Anthony O'Mahony
Islam in Europe

A specialist on Islam and Muslim Christian relations and Christianity in the Middle East, O'Malley is director of research for the Centre for Christianity and Interreligious Dialogue at Heythrop College, University of London. (Courtesy The Way, 4/2, April 2001).

Islam presents two distinct faces to Europe, the cane a threat, the other that of an itinerant culture. However viewed, the history of the relationship between Islam and Europe, is problematic and is likely to remain so for foreseeable future.

The relationship between Christians and Muslims over the centuries has been long and tortuous. Geographically the origins of the two communities are not so far apart — Bethlehem and Jerusalem are only some eight hundred miles from Mecca. But as the two communities have grown and become universal rather than local, the relationship between them has changed — sometimes downright enmity, sometimes rivalry and competition, sometimes co-operation and collaboration. Different regions of the world in different centuries have therefore witnessed a whole range of encounters between Christians and Muslims. The historical study of the relationship is still in its beginnings. It cannot be otherwise, since Islamic history, as well as the history of those Christian communities that have been in contact with Islam, is still being written.

Obviously, Christian-Muslim relations do not exits in a vacuum. The two worlds hive known violent confrontation. Muslim conquests of Christian parts of the world; the Crusades still vividly remembered today, the expansion of the Turkish Ottoman empire; the Armenian massacres and genocide; European colonialism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the rise of Christian missions; the continuing difficult situations in which Christians find themselves in dominant Muslim societies, such as Sudan, Indonesia, Pakistan.1 It would be petty to try to figure out who is more guilty in these conflicts.2 The weight of this history may be why few approach Islam without strong feelings one way or the other.

Islam in European history

The presence of Muslims in continental Europe probably goes back to the earliest days of historical Islam.3 Four periods can be distinguished. The first of these has passed into history — the period of Islamic Spain and Muslim rule in Sicily and southern Italy. The Normans put an end to the latter in the eleventh century,4 and the Spanish reconquista erased the last Muslim foothold in Spain in 1492.5 All that remains today is the rich contribution Islam made to many aspects of European culture.6

The second phase was the result of the spread of Mongol armies during the thirteenth century. After only a few generations, their successor states became Muslim, and one of these, the Khanate of the Golden Horde, centred on the Volga river basin north of the Caspian and Black Seas, left a permanent Muslim population of various Tartar groups stretching from the Volga down to the Caucasus and Crimea. As itinerant traders and soldiers, many of these groups later traveled around the Russian Empire and established colonies in Finland arid the area which today straddles the border between Poland and the Ukraine.7

The third phase is marked by Ottoman expansion into the Balkans and central Europe. This was the context for the settlement of Turkish populations, which still survive today in parts of Bulgaria, the former State of Yugoslavia, Romania and Greece.8 Albania became a country with a Muslim majority, and Slav groups in Bosnia and parts of Bulgaria also became Muslim.9

Islam in contemporary Western Europe

The fourth phase is relatively new, namely the establishment of Muslim communities in Western Europe.10 The last half of the twentieth century saw the arrival in Europe of .an increasing number of Muslim immigrants. The majority came seeking work, while other sought political asylum.11 The growth of Muslim minority populations in the West since the early 1970's generated increasing concern about their presence and settlement in areas that have for centuries been considered the heart of Christendom.12 Their presence has, in some quarters, provoked fear and suspicion while in others it has proved a stimulus for intercultural and interreligious exchange.

It is estimated that there are currently twenty to twenty five million Muslims in the whole of Europe including Russia and the Balkans, and some ten to twelve million in Western Europe.13 They are partly a by-product of earlier relations established between expanding European Empires of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the Muslim world. The vanguard of these Muslim settlers in Europe were soldiers who fought under the banner of European nations: North Africans and Senegalese for France; Tartars and Bosnians for Germany; Indonesians and Surinamese for the Netherlands; South Asians and Africans for Britain.

