “perver­sity”32
because
it is de­structive to both: It debases religion by turning it into an in­strument of
ever­yday power politics, and it typically results in a problema­tic sacralization of
poli­tics, which itself is thereby shielded against critical public dis­course. Whereas
theocracy, in which earthly rulers claim a qua­si-divine authori­ty, ultimately
amounts to polytheism,33
the monotheistic dogma of Islam, accor­ding toAshmawy,
implies a clear distinction between state and religion.
In the same vein of critical reflection, Zakariya unmasks the purported
antithesis of “divine law” versus “human law” as an ideolo­gical construc­tion.
Those who invoke divine law to legitimize their political position, actually remain
finite human beings. However, they refuse to recognize their finiteness and to
submit their political proposals to an open democratic dis­course and criticism.
“The real alternative,” Zakariya writes,
is not one between divine law … and human law. It is the alternative between
two versions of human law one of which frankly admits to its human nature
whereas the other one pre­tends to derive immediately from a divine source. This
latter version of human law is dangerous because it tends to base its particular
posi­tions on divine authority, thereby attributing to its passions and errors a
sanctity and in­fallibility to which is has no title.34
30
A.Abdarraziq. The caliphate and the bases of power, in Islam in Transition. Muslim
Perspectives, edited by J.J. Donohue and J.L. Esposito. Oxford: Oxford Univer­sity Press,
1982, 29–37.
31
Abdarraziq (1982), 37.
32
Compare M.S. Al-Ashmawy. L’islamisme contre l’islam. Paris: La Découverte,
1989, 11.
33
Compare Ashmawy (1989), 34, 85.
34
Zakariya (1989), 115.

36. Liberal Secularism and European Islam 19
In contrast to bigoted supra-human pretensions, poli­tical secularism does justice to
the finite nature of human beings. At the same time, in Zakariya’s opinion political
secularism can be understood as an expression of re­spect for the transcen­dence of
God, whose inscrutable will should never be instrumentalized for the purposes of
power politics.
Similar thoughts also occur in the writings of reformist Shia theologians.
Without explicitly using the concept of secularism, for instance, Mohsen Kadivar,
a disciple of the late Grand-Ayatollah Montazeri, argues for a policy of non-
discrimination on the ground of religion or belief. “In a world populated by the
followers of different religions and creeds, each of which … accords special rights
to its own followers, the fairest way is to reject all these special rights and not
to involve religious beliefs in human rights.”35
Moreover, Kadivar maintains that
what is fair from a political point of view at the same time makes sense from a
religious perspective, because people living in conditions of political and legal
equality “can turn to and accept a religion with greater sincerity, without their
decision being tainted by fleeting, this-wordly motivations.”36
Mohamed Talbi likewise resorts to a strong religious language when arguing that
no one can pretend to know God’s plan with their fellow humans. He contends that
from a Muslim perspective … religious liberty is fundamentally and ultimately
an act of respect for God’s Sovereignty and for the mystery of His plan for man,
who has been given the terrible privilege of building on his own responsibility
his destiny on earth and for the hereafter. Finally, to respect man’s freedom is to
respect God’s plan.37
It is from such theological reasoning that Abdullahi An-Na’im succinctly states:
“In order to be a Muslim by conviction and free choice, which is the only way one
can be a Muslim, I need a secular state.”38
Conclusion
It is not easy to make forecasts as to whether reformist perspectives like those just
presented will gain more strength among Muslims in Europe and elsewhere. The
purpose of this chapter, at any rate, was not to make prognoses but rather to point
to possibilities. What the above quotations from contemporary Muslim thinkers
show, at any rate, is that an appreciation of political secularism from an Islamic
35
Kadivar, M. Human rights and intellectual Islam. New Directions in Islamic
Thought Exploring Reform and Muslim Tradition. London: Tauris, 2009, 47–73.
36
Kadivar (2009), 55.
37
Talbi, M. Religious Liberty: A Muslim Perspective. Conscience and Liberty, 3rd
year, 1, 1991, 23–31.
38
An-Na’im (2008), 1.

