Introduction

The issue of the political representation of Maghrebi (North African) immigrants and their descendants in France, now redefined as a question of representation of Muslims, has been a long-standing debate in the French policy arena. The importance of representation in the French case is perhaps more heightened than in other EU countries because of France's particular model of secularism (laïcité) and statist political ideology. More so than other countries, the French state has raised numerous obstacles to Islamic practice, thus making political participation among Muslims a high-stakes endeavour. In order to make claims on the state and demand religious rights and recognition – in an era of anti-Islam discourse and in political and cultural fields that seek the elimination of religion from public space – French Muslims critically require means of political participation. But the question of who can represent the diversity of French Islamic practices and religious needs looms large, especially when the state demands Muslim interlocutors. It is commonly thought and argued that representation is difficult because Muslims in France are divided by ethnic background. While there are important ethnic differences among Algerians, Moroccans, Turks, and black Africans, I suggest that these are not nearly as salient as they are usually made out to be. For the younger generation of Muslims, they are even less consequential.

Islam in Lithuania – the background

The last census (that of 2001, in which, among others, a question on religious identity was included) for which there is publicly available official statistics produced the following figures for Lithuanian inhabitants adhering to Islam: 2,860 Sunni Muslims or 0.1% of the total population, 1,679 of whom (or 58.7% of all Sunni Muslims) identified themselves as ethnic Tatars, 362 (12.6%) as Azerbaijanis, 185 (6.5%) as Lithuanians, 74 as Russians, 15 as Belarusians, 13 as Polish, five as Ukrainians and even four as Jewish (Department 2002: 204–5). There is no data available on Shi'is.

The biggest group of Lithuania's inhabitants with a Muslim background, the Lithuanian Tatars (3,235 in 2001, (Department 2002: 188–9)), have been living in the eastern part of today's Republic of Lithuania since the fourteenth century when they started settling in what then was the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL, the lands of which are now divided among Lithuania, Belarus and Poland) as mercenaries and political immigrants (Račius 2009: 16–17).

Though precise data are not available, it can, from anecdotal evidence, be safely assumed that at no time in history did the Muslim population of the GDL exceed 100,000. Despite or because of the fact that Muslims have been only a tiny minority of the citizenry of the GDL, they enjoyed almost all the rights and freedoms that their Christian fellow citizens did.

Polish Muslim Tatars constitute a religious minority with an interesting status. They were settled in the Polish-Lithuanian territories at the beginning of the fourteenth century, above all because of their military service. The tradition of military service was continued by their descendants in subsequent centuries, even when military service was no longer compulsory. This kind of involvement in the political life of the Republic of Poland resulted in Muslim Tatars being granted social and religious privileges – this will be discussed later in this chapter. Recognition of the Tatars' service to the country has remained in the consciousness of Polish society to the present day and is visible in the approach to public matters concerning this minority.

History: the participation of Muslim Tatars in the Polish-Lithuanian and Polish armed forces

The first Muslims emerged within the borders of the Polish-Lithuanian state in the fourteenth century (Tyszkiewicz 1989: 146f); Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had at that time been connected through the person of the ruler since 1385. These Muslims were Tatars who originated from the Mongol Khanate of the Golden Horde, a state nominally Islamic since the thirteenth century (Borawski and Dubiński 1986: 13–14). They were prisoners of war and political refugees and, later, in the fifteenth century, mercenaries invited by the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Vytautas the Great (1401–40), to fight the enemies of his country; Lithuania at that time shared its borders with the Golden Horde.