A Breakdown of the countries of provenance of Muslims in Europe shows that they form an extremely heterogeneous group. While those in Eastern European countries are descendants of Tartar and Turkish military and civilian administrators and Slavic converts to Islam, the Muslims of Western Europe come from the great waves of migrants in the recent past. They exhibit great linguistic, ethnic and cultural diversity. It cannot be over stressed that beyond their profession of Islam, the various groups often have little in common. Frequently, the only common language among them is that of the European host country. Even those who come from the same country of origin stem from diverse and often antagonistic ethnic groups, such as Berbers and Arabs from the Maghreb or Turks and Kurds from Turkey. Their civil status varies greatly from country to country.14

Their ways of understanding and identifying with Islam show a rich diversity. Many, possibly the majority, of those coming from Turkey and the Maghreb come from village societies where Islam was part of popular religion. Islam offers them a global culture and a means of social structuring. They are thus strongly attached to the religion, although they may have but a vague knowledge of what it teaches. The local Islamic leader, whose position carries great authority especially among the first generation migrants, may himself have only and elementary knowledge of classical Islam. Many of the social and cultural problems faced by Muslims in Europe are similar to those faced by other, non-Muslim, migrant groups, while others are unique to them. The culture shock of moving into the highly mobile culture of modern industrial Europe and the difficulties of social integration, are considerable.

However, Muslim migrant groups face another complex issue connected with their Islamic faith. They are often both culturally and religiously alienated. Islam has determined the familial and social relationships, the rhythm and structure of daily life, the moral and value systems of their previous way of life. But in Europe they find themselves in a pluralist, secular environment in which there is little place for religious observance in the pattern

of daily activities. Second and third generations of these immigrants continue to experience in their lives a real and deep tension, finding themselves more and more integrated into the society in which they live and yet still influenced by the religious and cultural values and ideals held so dear by parents and elders in their communities.

Muslim migrants tend, not surprisingly, to transport to Europe the Islamic patterns of observance which they followed in their countries of provenance. Maghribis reproduce in Paris and Frankfurt the Marabout brotherhoods which are characteristic of Morocco and Algeria. Their identification with Islam is strong, although many have never attended Qur'anic schools and a Berbers know little Arabic. The brotherhoods offer a strong sense of community and stress the traditional values of-personal dignity, hospitality to the stranger and patient resignation.15

Many adjust to a dichotomised existence and take refuge in traditional values of behaviour in the private spheres of home and ghetto neighbourhood.

Others become alienated from all religious and ethical value systems. Evidence for this is found in the high percentage of Muslim prisoners in almost all Western European countries.16

Unity and diversity

Muslims themselves are ambivalent about their situation. They debate whether it is Islamically acceptable to live in a non-Muslim environment, they worry about the influence of western culture and education on their children, they debate whether they should become citizens, or opt to be transients in perpetuity. Some argue for establishing Islamic ghettos in order to maintain their children in the faith and deep the alien culture, out, while others see the possibility of living in a pluralistic society where Islam is recognised as a religion of divine origin with a divine mission to the world.

In early 1989 the 'Rushdie affair' hit the public, with Muslim protests in Britain against the perceived insult of The Satanic verses and the subsequent Iranian fatwa. This was followed by another celebrated incident when a group of Muslim girls were excluded from a secondary school north of Paris for insisting on wearing headscarves. This aroused a heated public debate across Europe about the place of Muslims in European society, about the relationship between religion and state, as well as about perceptions of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations.17

Many younger people have reacted by rediscovering Islam. International Islamic movements give them a sense of belonging to a larger, self assertive community. Paradoxically, their religious identity as Muslims, with the great demands it makes upon the individual, offer values which seem both absolute and unimpeachable. Observers in various countries have noted, for example, the increased practice of the Ramadan fast in recent years among Muslim youth. In this context of unity and diversity, three responses have evolved among Muslims in Europe.

Preservation, integration, mission

The first is the effort to reproduce the Islamic way of life of the country of origin: In order to protect itself from a society where Islamic traditions could easily crumble, there is an inclination towards exaggerated rigidity. The host society is considered decadent, dangerous, contact with it is undesirable and should be avoided as for as possible. Dress, behaviour, relations between, the sexes and patterns of worship should differentiate the Muslim from his or her European counterpart.18 'The myth of the return home', for instance, which was entertained by the first-Muslim migrants after the Second World War, has raised two questions. Can Western Europe accept the existence of Muslim communities within them? Can Muslim communities cope with a minority situation?19

A second response is that Muslims should develop a religious identity adapted to their cultural surroundings. They should work to build a 'European Islam', integrating what is good from the local cultures and making their own Islamic contribution to the future of European societies. This point of view, which often challenges traditional interpretations of Islamic doctrine, is based on the belief that lslam is a way of life which can be fully lived in any political and cultural context. This approach to Islamic life in Europe, however, presupposes a positive cultural experience of life in the various European countries in which Muslims-live.20

