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Beyond the domestication of Islam in Europe: A reflection on past and future research
on Islam in European societies
Sunier, J.T.
published in
Journal of Muslims in Europe
2012
DOI (link to publisher)
10.1163/22117954-12341236
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citation for published version (APA)
Sunier, J. T. (2012). Beyond the domestication of Islam in Europe: A reflection on past and future research on
Islam in European societies. Journal of Muslims in Europe, 1(2), 189-208. https://doi.org/10.1163/22117954-
12341236
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Download date: 10. Aug. 2022
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: ./-
Journal of Muslims in Europe 1 (2012) 189-208
brill.com/jome
Beyond the domestication of Islam in Europe:
A reection on past and future research
on Islam in European societies
Thijl Sunier
Dept. of Social and Cultural Anthropology, VU University Amsterdam
J.T.Sunier@VU.nl
Abstract
Within two decades Islam in European societies has developed from an issue of minor academic
interest into one of the fastest growing research fields. The main reason for this is no doubt the
emergence of new regimes of governmentality in most countries in Europe that emanate from the
complex relationship between integration, and political priorities of security and national
identity, the ‘domestication of Islam’. The narrowing down of research foci in the field of Islam in
Europe has caused a serious academic neglect particularly where it concerns the entanglement of
Islamic practices with everyday life, the religious engagements, expressions and experiences
among young people, and the transformation and reconfiguration of Islamic authority. These
three fields are of course closely connected, but also have their specific features and dynamics.
The article explores these fields of research beyond the domestication paradigm.
Keywords
Islam in Europe; domestication of Islam; Islamic youth; local Islam; research on Islam; Islamic
leadership and authority
1.Introduction
Within two decades Islam in European societies has developed from an issue
of minor academic interest into one of the fastest growing research elds in
Europe. The main cause for this is no doubt the necessity felt on the part of
national and local governments to take account of the presence of some fteen
million Muslims in the European Union today (EUMC 2006, p. 29). As a conse-
quence, the integration of Muslims into European societies has become a
highly politicised central research focus. Research agendas on Islam in Europe
increasingly follow the political priorities and goals formulated by national
and local governments. Integration has developed from a political priority into
190 T. Sunier / Journal of Muslims in Europe 1 (2012) 189-208
a scientic paradigm with its own epistemological assumptions, problem de-
nitions, communicative devices and citation communities, which in turn feeds
into policy agendas.
The post 9/11 political climate has invigorated the urge to monitor every-
thing that is done by Muslims. The combination of a deracinated migrant youth
and an unpredictable ‘globalised Islam’, as described by Olivier Roy (2002), is
said to form a dangerous and easily inammable mix (see also Kepel 2006).
Muslims are often depicted as proverbial aliens, adherents of a ‘border-defying
global Islam’ (Silverstein, 2005; see also Samad and Sen 2007), with irreconcil-
able cultural diferences with the West. Bernard Lewis has written that after
the Crusades and the encroachment of the Ottoman Turks in the seventeenth
century, we are now facing Islam’s third confrontation with the West (Lewis
2002). The conservative American journalist Caldwell published a book with
the ominous title: Relections on the Revolution in Europe. Can Europe be the
same with diferent people in it? Caldwell blames European countries for being
too indecisive in the face of a growing ‘Muslim problem’. Instead of taking the
massive immigration seriously and forcing Muslims to assimilate, European
governments look away and ignore the problem (Caldwell 2009). Many more
authors express a deep worry about, in their eyes, an uncontrollable force com-
ing from outside. Some arrive at the conclusion that there is an unbridgeable
cultural gap between Muslims and the rest of the populations of Europe. Oth-
ers point to the urgency of a civilising mission in the wake of an ‘unmistakable
Islamisation of Europe’. An increasing number of politicians consider security,
securitisation, containment, and control of Islam crucial dimensions of politi-
cal decision-making.
The merging of these two political priorities, integration and securitisation,
indeed results in new regimes of governmentality. I call the political pro-
grammes and modes of governance that emanate from the complex relation-
ship between integration, and political priorities of security and national
identity, the ‘domestication of Islam’. Domestication is a process of contain-
ment and pacication based on national identity politics. It is a process that is
in the rst place and self-evidently about integration of Islam into European
societies. But in fact it is more explicitly about the character of nation-states
and the challenges they face. Domestication politics revolve around the ques-
tion of how national states should deal with the presence of Islam in all its
perceived facets. Since domestication involves a good deal of monitoring and
control of religion, it also implies an intervention in the very content of Islamic
practices and convictions. Diferent nation-states have historically grown
nationally specic modes of dealing with religious diference, sometimes
T. Sunier / Journal of Muslims in Europe 1 (2012) 189-208 191
informed by colonial practices and experiences, so the domestication of Islam
takes on nationally specic features and outlooks. Most of the semi-scientic
reports on policy development take the Islamic challenge as their point of
departure.
