A Case for Greater Muslim Integration

Hi everyone!

On the op-ed page of today's New York Times, Jonathan Laurence, an associate professor of political science at Boston College and the author of "The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims: The State's Role in Minority Integration" has written an insightful piece about the need for European governments to do more from a political standpoint to integrate Europe's rapidly growing Muslim population.

The piece, "How to Integrate Europe's Muslims," perhaps counterintuitively places blame for Muslim disenfranchisement on 'an excess of tolerance toward the large-scale Muslim immigration that began in the 1970s.' Mr. Laurence goes on to say that for all the talk of religious integration, the root cause of the issue has to do with the fact that this integration model is contradictory at best. He seems to be saying that most European countries have had a more-or-less open-door policy when it came to Muslim immigration, with a very specific caveat: It's okay for you to come into our country as long as you assimilate with our predominantly Christian-based way of life. This means we will not go out of our way to recognize your religious holidays, we will not support your desire for Islamic education or the building of new mosques or Islamic cultural centers, and we will insist that--as France has lately done--you divest yourself of any openly Muslim clothing--the hijab, for example--on threat of arrest and even deportation.

It's no wonder that European Muslims feel like second-class citizens. What Mr. Laurence suggests in place of these perhaps well-intentioned but ultimately rather draconian laws is, for one, a 'period of benign neglect of the Islam issue.' First, however, European governments need to formally recognize that Islam is now woven into the very fabric of their nations' existence, just as are Christianity and Judaism. He writes, in essence, that Europe needs to end its "us versus them" approach when addressing Muslim issues within the community, taking it beyond a tacit acknowledgment of Islam's right to exist alongside the Judeo-Christian tradition to a much more proactive program that truly integrates Islam at the grass roots level. This may include issuing mosque permits, incorporating Muslim holidays into school holiday schedules and encouraging the right to form all other types of political and non-political organizations, just as other non-Muslim Europeans have had the right to throughout history.

Only by making Islam a non-issue will Muslims ever feel truly included within the social and national fabric of their adopted countries.

To many this may read as rather simplistic. It doesn't address the rise of radical Islam, for example, which particularly since 9/11 has been at the heart of Western antipathy toward Muslims. And while there will always be extremists--on both sides of the equation--I do support Mr. Laurence's point. By continuing to pursue policies that merely seek to assimilate Muslims into society rather than truly integrating them, we are only furthering their feelings of disenfranchisement which can only add fuel to their simmering hostility. From anyone's perspective, this is a lose/lose situation. It's high time for a change.

Ciao.