A third tendency should not be forgotten. It is that of the 'missionary' who wants to win Europe over to Islam. This desire is motivated by the conviction that Islam is the ultimate revelation of the original revelation, and hence the religion for all. The failure of the ideologies of the last century and the moral degeneracy of liberal capitalism means for some that Islam, and Islam alone, can offer salvation: There is no reason to be alarmist and to assume that all Muslims entertain this project, but it would be unwise to ignore it. 21

In Eastern Europe, more settled Muslim communities offer a further variation. In Yugoslavia Muslims came to define themselves by way of opposition. They were not Serbs or Orthodox, they not Croats or Catholic. They were simply Muslims, marked by a wider membership of the Islamic world. This was their difficulty at the demise of the Federation. The Croats had Croatia to fall back on, and the Serbs had Serbia, but the Muslims only had Bosnia, which had been dominated by the Serbs since 1918. Yet the Muslims did not want to be forced into leaving for Turkey. Contrary to allegations of their identification with Turks, the Bosnian Muslims have always had a strong sense of their Slavic and European identity.22

Views of the Varieties of Islam

The prism through which others view the nature of the unity and diversity of Islam as a global tradition continues to inform encounter and dialogue. In their views of Islam. both Muslim and non-Muslims seem on the whole to gravitate towards the notion that all Muslims are really the same, but they say so for very different reasons. For non-Muslims — especially some European and American secularists — images of a monolithic Islam often arise out of a fear of the unknown, or of organised religion: or autonomous spiritual values, that encourages oversimplification in dealing with 'the other.' That fear is in turn exacerbated by long standing stereotypes of Muslims as bellicose and generally given to religiously motivated and sanctioned violence.23

For their part, Muslims tend for several reasons to dismiss the notion that there are varieties of Islam. One is that their tradition's characterisation of Christian disunity poses an unacceptable image, of a religious community. Another is that their own understanding of, and wish for, a truly global community of Muslims leaves no room whatsoever for any significant diversity within it. If non-Muslims' consistent attribution of a seamless unity to Islam rests on an unjustifiably negative reading of Muslims as humanly homogeneous, that of Muslims is built on an equally uncritical idealisation of Islam as religiously uniform. The first characterisation is unfair the second unrealistic.

Islam as a challenge to Christianity

Islam in Europe presents a clear challenge to Christianity. Many Christian churches have responded with much good Muslim communities will, and increasingly, creative dialogue is taking place.24 However, for Christianity the

challenge of Islam is total. Islam presents itself as the primordial authentic religion par excellence. The final, complete form in which this religion lives and is taught today is guaranteed by the Qur'an. It proclaims the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. who first revealed himself to Adam, father of mankind, and made a covenant with him and his descendants.25

Even if the Qur'an praises the humility of certain Christians, Muhammad seems to have encountered a Christianity which gave the impression of having betrayed Jesus, of worshipping three gods and especially of being greatly divided. The Qur'an puts this terrible pronouncement about Christians in God's mouth: We estranged them, with enmity and hatred between the one and the other to the day of judgment (Surah 5. 14).

Apparently Christians showed no signs they would ever be able to get along with each other. Opposing this kind of Christianity, Islam proclaims the absolute oneness of God and unity among believers.

Christian and Islamic histories continue to be intertwined. The relationship has been ambiguous. For the Muslim, Islam proclaims the ultimate and total truth about-humanity and its history, about Jesus Christ (as servant, not as God, as a prophet in the Islamic understanding of that term), and about Christianity (which tampered with Scripture and so represents a continued deviation from Christ's teaching). To Islam, Christianity has changed so completely that it is hard to recognise it as Christianity.

The Dominican Islamicist Jacques Jomier has reflected upon these themes. In the context of inter-religious dialogue in modern Europe, how does the umma define itself vis-à-vis other, non-Muslim, communities? Can Muslims today, with good qur'anic conscience, as it were, attribute to non-Muslims, including those who freely reject the message of Islam, the same message of Islam, the same human dignity as the Muslim believer? Or are all non-Muslims to be viewed qur'anically — as somehow deformed by their erroneous beliefs and their refusal to adhere to Islam? Do they merit being treated as human beings of equal dignity and rights? Jomier pondered further upon the possible reasons for this Islamic 'psychological assurance' and observed that to many the Muslim believer appears uniquely sure of his faith. What does the typically Muslim conviction that the truth of Islam is patently evident to the point that those who do not accept it are viewed as acting dishonestly have to say about the specifically Qur'anic view of human beings as believers?26

For the Christian, Islam is hard to make out. What is the meaning of this religion which on the one hand came after Christ and is related to Christ and Christianity, but on the other hand does not seem to be acquainted with true Christian teaching about the living person of Jesus Christ? Some (eg. John of Damascus) saw Islam as a Christian heresy, some medieval Christians saw it as a diabolical work.

