A core facet of individual well-being concerns one's relationship to politics. Political attitudes such as support for democracy and trust in governmental institutions form the basis of legitimacy for democratic government while various forms of political participation illustrate citizens’ capacity to affect policy outcomes. Critics of the presence of Muslims in Europe posit (often without providing evidence) that they threaten the stability of democratic systems (cf. Sarrazin, 2010: 267). Those with vested interests in Europe may also fear that despite the small size of the religious minority, Muslims may dramatically affect European politics in the future. Recent figures estimate the number of Muslim voters in France, for example, the country with the largest Muslim population, at approximately 1.5 million or only 3.75% of all French voters (Ajala, 2010: 84 and see Vaïsse, 2007). However, an aging native European population combined with relatively high birth rates among Muslim populations in the member states indicates the potential for these percentages to dramatically increase and with them Muslims’ influence on European political systems.

Critics fear Muslims’ relationship to politics, and question both their attitudes toward democracy and the form that their participation in government will take. In an effort to ascertain Muslims’ relationship to politics in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom in this chapter, we examine existing scholarly literature and present data from several sources, including the European Social Survey, the Home Office Citizenship Survey, the German General Social Survey, and Statistics Netherlands. Our focus here is on Muslims’ political well-being in Europe, a concept with several dimensions, including: their support for democracy, their trust in the political systems of Europe and its member states, and the backlash against them by others intent on using politics to prevent accommodation to Muslims’ demands for recognition of their religious identity in Europe. Though some recent literature on these topics has looked specifically at European Muslims, much of the older literature has focused more generally on immigrant populations and ethnic minorities. While we caution against conflating these categories, we also discuss this literature.

Muslims’ political participation and representation

Examination of core indicators of political integration such as voter turnout and representation in elected office reveals that though some progress has been made, most ethnic minorities, including Muslims, are less well incorporated politically than native citizens (Messina, 2006, 2007).