37. Islam and Political-Cultural Europe20
perspective, far from being essentially impossible, is actually a reality among
Muslims today—even if those explicitly subscribing to such views may currently
still represent a minority.39
Against the widespread stereotype that a positive appreciation of political
secularism is the exclusive heritage of Western-Christian culture, it should be
emphasized that rejection or affirmation of political secularism, rather than directly
deriving from existing theological doctrines or cultural legacies, largely depends
on individual and collective learning processes. For such learning pro­cesses to be
possible, however, all currents in society bear responsibility. It is in this sense that
political secularism presents a challenge to Muslims as well as non-Muslims.
What non-Muslim Europeans can do to support, at least indirectly, the inner-
Islamic debate about political secularism is to try to make clear, in words and
deeds, that the secular state is not a state run by followers of doctrinal secularism
but, rather, should be understood as a state bound by the human right to freedom of
religion or belief. The best defense of political secularism, therefore, is a full and
non-discriminatory implementation of freedom of religion or belief for everyone,
including members of religious minorities. In this regard, European governments
still have a lot of homework to do. For instance, in Germany, Islamic or­ganizations
have not yet been accor­ded the status of a “Corpora­tion of Public Law,” a status
which the Christian churches have enjoy­ed for a long time and which, in principle,
is open for other religious communities, too. Apart from the prestige which this
public legal status carries, it is connected with a number of practical advantages,
such as finan­cial subsidies and representation in public media organizations.
Aproblem that worries German Muslims much more than the status of Corporation
of Public Law is the need for Islamic education in public schools. According to
the German constitution, religious education generally has the status of a “regular
discipline” in public schools.Although religious education is organized by the state,
most of the Länder religious communities have a constitutionally guaranteed right
of defining, for their respective constituencies, the content of religious education.40
So far, however, the majority of Muslim students and parents have not been able
to enjoy this right. To fill this gap would require more than an act of tolerance
towards Muslims. It is indeed a requirement on behalf of implementing those very
principles on which the legitimacy of a secular democracy is normatively based.
39
Compare J. Klausen. The Challenge of Islam: Politics and Religion in Western
Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
40
Compare article 7, paragraph 3, of the German Constitution.

38. Chapter 2
Muslim Minorities and Democracy: Battle of
Memories versus Genuine Integration
Guy Haarscher
Religion, Democracy and Human Rights
I would like to begin this chapter by briefly approaching a more general issue, that
is, “religion and democracy.” At first glance, one could conclude that a clash is
unavoidable between these two elements. Why? Because almost all religions have
a body of sacred laws, and it would be a miracle if these would magically harmonize
with modern, secular, political values. This is not to say that the contradiction is a
priori insurmountable. I just want to emphasize that old, sacred texts, elaborated
by human beings under the dictates of God (provided one believes in God) during a
period that is remote from the contemporary era have a content that is often at odds
with the modern tenets of human rights and democracy. Moreover, contemporary
political values are the result of a human collective choice, which might clash with
the historically understood will of God.
However, religions have evolved. Some doctrines have been interpreted in
ways that make them compatible with modern precepts of human rights; others
have simply been dropped. How is this possible if one accepts that the sacred
commands are the voice (logos) of God? How can human beings, considered in
the three monotheist religions to be products of a Creator, modify the transcendent
will of the Creator? In Judaism and Christianity, the sacred texts are viewed as the
will of God received by human beings in a particular historical context. This view
entails, for instance, that a symbolic interpretation of the texts, as opposed to a
literal approach, is not scandalous because it does not modify the will of God, just
its historical understanding by human beings.