Early Muslim-Christian dialogue continues to be of interest because of its readiness to rely on philosophical reasoning, to have recourse to scriptural texts, and to investigate them methodically. Many participants showed same sensitivity to history and, whereas Oriental Christians seemed inclined to rank Islam among the many heresies, Latins of the West were more aware of those aspects of the religion that might provide ground for dialogue with Christians.27 The motives behind the dialogue were many ranging from mere polemical intent to eschatological perspectives. Against this background it was natural that when the Catholic Church gathered at the Second Vatican Council, the Church fathers would address themselves to Islam.

Vatican II on Islam and Christian-Muslim relations

When, during the second session, the text about Judaism was presented, the Catholic Oriental patriarchs and bishops living in Muslim countries asked for 'balance' — in other words, that justice should be done not only to the reality of Judaism but also to Islam. This demand issued in two relatively short but important and decisive texts. Although they are primarily concerned with the Catholics' practical attitude towards Muslims, they imply elements of a fresh Catholic theological view of Islam. Paragraph 16 of Lumen gentium, the Constitution on the Church, declares: The plan of salvation also embraces those who acknowledge the Creator, and among these the Muslims are first: they profess to hold the faith of Abraham and along with us they worship the one merciful God who will judge humanity on the last day.

The study of the proceedings of the Council makes it clear that it did not want to state an objective link between Islam, Ishmael and the biblical revelation.

The reference to Abraham is put on the subjective level: 'they profess...' Islam is situated first among the non-biblical, monotheistic religions and it is boldly affirmed that the Muslims adore the same God as the Christians.

The second text of the Council is longer and more substantial. It constitutes paragraph 3 of Nostra aetate, the declaration on non-Christian religions. After stating in paragraph 2 the principles of the 'Christian vision of the religions in general — to accept all that they contain of the true and good as coming from God. Without however falling into syncretism — the Council states:

The Church also looks upon Muslims with respect. They worship the one God living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to humanity and to whose decrees, even the hidden ones, they seek to submit themselves whole-heartedly, just as Abraham, to whom the Islamic faith readily relates itself, submitted to God. They venerate Jesus as a prophet, even though they do not acknowledge him as God, and they honour his virgin mother Mary and even sometimes devoutly, call upon her. Furthermore they await the day of judgment when God will require all people brought back to life. Hence they have regard for the moral life and worship God especially in prayer, almsgiving and fasting. Although considerable dissension and enmities between Christians and Muslims may have arisen in the course of the centuries, this synod urges all parties that, forgetting past things, they train themselves towards sincere mutual understanding and together maintain and promote social justice and moral values as well as peace and freedom for all people.

Two characteristics of this text are immediately evident. First, it highlights the common or related points between Islam and Christianity, noting at the same time the essential difference: the Christian profession of the divinity of Jesus. Second, it opens up the possibility of collaboration between the two religions, at the service of the most pressing needs of contemporary humanity.

The opening sentence of the paragraph, apparently a trite formula, in fact constitutes a unique statement and an absolutely new beginning in so far as it is an official declaration about Islam issued by the highest teaching authority of the Catholic Church. Faith in, and adoration of, God as One are the centre and heart of Islam. It has been pointed out by the Jesuit Islamiçist, Christian Troll, that this is close to the first article of the Christian faith — 'Credo in unum Deum' — even if, for Christians, the divine oneness opens itself to the Trinity of the persons. Muslims and Christians adore together the one God, even if they do not always give God the same 'names' nor give the same meaning to apparently similar 'names'. 28

Louis Massignon, a Witness for the Future

Let me bring these reflections on the relations between Islam and contemporary Europe to a close by looking to the future and to the contribution of a great European to the dialogue. During the decades preceding the Council no scholar had so intensely and persistently tried to transform Christian views of Islam as the scholar, mystic and priest, Louis Massignon (1883-1962). By the force of his personality and the originality of his ideas Louis Massignon was perhaps the only Islamicist scholar who was a central figure in the wider intellectual life of his time.

