Islamization in Western Europe: Political Consequences and Historical Parallels

This article deals with Islamic postwar immigrants to Western Europe, specifically North Africans—Maghrebis—in France and Turks in West Germany. It explores the relationship between economic status, ethnic consciousness, and religion and discusses the response of the host society to the Islamic reality. In this exploration a comparison is made with the immigration, several generations earlier, of Jews from Eastern Europe. Whereas Jewish immigrants, as individuals, were able more easily to adjust to their new environment and to advance economically, Muslim immigrants have encountered greater difficulties and have tended to remain economically underprivileged much longer. Conversely, it is argued, the Muslim communities have been able more effectively to maintain ethnocultural cohesion and collective political security because of the convergence of a variety of factors: the massive number, and urban concentration, of the postwar immigrants; the spread of pluralist ideology; the continuing connection with, and protection from, homeland governments; and other contextual elements. The article concludes with an evocation of appropriate policy responses by the French and German governments to the Muslim presence.