April, 2004

THE ISLAMIC DIMENSION IN EUROPEAN FOREIGN POLICY

Dr Abdullah Al-Ashaal

This study looks at European foreign policy from an Islamic perspective. In the context of this discussion, the Islamic factor refers to:
- the effect of Islamic minorities, whether positive or negative, and the extent of their influence on the foreign policy and party politics of the European countries and the EU;
- the extent to which the affairs of Europe’s Muslim minorities affect the continent’s relations with the US;
- the relation between Europe’s Muslim minorities, the stances of the extreme right and other minorities, official European-Islamic tensions, and Europe’s relations with the Islamic world in general.
The relation between Islam and Europe is affected by, among other factors: the negative image that each party has formed of the other; the misinterpretation, intentional or otherwise, of Islam and Muslims; the feasibility of dialogue between two often very different worlds; Europe’s attempts to find solutions to the problem of illegal immigration; Europe’s efforts to turn mass immigration into a booster of development, while minimising the political and social impact of assimilation; Europe’s keenness to maintain its cultural identity; the problems facing Muslim minorities in Europe; and the differences between Islamic and European political behaviour.
According to some studies, Muslims living in minority communities around the world number between 400m and 500m, some 10% of whom live in Europe or the US. They face, to varying degrees, a number of common problems, including poverty, prejudice and the limits placed on the role they can play in these new societies.
For Muslim immigrants, Europe presents an ideal environment, providing democracy, liberty, opportunities to make a living and proper governance, not necessarily available in the countries from which they emigrated. However, there is still no clear framework of how to integrate Muslims into European society, facilitating the emergence of “European Islam” and “European Muslims.” This process is faced with problems on both sides. There are certain elements among the Muslim immigrants that seek to change the European environment, to make it more consistent with their own beliefs. On the other hand, the historical perception of Europeans that Muslims are strangers that should only be assimilated within very narrow margins so as not to threaten Europe’s identity, is still very much alive.
This situation was examined by Jocelyne Cesari in Muslim Minorities in Europe: The Silent Revolution, and was re-addressed by John Esposito and Francois Burgat (ed) in Modernising Islam: Religion in the Public Sphere in the Middle East and in Europe (Rutgers University Press, 2003, pp251-69). Modernising Islam examined the European misconceptions that Muslims and Islam represent a danger, and that Islam and modernisation are incompatible, as well as the expansion of Islam in Europe and the need for greater understanding of the link between politics and religion. It also looked at the development of religious minorities after immigration, and the emergence of an Islam marked with conflict between ethnic and national ties, on one hand, and the universal bond of Islam, on the other.
In our view, Muslim minorities can be divided into three main groups:
- The first group has managed to transplant Islam and its tolerant values in Europe and find a role for Islam in the European modernisation process. This group rejects the fanatical, backward values linked with Islam and emphasises the role of the individual.
- The second leans towards secularism, and believes that religion should have a lesser role in social construction.
- The third endorses the concept of religion as a private matter, rather than a societal concern. This group is the most capable of merging and making full use of the values of European communities.
There are generally two contradictory trends among the Muslim minorities: one which regards European society as its primary arena and believes there should be separation between the problems of their homeland and the country in which they live; and another which remains affected by events in the Islamic world, especially the relationship between it and Europe, primarily in terms of the Palestinian issue. Members of this group find greater difficulty in integrating into European society as they consider themselves part of the Islamic world and often maintain bonds with their homelands. They think of themselves as the Muslim diaspora, though they consider this quite different from the Jewish diaspora, upon which Israel relies to influence European policy concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Based on this analysis, Muslim minorities, as long as they maintain an attachment to their homelands and fail to integrate fully into European society, will constitute a problem for Europe’s policymakers - and even more so as long as their homelands face political or economic crises or are involved in problems with the countries in which they reside.
The events of 11 September without a doubt nurtured European-Muslim tensions, as has been noted in the studies and reports of various European research centres. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), a centre affiliated to the European Parliament, for example, reported in May 2002 that there had been a rise in anti-Islamic sentiment, particularly against veiled women and mosques. It noted that measures taken by European countries to tighten immigration and asylum laws for religious minorities, and Muslims in particular, had helped enhance the power of the extreme right. The study concluded that Muslim minorities had become a scapegoat for the failures of the EU, and recommended that European politicians address the wave of right-wing fanaticism and shoulder their responsibilities.
A study issued by the EU in 2003 recommended that illegal immigration not be considered a crime without a review of the reasons behind it, including the religious dimension. Chief among the reasons for immigration, the report stated, were the negative consequences of globalisation on Islamic societies and the failure of these societies to address them. The study recommended that European policies take into consideration both the interests of Europeans and the need for selective and organised immigration. These conclusions can be seen to have provided the impetus for the creation of European-Arab partnership agreements, which aim to assist the Arab Mediterranean countries in addressing the causes of emigration.