The renewal of Massignon's Christian religious consciousness was directly linked to Islam. He discovered his Catholic faith through the study of the great Muslim mystic al-Hallaj, an experience which moved him for ever beyond the realm of mere academic interest. Their extraordinary friendship 'filled the heart of Massignon and shaped his mind so thoroughly that he can be seen as the greatest Muslim among Christians and the greatest Christian among Muslims.29 Massignon become convinced that Christians had to accomplish what amounted to a Copernican re-centring in order to understand Islam. In other words, Christians had to place themselves at the very axis of Muslim doctrine. Massignon was open to the Muslim notion that the three religions issued from the same source. He accepted the connection of Muslims to Abraham via Ishmael; they were the heirs of Muhammad's blessing.

Muhammad, for Massignon, was prophète negatif in the sense that he denies God being more than what he affirms him to be. Muhammad, in other words, is the herald of an intransigent monotheism.

For Massignon Muhammad is no longer the 'Antichrist', as a, certain section of the Church had presented him in the past. He is, rather, the one who expects Christians and Jews to put themselves in the place of the Muslims in order to join in to the one salvation proposed by God. This substitution implies that Christians take on themselves the sins, the insufficiencies, the sufferings and the limitations of their doctrines and legal prescription. It implies that Christians live dependent upon Islam in order to save Islam in the same way in which Christ depends on those whom. he saves. If Christians had been faithful to their calling, would Islam have been born? Massignon saw Islam as the claim of the heritage of Abraham against Christians who have been unfaithful to Jesus and against an Israel which has been unfaithful not just to Jesus but to the Mosaic Covenant.

Massignon's témoignage, his deep personal commitment to Muslims and Islam, has profoundly influenced the course of Muslim-Christian dialogue in Europe. It has also directly influenced the way Islamic thinkers have understood their own reflection on the relationship between religion and politics. The important Iranian Islamic activist Ali Shari'ati has recalled: 'The most remarkable lecture by professor Massignon I ever attended was not held at the Sorbonne or at the College de France... but at the foot of the columns of the mosque of the Muslims of Paris. He was sitting there, with a few vegetable salesmen and some unhappy Algerian Arabs who had, in colonialist France, forgotten even their religion and their language; and he taught them the Qu'ran.30

A Continuing Challenge

The relationship between Europe and Islam as it enters a New Era will continue to present challenges. In the first encyclical of his pontificate, Redemptor hominis, Pope John.Paul II referred to the religious map of the world and underlined the importance for the Church of taking account of religious plurality. Having given more attention to the relations between Christians and Muslims than any of his predecessors, his overriding attitude is one of respect for the valid religious experience of Muslims. His is a vision for today's Europe — a vision with which Christians can approach Muslim, not merely-eager to speak and give, but also ready to learn.31

The real challenge now for European Muslims, and Christians, as David Burrell has said, is how to practise an inner journey which is neither assimilating not appropriating.

What is rather called for is mutuality of understanding and of appreciation, a critical perception which is already incipiently self-critical, Rather than reach for commonality, we are invited to expand our horizons in the face of diversity. The goal is not an expanded scheme, but an. enriched inquirer: discovery of one's own faith in encountering the faith of another. 32

 

Dialogue is not a surrender of our own beliefs

But a necessary mode of existence In a world of difference.

Dominican General Chapter, 1995

 

 

 

 

Notes

1. See Bernard Lewis, Cultures in conflicts: Christian, Muslims and Jews in the age of discovery (Oxford University Press, 1995); Hugh Goddard, 'Christian Muslim relations a look backwards and a look forwards. Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations (ICMR) vol 11, no 2 (2000), pp. 195-212 and Thomas Michel, 'Christian Muslim dialogue in a changing world', Theology Digest, vol. 39 (1992), pp. 303 -320.

2. Jacques Waardenburg, 'Critical issues in Muslim Christian relations theoretical, practical, dialogical, scholarly', ICMR, vol 8. n. 1 (1997), pp. 9-26, and Thomas Michel, 'Social and religious factors attecting Muslim-Christian relations', ICMR, vol. 8, n. 1 (1997), pp. 53-66.