Introduction

The Alevis are one of the lesser-known Muslim immigrant communities in Europe; on a political front they constitute an organised movement at a European level. The word ‘Alevi’ refers simultaneously to Ali, Mohammed's cousin, and to Ahl al Bayt, the family of the Islamic prophet. In this context, Alevism is defined as ‘to adore Ali and his family’ and to follow in his footsteps (Yaman 2006: 101). Due to the origin of the word, Alevism is frequently confused with Shi'ism. Today, although they have certain beliefs in common with the Twelver Shiites, Alevi rites of worship are wholly different from other Shia practices (Zarcone 2007). During the period of conversion to Islam in Anatolia, the Turcomans who were nomadic and semi nomadic Turkic tribes, did not completely abandon all of their previously held religious beliefs such as Shamanism, Animism, and Buddhism, which subsequently became the cultural and confessional framework within which the newly adopted religion evolved (Melikoff 1998). The origin of the Alevi religion is therefore a syncretic type of Islam generated by the superposition of the previous belief systems that the Turcomans practised between the tenth and fourteenth centuries (Zarcone 2004). Thus Alevism can be defined as a result of religious and cultural interactions between nomad groups from Central Asia to the Middle East and to the Balkans during this period.

In April 2009 Sweden's largest Sunni Muslim youth organisation, Sweden's Young Muslims (SUM), organised their 16th annual youth conference. Based on a survey distributed at the conference, this chapter aims to document and analyse political opinion and political participation among young organised Muslims in Sweden and relate the respondents' answers to the political left and right scale. For this purpose – well aware of competing and alternative definitions – we do not apply an external definition of ‘young’ or ‘Muslim’, but rather assume that those attending a conference for young Muslims see themselves as fitting the bill.

Before we go into the specific survey we would like to offer some more general comments on the composition of Sweden's Muslim population. Like most countries in Europe, the Swedish population has been altered because of international migration (workforce migration, family reunification migration and asylum seekers) and more generally by globalisation processes. Compared to the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, Sweden is today a multicultural and multi-religious society and the Swedish constitution and the state places great stress on freedom of religion and pluralism. For example, when writing this chapter (autumn 2012) the Swedish state supports six Muslim umbrella organisations with economic subsidies, and religious groups are often seen as important interlocutors for the state. However, this recognition does not clash with the fact that the state of Sweden aims at neutrality when it comes to religious affairs.

In the 1970s newspaper advertisements from Leicester advised migrants to go elsewhere as the city was already ‘full to the brim’ after the acceptance of more than 14,000 Asian Indian refugees, more than half of the total number of people expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin: ‘In your own interests and those of your family you should accept the advice of the Uganda Settlement Board and not come to Leicester, I think they said.’ (interview, 26 July 2011). Leicester was overwhelmed by its increased population and was desperately hoping to stop more massive migration. However, by 1981 the migrant population had risen to 59,709 and by 2001 to 100,000 (Open Society Institute 2010: 32). By 2012 it is estimated that Leicester will become the first city in Britain to have a white minority (interview, 23 July 2011).

Muslims in the European Union have different visions of their religion, and often they are contradictory. Their attitudes towards the letter of the religion range from a strict adherence to practice to a critical attitude towards the rituals (Frégosi 2011). Indeed, a lot of Muslims do not use their faith as the only lens through which they interpret reality and are active within society.

It is important to discuss the different forms of mobilisation that these populations use, either one at a time or combined. We will use the ideal typical categories of mobilisation forms to study how they stage the complex relations between European Muslims and their religion, and how the fact of being a Muslim plays a part in the mobilisation process, at what level, under what form and to what end. In this chapter we will try to understand how the different ways of being Muslim (believing with or without belonging to an organised Muslim community, secular Muslims, Muslim cultural backgrounds only, etc.) are directly connected to different ways of involvement within the European societies. In another words, does Islam have any influence on the degree of integration and political commitment in French and other European societies?

Introduction

This opening sequence of a stand-up performance by Fatih Çevikkollu, a German actor and comedian born to Turkish parents in Cologne, introduces a contestation of ethnic stereotypes in everyday life. Çevikkollu is committed to the German tradition of political cabaret and frequently appears in established TV shows. His performance Moslem TÜV, which he published as a book and took to comedy stages around Germany, criticises a citizenship test from 2006 aimed at scrutinising Muslim applicants' values. Besides, Çevikkollu supports campaigns for participation in elections like the one by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education for the federal elections in 2009. The political content of his shows, as well as his personal engagement for political participation, distinguish Çevikkollu as an entertainer with both political awareness and a voice.