It would be an oversimplification, however, to consider the problematic
relationship between religious and democratic values to be only a zero-sum game:
if a religious command contradicted principles of democracy and human rights,
the latter would prevail. This is, of course, true in many respects, but it leaves
aside another aspect of religion: some religious people will consider that they
are the best defenders of human dignity, and therefore of human rights. They will
contend that in order to protect human rights one needs categorical commands that
cannot be reduced to relativist, positivist human dictates. John Rawls, in Political
Liberalism, which is a re-elaboration of his former theses developed in A Theory

39. Islam and Political-Cultural Europe22
of Justice, spoke in this context of an “overlapping consensus,”1
meaning human
rights and the principles of justice can be defended within the framework of various
“comprehensive” conceptions of the good. In that sense, contemporary secular
political values and the religious conceptions of life are related in what Rawls
calls a “reflective equilibrium,”2
and do not necessarily generate one unique result:
some religious behaviors and commands have to “recede,” but other elements of
religion can reasonably be considered necessary for the foundation of human rights
values. Thomas Jefferson knew very well the dangers of religious intolerance, but
he also considered that, without a belief in at least a “theistic” God, human rights
could not be defended, and relativism would prevail.3
Some fifty years later in a
similar context, Ivan Karamazov, one of Dostoyevsky’s heroes, famously said that
if God did not exist, everything would be permitted.4
Islam and Democracy: A First Approach
Let us now analyze the specific case of contemporary Islam. Most are aware that
Islamism, a fundamentalist, political and literalist approach to the Qur’an, has
gathered momentum since approximately the 1980s. We shall analyze the history
of this movement later. Regarding the sacred commands being considered, as in
the Judeo-Christian tradition, the word of God as received by human beings in
a certain historical and cultural context, there is a specific problem concerning
Islam.5
Indeed, the Qur’an is supposed to have been dictated by God inArabic to the
illiterate Mohammed. It is the voice of God, which, by the way, makes problematic
any translation of the sacred text into other languages. On the other hand, there
1
See J. Rawls. Political Liberalism. New York City: Columbia University Press, 1993.
2
“[W]e work from both ends … I assume that eventually we shall find a description
of the initial situation that both expresses reasonable conditions and yield principles which
match our considered judgments duly pruned and adjusted. This state of affairs I refer to
as reflective equilibrium.” J. Rawls. A Theory of Justice. Boston: Harvard University Press,
1971.
3
“Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only
firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?” T.
Jefferson. Notes on the State of Virginia (1781–1782). New York City: Library of America,
1984.
4
The exact sentence is not literally found in the book by Dostoyevsky, contrary to
what is usually said. But it captures very well Ivan’s conceptions: he is an idealist atheist,
very much at a loss before the implications of a world without God. F. Dostoyevsky. The
Brothers Karamazov. Penguin, 2003.
5
Djavâsi-Amoli, a contemporary Iranian conservative GH, declares that those who
oppose the Velayat-e-faquih, government by the doctor of the law—GH, are worse than
animals and adds: “ … Accepting Islam is incompatible with accepting democracy … We
must choose our way … Democracy in law means that, if the people wants something
against God’s will, then this prevails over God and religion … ” J. Rollet. Religion et
politique. Paris: Grasset, 2001, 166–7.

40. Muslim Minorities and Democracy 23
have long been many schools of interpretation of the history of Islam, and it is
only since the time of Al-Ghazali (1058–1111) that a literal approach has prevailed,
“closing … the gates” of Ijtihad (interpretation in other ways to give new answers
to new problems). Therefore, one cannot affirm in a categorical way that Islam is
necessarily immovable, and that only a literal approach to sharī’a is possible.
Just after the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington, the
Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, declared that Islam was incompatible
with modernity and democratic ideas.6
There was a row about this statement, and
Berlusconi decided, sincerely or not, to back down. However, he had expressed
some feelings that were—and still are—deeply rooted in the Western European
population’s minds.
On the other hand, many European intellectuals put the blame for the terrorist
attacks on the United States and the West, interpreting them as a reaction to
policies of domination, particularly in the Middle East. In that context, Islamism—
not to be confused with Islam—was considered a marginal phenomenon, not
essentially related to an intrinsic crisis in the history of the Muslim civilization.
These two explanations (shame on Islam; shame on the US) were of course
blatant oversimplifications, but they captured the state of public opinion, at
least in Western Europe. Of course, the two opposite positions were linked to
deeply rooted prejudices. Anti-Americanism is a powerful ideological sentiment,
particularly in France, and the presence of strong Muslim immigrant communities
has generated feelings of rejection and of fear that seem to have been confirmed
by the events of 9/11. We should, of course, try to deconstruct these stereotypes
and get to a more reflective understanding of the causes of Islamic radicalism
and violence if we want to cope seriously with the problem of the relationships
between contemporary Islam and democratic ideals and practices.