3. The influential Italian Catholic historian Andrea Riccardi, pondering the relationship of Christians and Islam around the Mediterranean places Islam in another context. 'Can a region of the world with seventeen countries and territories, twenty-two languages and three world religions be thought of as single entity? Or is the Mediterranean merely a geographical expression, a frontier zone between North and South, between Christendom and the world of Islam?' Riccardi takes issue with the 'Clash of civilizations' thesis espoused by Samuel Huntington, arguing that the Mediterranean, in spite of - and indeed perhaps because of its diversity, exhibits all the characteristics of a united whole. Riccardi evokes the French historian Braudel's vision of the Mediterranean as a sea of diversity that over the centuries had been 'melded into larger units such as empires or cosmopolitan cities'. His was the Mediterranean of coexistence, until it entered a period of crisis between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As the great empires (most notably that of the Ottomans) fell by the wayside, they were replaced by several different 'nations', each one affiliated to a distinct religion, culture and ideology. But by employing what Braudel once termed a 'long-view lens' to observe the current fragmentary state of things, Riccardi suggests that one can detect the persistence of an underlying unitary fabric. 'The Muslim south and the European north are obliged by geography and history', to find a way to live together in that set of common circumstances that is the Mediterranean.' Andrea Riccardi, Mediterraneo: Cristianesimo e Islam tra coabitazone e conflitto, (Milan: Guerini e Associati, 1997).

4. Georges Peyronnet, 'Coexistence Islamo-Chretienne en Sicile et au Moyen-Orient (fin du XIleme siecle)', Islamochristiana (ISCH) vol. 19 (1993), pp. 55-73.

5. Francisco de Borja de Medina, 'Islam and Christian spirituality in Spain: contacts, influences, similarities'. ICSH, vol. 18 (1992), pp. 87-108.

6. W. Montgomery Watt, The influence of Islam on medieval Europe, (Edinburgh University Press, 1972).

7. Mark Batunsky, 'Islam and Russian medieval culture', Die Welt des Islams. n.s. vol. 25 (1985), pp. 1-27. For Muslim-Christian relations see Chantel Lermercier-Quelquejay, 'Les missions orthodoxies en pays musulmans de Moyenne-et Basse-Volga, 1552-1865', Cahiers du Monde Russe et Sovietique (CMRS) vol. 8, n. 3 (1967), pp. 369-403; Alexandre Bennigsen and Ch. Lermercier-Quelquejay, ' Musulmans et missions orthodoxies en Russie orientale avant 1971', (CMRS) vol. 13, n. 1(1972), pp. 57-113.

8. See in particular the work of Alexandre Popovic: L'Islam balkanique: Les musulmans du sudest européen dans la période post-ottomane (Berlin: Otto Harrassowitz Wiesbaden, 1986); Un ordre de derviches en terre d'Europe: la Rifâ'iyya (Lausanne: Éditions l'Âge de l'Homme, 1993): 'L' Islam et l'état dans les pays du sud-est européen' in L'Islam et I'état dans le monde daujourd'hui, ed Oliver Carré (Paris: PUF, 1982), pp. 121-142: "Le 'radiclisme islamique' en Yougoslavie" in Radicalismes Islamiques, ed Oliver Carré and Paul Dumont (Paris: Editions l'Harmattan, 1985). vol. 2, pp. 151-161: and Harry T. Norris, Islam in the Balkans: religions and society between Europe and the Arab World (London: C. Hurst, 1993).

9. Nathalie Chaser, L' Albanie pays des derviches : les orders mystiques musulmans en Albanie à l'époque post-ottomane (1912-1967), (Berlin: Otto Harrassowitz Wiesbaden, 1990). See also the very interesting account by the French Jesuit Islamicist André d'Alverny, 'L'Albanie : terre d'Islam au bastion de chrétienté', En Terre d'Islam, n. 6 (1939), pp. 95-103.

10. J. Nielsen, 'Muslims in Europe', Renaissance and Modern Studies, vol. 31 (1987), pp. 58-73.

11. Classical Islamic thought has divided the world up into two spheres. Dar-al-Islam (The House of Islam) and Dar-al-Harb (the House of War). In the former, Muslims govern Islamic society according to its practices, and in the latter, unbelievers rule. The presence in Europe — Dar-al-Harb — of large numbers of Muslim intellectuals articulating dissent towards Islamic states Dar-al-Islam — is creating tensions within contemporary Islamic thought over how to square the circle within classical parameters. Maurice Borrmans, 'Future prospects for Muslim-Christian coexistence in non-Islamic countries in the light of past experience'. Journal of the Institute for Muslims Minority affairs, vol. 10, n. 1 (1989), pp. 50-62, and Bernard Lewis, 'Legal and historical reflections on the position of Muslim populations under non-Muslim rule', in B. Lewis and D. Schnapper (ed), Muslims in Europe, (London: Pinter, 1994), pp. 1-18.