One of the efects of the spread of domestication policies across Europe is
that research agendas tend to focus almost exclusively on the political priori-
ties of domestication and governance. The governance of Islam is the fastest
growing focus of research on Islam in Europe (see e.g. Bader 2007; Fetzer and
Soper 2005; Lettinga 2011). Research on Islam in Europe is gradually narrowing
down to issues of security, deviant behaviour and culture clash. One of the
major consequences of the one-sided emphasis on governance, national iden-
tity politics, and integration and security in the study of Islam in Europe is that
it conceals and ignores certain issues and trends that might be very important.
This has produced a paradoxical situation. Whereas Islam in particular has
become the common denominator for a wide range of phenomena, attitudes
and developments, as elds of research religious practices and the production
of religious knowledge among Muslims have sufered from programmatic con-
cealment and downright neglect.
2.Historical Roots of Domestication
It is tempting to attribute domestication politics, with its emphasis on control,
containment and security, predominantly to ‘9/11’, not least because this event
is often adduced as legitimisation for fundamental policy changes across
Europe in the past decade. The roots of domestication, however, must be
sought in the immigration policies of European countries of the early 1980s. In
those years a gradual shift took place from an emphasis on the economic
absorbing mechanisms of host societies to the cultural characteristics of the
migrant populations. In the course of the 1980s ‘Islam’ became the principal
Bowen, in discussing the domestication of Islam in French society, argues that the ‘dilemma
of domestication’ revolves around three basic issues: behaviour of Muslims, control of the republic
and adaptation of Islamic norms to France (2004: 43). Bowen demonstrates how domestication
has also signicantly dictated research agendas in France.
A good example is report of the so-called Stasi Commission that advised the government on
the headscarf in public places (2003). As a result, the French government issued a law on
‘conspicuous religious signs’ in schools passed by the National Assembly in February 2004.
As Bowen rightly argues the application of ‘governance’ as the key concept in the study of
Islam in Europe, runs the risk of discarding all kinds of developments that do not t in the
governance analytical format (Bowen 2007).
192 T. Sunier / Journal of Muslims in Europe 1 (2012) 189-208
denominator with which the background of migrants could be understood and
explained at the cost of other factors such as economic structure and social
context in the host countries. This has been referred to as ‘culturalism’. ‘Mus-
lim culture’ rendered an almost timeless character and turned from a ‘category
of practice’ into a ‘category of analysis’ (cf. Brubaker and Cooper 2000).
In the early 1990s most governments in Western Europe were becoming
increasingly concerned about how to ‘integrate’ Muslims into their societies,
each according to their own political frameworks. It was already clear that
most migrants would stay permanently and that Islam would be a constant
element in the political and social fabric of society. This was of course not
something new, but unmistakably new was the strong emphasis on the juxta-
position of the perceived liberal and secular foundations of West-European
nation-states and the religious traditionalism that Muslim immigrants were
said to carry with them.
The public debates and policy measures that emerged
in the 1990s included state neutrality, governance of alterity, but also the per-
ceived roots of European civilization. They all revolve around the same ques-
tion: how to cope with a new Muslim presence. The terrorist attacks in the past
decade and the ‘war on terror’ have only strengthened anxieties about global
events and have led to a further inward turn of European nation-states, a proc-
ess of ‘social closure’(Geschiere and Meyer 1998).
3.Beyond the Domestication of Islam
The narrowing down of research foci in the eld of Islam in Europe to issues of
integration and security has caused a serious academic neglect particularly
where it concerns the entanglement of Islamic practices with everyday life, the
religious engagements, expressions and experiences among young people, and
the transformation and reconguration of Islamic authority. These three elds
For a discussion on culturalism see: Dirlik 1990; Elsadda 2004; Freeman 2000; Vermeulen
1992.
There is a vast body of literature that deals with the politics of nation-states towards religious
diversity in all parts of the world (see e.g. Hoeber Rudolph and Piscatori 1997; Piscatori 1986; Van
der Veer and Lehmann 1999). There are, however, few studies on Islam in Europe that explicitly
analyze the process of domestication.
In that respect Caldwell (2009) is completely wrong when he argues that European
governments were lenient towards religious diversity. Quite the contrary, from the early 1990s
onwards European politicians expressed their sometimes deep worries about the future of ‘our
liberal and secular accomplishments’.