Arab and Turkish Minorities in France and Belgium
As the next section of this chapter illustrates, the cultural and religious context
in which minorities from the Maghreb or Turkey evolve (or, for instance, the
Asian minorities in Britain), has radically changed since they came to Western
Europe seeking industrial work. In the 1960s and 1970s, they were identified
as Moroccans, Algerians, Turks, and so forth, by national rather than religious
identity. Of course, they were Muslims, but religion was related to traditional
contexts, and not considered an obstacle to integration, which was very often
impeded by racist feelings emerging in the majority (this had already been the
case for Italian, Polish and Portuguese guest workers in the 1950s).
It was only in the 1970s and 1980s that Islam became a “hot topic,” when the
frustrationsoftheseminoritiesweremanipulatedbyaninternationalfundamentalist
movement. Unfortunately, Islam became visible in western societies in the guise
6
See Le Monde, September 28, 2001.

41. Islam and Political-Cultural Europe24
of international Islamism. This phenomenon creates a specific problem for the
possible democratization of Islam, notably in France and Belgium. Especially
in Belgium, where religions are subsidized by the state, the government needs
interlocutors who can be considered representative of the relevant community. In
the case of Muslim minorities, this is particularly difficult. Either the interlocutors
willbedemocratsandliberals,butnotrepresentativeoftheirreligiouscommunities,
or they will be representatives of their religious communities, but not democrats.
This is a very difficult problem, but also an essential precondition for the
integration of Muslim minorities into the democratic process. The problem even
exists in France, where there is apparently no need for official interlocutors because
the principle of laïcité, which is based on the Statute on the Separation of Church
and State,7
prohibits government funding of any “religion.”8
As religion is not
taught in French public schools, there is no need to create a representative body
that could nominate teachers of the Islamic religion, as is the case in Belgium. Why,
then, did Nicolas Sarkozy, while French Minister of the Interior, create a French
Council for the Muslim Religion?9
Basically, its purpose is to control a community
that is in danger of being manipulated by the extremists. Liberalizing Islam does
not then appear to be linked to particular forms of institutional secularism—
Belgium and France have adopted very different solutions to that problem—but to
a general problem which the French sociologist Gilles Kepel calls Fitna,10
that is,
an internal war in Islam. This internal war is essentially waged in Western Europe,
because important Muslim minorities are present, and the freedoms of expression,
of association, and so forth, are much more effectively guaranteed than is the
case in the “land of Islam” in general. A more precise picture of this phenomenon
would help us to better understand the specifics of the present situation.
Re-Islamization “From the Bottom”
In two earlier books,11
Gilles Kepel tried to analyze the causes of contemporary
Islamism.Adetailed analysis of these historical events would fall beyond the scope
of this chapter. However, I will discuss some basic elements that are essential
to gain an understanding of the contemporary situation of Muslim minorities in
Western Europe. The Golden Age of Arab Islam finished long ago. The decline,
starting in the thirteenth century, is felt deeply embedded in the daily “culture” of
Muslim peoples today. Of course, such a feeling is easily manipulated, as it is often
7
Loi de Séparation de l’Eglise et de l’Etat, December 9, 1905; see G. Haarscher. La
laïcité. Paris: PUF, 2004.
8
“The Republic does not recognize, salary or subsidize any religion.” Article 2 of
the Statute of 1905.
9
The first Council was elected on April 6, 2003.
10
See G. Kepel. Fitna. Guerre au Coeur de l’Islam. Paris: Gallimard, 2004.
11
G. Kepel. La Revanche de Dieu. Chrétiens, Juifs et Musulmans à la Reconquête du
Monde. Paris: Seuil, 1991; Kepel, G. Jihad. Paris: Gallimard, 2003.

42. Muslim Minorities and Democracy 25
the basis of any frustration or resentment. Nevertheless, it rests on a sound basis.