December 2002 saw the release of a report on the policies of EU countries with regard to Muslim minorities, compiled by a number of Swedish, British and German research centres concerned with immigration and cultural and ethnic relations, and funded by the European Committee and the Swedish government. According to the report, the position of religion is different in Sweden, Britain and Germany, while the immigration patterns of Muslims to these countries have been affected by their different relations with the Islamic world. Nevertheless, all three countries have neutral official stances on Islamic issues and protect freedom of religion by means of law or constitution. The report concludes that Muslim participation must be increased in the labour market and social and health services, and recommends that the relation between state institutions and Muslim minorities be improved and that Muslims be given greater opportunities to represent themselves. According to the report, there is a level of intolerance of Islamic symbols in all three countries, though improvements were noted in the situation in Sweden. The writers thus recommended legal confrontation of religious discrimination and called for a response to Muslims’ demands for the provision of places of worship and Islamic slaughterhouses, as well as for understanding of the importance of the veil, religious holidays and the study of Islam in universities.
It is clear that in order for European society and Islam to meet successfully that Europe and the Islamic world must cooperate, particularly on issues such as democratic pluralism, religious freedom, tolerance and the international boundaries of religious expression. Pluralism in secular western society has become a matter of finding a balance between cultural diversity and rapprochement within the framework of the national group.
Another important factor is the relation between the Islamic world and the West in terms of Muslim minorities and western stances towards Islam. Western-Islamic relations are generally of a secular nature and are rarely affected by Islamic affairs. Europe, in this regard, has a positive stance, from the Muslim viewpoint, on the issue of Jerusalem, even if it lacks the ability to play an effective role in the situation. Washington’s stance on this issue, meanwhile, although quite far from that of most Muslims, has not affected US-Islamic relations. The reason for this is that the countries of the Islamic world focus on bilateral relations rather than general Islamic issues in their relations with both Europe and the US.
The governments of Islamic countries remained neutral regarding the French law prohibiting the display of religious symbols in government schools and authorities, despite angry public reaction in much of the Islamic world. This shows that there is no obvious Islamic dimension to European foreign policy, and that issues of Islamic minorities are treated as a domestic European affair, unrelated to relations with Islamic countries.
Europe’s approach to the Islamic world has elicited an angry response on the other hand among Muslim minorities in Europe, as was manifested in the reaction of British Muslims to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This situation raised controversy over the level of British Muslims’ loyalty to the state, as well as the bounds of opposition to state policy, which naturally had an effect on the Muslim minority’s relations with the state.
The targeting of the Islamic world by certain European countries, while they at the same time turn a blind eye to the actions of Israel, has also had a negative impact on public opinion regarding these countries in the Islamic world.
The relation between the Islamic countries and Muslim minorities in Europe, and its impact on European-Islamic relations, is also related to a number of other issues:
- Some European countries make use of Islamic opposition groups in certain Islamic countries under the pretext of supporting freedom of belief and the rights of asylum and freedom of expression. Their objective is to protect certain terrorist elements that serve their interests in various Islamic countries, as has occurred in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
- The publication of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses led to an acute crisis between Britain and Iran, with Tehran accusing the author of blasphemy and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa calling for his death. Though the Organisation of Islamic Conference issued a resolution condemning the book, this did not have an impact on overall European-Islamic relations. The statements of some European leaders and clergy against Islam, however, led to anger in Muslim communities in Europe, as well as in the Islamic world, though this also did not, for the most part, affect official relations between Europe and the Islamic world.
It is worth mentioning in this regard that the governments of the Islamic world take varying levels of interest in their citizens residing abroad. Turkey and Morocco, for instance, both have strong levels of influence over their minorities in Europe. Ankara, which considers itself close to Europe, tries to support the Turkish community there, and especially in Germany, while the Moroccan minority in France is strong enough to influence French-Moroccan relations.
- The Islamic countries’ relations with their minorities in Europe differ totally from that between the continent’s Jewish minority and Israel, as was crystallised in the Jewish conference held in mid-February 2004 between Europe’s Jewish leadership and the European Commission to discuss increasing anti-Semitism in the continent.
First, Israel has succeeded on the international level in presenting itself as the representative of Jews worldwide, the head of a Jewish commonwealth. This includes the notion that members of the Jewish faith are a single people, bound by a bond stronger than legal citizenship of the state, with Israel responsible for them.
Second, Israel supports the Jewish communities in Europe, which promote Israeli policy to their home governments. Europe’s Jewish communities are thus often criticised because of Israeli policy, which Israel regards as anti-Semitic. The entanglement between criticism of Israel and criticism of the Jews on religious grounds, meanwhile, will continue as long as Israel maintains its stance that the two are the same, even though this view is not supported by many Jews.
- Islamophobia and the linking of Islam to terrorism are the outcome of decades of Zionist efforts to influence the media, academia and politics. However, official European-Islamic relations remain largely unaffected by Israeli efforts to dampen them, even if there are contradictory approaches to Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.
The Islamic world must now work to clarify the methods its governments should use to encourage Muslim minorities to form a European Islam and a European Islamic character, which would allow Europe’s Muslims to become an influential force in European society and policymaking. Europe’s Muslims could then increase dialogue and understanding between the Islamic world and Europe, and create a partnership between themselves, Europe and the Islamic world.
For further examination, the following references are recommended:
Jocelyne Cesari, Muslim Minorities in Europe: The Silent Revolution, CNRS Paris and Harvard University
Khaled Schmidt, “Religious Minorities, Scapegoat: European study”, Islam Online, 17 May 2003
Ake Sander, Goran Larsson and Dora Kos-Dienes, “State Policies towards Muslim Minorities in the European Union”, (MusPol) final report, 2000
Dr Mohammed Nejatullah Siddiqi, “Muslim Minorities in the 21st Century, A Case Study of the Indian Muslims”, Encounters magazine Leicester, UK, Vol 3, No 2, (September 1997), pp119-37
Tariq Ramadan, Etre Musulman Européen, 2003
Oliver Roy, Vers un Islam Européen, 2003.