Stand-up comedy and other creative political interventions of Muslims or individuals of Muslim background have largely been neglected within research on political participation in this field. Most surveys on political participation concentrate on active and passive elective participation, the measurement of trust in legal and political institutions, adherence to liberal-democratic values, degrees of organisation, and protest movements.

The recent focus on European Islam has sparked an interest in establishing representative Muslim networks that seemingly span the continent of Europe. However, unifying European Muslims onto a single political platform has largely been an elusive process for Europe's Muslim communities. The image of Muslim representation in Europe has been aided by international organisations, such as the European Council for Fatwa and Research, whose prestigious network of esteemed scholars purportedly address the concerns of western Muslims, while acting as one of the few representative voices of European Islam. Although this image of a unified ‘European Islam’ would indeed, at first glance, appear to be an impressive accomplishment for Europe's Muslim communities, it is not the outcome of local efforts by European Muslims at the grassroots level. Rather, organisations like the European Council for Fatwa and Research are the result of a top-down approach intended to project an image of European Islam. This has shaped the development of Muslim communities in countries, like Ireland, where transnational influences have promoted the vision of a globalised Islam. Efforts to fabricate this image of European Islam have remarkably transformed Dublin into the seat of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, despite Ireland having one of the smallest Muslim populations in Western Europe. This chapter will explore the role of external influences on the construction of the image of European Islam and on the notion of Muslim representation in Europe, with particular reference to the historical development of Ireland's Muslim community.

Introduction, questions and the limitations of the study

The degree of political integration of minorities in a society is a significant indicator of the ‘health’ of a democracy and social cohesion. Political integration is of great importance to feelings of belonging and shared identity. The inadequate political integration of minorities can potentially lead to social division, parallel societies, mutual distrust and conflict. In Denmark, the level of political participation and integration of Muslim minorities has been an issue of public debate for at least the last decade. In contrast to the debate in countries like France and Germany, the debate in Denmark has been less about formal voting rights for non-nationals or the establishment of a Muslim council with whom the government can discuss issues of special concern (although these issues have come up). Rather, the debate about political integration of Muslim minorities in Denmark has been driven by general concerns about the level of Muslim trust in and acceptance of Danish political institutions – their willingness to engage in democratic procedures and adhere to the fundamental values and principles of liberal democracy when doing so. An element of this debate has concerned the degree to which Danish society and majority institutions should accept and adapt to growing ethno-cultural diversity. In the context of the ‘value struggle’ launched by the right-of-centre government, which took office in 2001, the social and political integration of Danish Muslims has been questioned with reference to Muslim parallel institutions (schools, kindergartens, organisations, etc.), ghetto formation, and a lack of commitment to democratic principles and liberal values such as freedom of speech and gender equality.

Introduction: setting the stage

The 2009 local council elections in the German State of North-Rhine-Westphalia brought about a significant innovation: for the first time citizens with a migration background came to the fore as founders of local voter associations. Among these newly founded voter associations, the Bündnis für Frieden und Fairness (Confederation for peace and fairness, BFF) stands out for two reasons: first of all, because it immediately won two seats on the city council, although it was founded only two months prior to the elections. Secondly, it is unusual because it was founded exclusively by Muslims. This fact triggered attention by media far beyond the local scope and raised fierce debates about the legitimacy of such a political organisation.

This chapter argues that while the emergence of these new political actors can be explained by looking at political and social structures and discourses, the astonishing success of the BFF can only be explained if we take into account both structures and individual agency, considering both as forces for change in a reciprocal and iterative process (Moser 2006: 69). A structurationist approach has therefore been chosen for the analysis at hand. It will be presented in detail in the following section. A third section then outlines the main characteristics of the German political field which frame immigrants' political participation on the one hand and Muslims' political participation on the other hand.