From approximately 800 to 1200 A.D., the Muslim world, under the Arab rule of
the Umayyads and Abbasids in Cordoba and Baghdad, was in many aspects more
“progressive” than Christian Europe. The mixture of Muslim, Judaic, and Christian
cultures generated a dynamism that, particularly in Al-Andalus, expressed itself in
art, science, and a certain form of tolerance. Of course, one has to avoid judging
these periods by twenty-first-century standards while at the same time refraining
from idealizing the openness of the Arab world at the time. However, if we view
the events and results from the perspective of that time, we can undoubtedly affirm
that the decline was affective, deeply felt and resented in the “land of Islam.”
In the fifteenth century, a new Muslim empire was born, this time under non-
Arab (Turkish) rule. From the time of Suleiman the Magnificent (1494–1566) to
the nineteenth century, when the Ottoman Empire was dubbed “the sick man of
Europe,” a new period of relatively rapid decline took place. During World War
I the Arabs were encouraged to side with the British against their Turkish rulers.
Lawrence of Arabia had promised them that they would be freed from Ottoman
domination, but after the war, governance of most of the Middle East was shared
between the dominant colonial powers, France and Britain. This was another
humiliation that is still deeply felt, and appears today in Al Qaeda attempts to
justify the unjustifiable.
Two solutions were proposed to end the Arab decline by movements which
were completely at odds with each other. The first one held that, in order to catch
up with the “Christian” West, the Arab world had to modernize and, in so doing,
borrow whichever elements of Western political culture seemed to be linked with
the success of Europe (and, increasingly, the United States). The reasoning had a
certain loose relationship with the strategy the Japanese had adopted in the Meiji
Era (1868–1912) and after, i.e., copy the west in order to “borrow” from it the
basic ingredients of its remarkable success. The dominant figure of this movement
was Gamal Abdel Nasser, who seized power in Egypt in 1952. His emphasis was
on modernization and the building of Arab nation-states partially modeled on the
West. I say “partially,” because, for historical reasons, the borrowed elements were
much more akin to fascist and communist dictatorships than to the liberal ideas of
human rights and democracy, which never really took root in the region. Depending
on their own respective convictions (Nasser was a sincere believer), and in more
or less radical methods, rulers pushed religious leaders aside by paying lip service
to Islam and by limiting them, as far as was possible, to non-political roles. The
fact is that Nasserism, as it tried to take root in the Arab world (in Algeria, Tunisia,
Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt), resulted in complete failure. The most dramatic
illustration of this was the spectacular defeat of Nasser in the Six Days War against
Israel, the event coming after long months of propaganda assuring the Arab and
Muslim world of the imminent victory over the “Zionist entity.” But this was
a secondary cause of the failure. More important was the incapacity of corrupt
autocrats to live up to their own standards, to really modernize their countries and
to give the youth a credible future (the demographic trend ran against them).

43. Islam and Political-Cultural Europe26
The failure of this first alternative gave a new impetus to the people in the
Muslim world who had never believed in Western style modernization. For them,
the attempt was doomed to fail from the beginning because it resulted in further
distancing the land of Islam from the original philosophy of the Prophet. Copying
the west was exactly the opposite of what had to be done; it aggravated the “illness
of Islam”12
instead of curing it. A similar debate took place, in a very different
form, in the Catholic world in the 1960s. The Second Vatican Council had taken
a position in favor of aggiornamento—modernization and adaptation of Christian
doctrine to the reality of the contemporary world. The “integrists,” who refused the
ideas defended in the Council under the leadership of Pope John XXIII, affirmed
that, by adapting to a modern, secularized society, the Catholic Church would
lose its soul. It was therefore necessary to stick to, as Nietzsche would have said,
“untimely”13
values and resist the conventional wisdom of the time (the Zeitgeist).
In the Muslim world, such was the gist of the arguments developed over
and over by those who came to be known as “Islamists.” Of course, throughout
modern and contemporary times there had always been small groups that defended
these theses. But they were marginalized, and several times severely repressed
(as was the case of the Muslim Brotherhood in Nasserian Egypt whose leader
and theoretician, Sayyid Qutb, was hanged in 1966). The failure of the Nasserian
model gave the Islamists a formidable impetus. Here was the opportunity (the
kairos of Aristotle and Machiavelli) they had awaited. At last, they would be able
to prove that the solution resided in enforcing the Islamic law (the sharī’a), and
not in obeying secular rules. To overcome the “illness of Islam,” it was necessary
to go back to the sources and to live again according to the genuine Word of God,
the Qur’an and the Hadith.
The Islamists began by trying to topple the Nasserian leaders (Nasser
himself had died in 1970, three years after his crushing defeat by the Israelis),
and to replace the law of the “apostates” with the sharī’a. Gilles Kepel calls this
strategy “reislamization from the top.” Thus far the attempts have failed in all
Arab countries. They were crushed in the bloodiest ways in Egypt, Syria, Iraq
(during the rule of Saddam Hussein), Tunisia, Algeria, and even Morocco (where
the position of the king as the Commander of the Believers insulates him—but
not other political leaders—from Islamist attacks). The only places where the re-
Islamization from the top succeeded are to be found outside the Arab world in
Persian (and Shiite) Iran (the revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini took place in
1979) and Pashtun, Tajik, and Uzbek Afghanistan, under the radically intolerant
rule of the so-called students of religion (Taliban), until the coalition under US
leadership toppled them at the end of 2001 in the wake of 9/11.
The Islamist movements adopted another strategy: re-Islamization from
the bottom. This approach was made possible by two main factors. First, the
12
A. Meddeb. La Maladie de l’Islam. Paris: Seuil, 2002.
13
See F. Nietzsche. Untimely Meditations (1873–76). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997.

44. Muslim Minorities and Democracy 27
fundamentalists decided, in the majority of cases, to stop attacking the governments
directly. The leaders of the so-called “secular” Nasserian States were ready to
accept such a proposal, and left the Islamists an unfettered opportunity to attack
the “others,” the West, that is, the United States, the Christians (“Crusaders”), and
the Israelis or the “Zionists” (more and more directly assimilated to the Jews).
A second factor aggravated the situation: the “secular” governments (“apostates”
in the eyes of the Islamists), being corrupt and basically ineffective, were unable
to cope with the demographic boom that was taking place in their countries; more
and more young people were unemployed, which caused resentment towards the
government. As we saw before, the fundamentalists were “authorized” to deviate
the venting of the frustrations towards the evil “other.” Of course, the West bears
certain real responsibilities for the situation of Arab and Muslim countries, but
here, the hubris was such that the perception of the world and the complex causes
of the “catastrophe” were completely distorted.
At approximately the same time, the Islamists took over the basic “education” of
children, which the impotent governments were all too happy to abandon to them.
They received money from the Saudis (in particular from some members of the
ruling family), who have always desired to control Sunni Islam.14
They built roads,
sewage systems, hospitals, schools, and of course mosques. This phenomenon is
quite characteristic of places where the state is unwilling, or too weak, to provide
certain basic social services for the population. It has happened in Southern Italy
(the Mafia), in South America, particularly—but not only—in Colombia (the drug
cartels), and in the former Soviet Union. Under these circumstances, the people
are controlled by groups that give them what the state does not provide. In a sense,
they compensate for the lack of basic institutionalized social rights. By doing this,
they ideologically take control of the people and dominate them. This is what
happened with the re-Islamization from the bottom: the basic services that they
offered gave the fundamentalists a formidable opportunity to control the “primary”
education of the children. The governments had signed, so to say, a pact with the
Devil. They had allowed the Islamists to take over the population from the bottom,
foolishly hoping that, being immune from direct criticism, they would be able to
survive by putting the blame on the West. But they had opened Pandora’s Box.
14
This is a particularly good example of “the boot’s on the other foot.” The Saudis are
perceived by the Arab “street” (now intensely manipulated by the Islamists) as the popes in
Avignon were viewed by the Franciscans in the fourteenth century. They were perceived as
living a life of luxury that was completely at odds with the vow of poverty that lies at the
heart of the New Testament. Mutatis mutandis, the Saudis want to dominate Sunni Islam,
but they actually sometimes live, in fact, not far from Avignon, on the French Côte d’Azur,
as many Western tycoons do. It was unavoidable that, at some point, the Islamists they
had supported would attack them as being as “apostate” as the secular Arab regimes. The
evolution of Osama bin Laden was a good example of this process.