12. The best overall guide to Muslim presence in Europe is J.S. Nielsen. Muslims in Western Europe (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, second edition, 1995). See also the bibliographic guide: Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and I. Qurqmaz, 'Muslims in the West: a select bibliography', ICMR, vol. 11, n. 1 (2000), pp. 5-49.

13. Estimates of Muslim population in European countries: Austria - 100.000: Belgium - 250,000; Denmark - 60.000; France - 3.000,000; Germany - 2.500,000; Ireland - 5.000: Italy - 500,000; Luxembourg - 1.000; Netherlands - 400,000; Norway - 25,000; Portugal - 15,000; Spain 450,000; Sweden - 100.000; Switzerland - 100.000; United Kingdom - 2.000.000.

14. Thomas Michel, 'Muslims in Europe', Secretariatus pro Non-Christianis (Rome), Bulletin n. 60 (1985), pp. 265-269.

15. Joseph Roger de Benoist, 'De Touba à New York et Hong Kong : l' expansion économique d'une confrérie sénégalaise' in Recueil d'articles offert à Maurice Borrmans par ses collégues et amis (Rome, PISAI, 1996), pp. 29-40.

16. Michael L. Fitzgerald, 'Muslims in Europe: managing as minorities' in Religion et politique: un theme pour le dialogue Islamo-Chrétien. Dossiers de la commission pour les rapports religieux avec les musulmans (1995 -1999), Cité de Vatican, 1999, pp. 63-78.

17. S. Nielsen, 'Muslims. Christians and loyalties in the nation-state', in Religion and citizenship in Europe and the Arab world, ed. J. S. Nielsen ( London: Grey Seal, 1992), pp. I-6: and Claude Galliot, 'Islam et pourvoir : la commanderie du bien et l'interdiction du mal', Comnuinio, vol. 16 (1991), pp. 127-152.

18. Gillies Kepel, Allah in the West: Islamic movements in America and Europe (London: Polity, I 997).

19. Michael L. Fitzgerald, 'Christians and Muslims in Europe: perspectives for dialogue', Encounter: Documents for Muslim-Christian understanding, n. 247 (1998), p. 7.

20. For an extended reflection on this theme, in contemporary Islamic thought, see J. S. Nielsen, Towards a European Islam, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999).

21. For the controversial question of conversion see Jean-Marie Gaudeul, Called from Islam to Christ: why Muslims become Christians (London: Monarch, 1999): and L. Rocher and F. Cherqaoui: D'une foi l'autre, les conversions à l'Islam en Occident, (Paris: Seuil, 1986).

22. This dilemma and others are powerfully told in Michael A. Sells, The bridge betrayed: religion and genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina (University of California Press, 1996): see also the essays in Mark Pinson (ed), The Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina, (Harvard University Press, 1996).

23. M. Lagarde, 'Violence et verité : etude de texts islamiques', Pontificium Consilium pro Dialogo inter Religiones, Bulletin n. 81 (1992), pp. 282-327.

24. J. S Nielsen, 'Christian-Muslim relations in Western Europe', ISCH vol. 21 (1995), pp. 121-131.

25. Guy Monnot, 'Ce que l'Islam n'est pas', Communio : revue catholique internationale, vol. 16 (1991), pp. 28-41.

26. Jacques,Jomier, Dieu et l'homme dans le Coran : l'aspect religieux de la nature humanie joint a I'obeissance au Prophete de I'Islam, (Paris: Cerf, 1996).

27. David B. Burrell has shown as how inter-faith dialogue was immensely important in the Middle Ages and how a renewal of such conversations might be productive for current theological engagement among Jews; Christians and Muslims. See Knowing the unknowable God: Ibn Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas (University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), and Freedom and creation in three traditions (University of Notre Dame Press, 1993).

28. For an extended reflection see Christian W Troll, 'Changing Catholic views of Islam', in Jacques Waardenburg (ed), Islam and Christianity: mutual perceptions since the mid-20th century (Louvin: Peeters, 1998), pp. 19-77.

29. Ibrahim Madkour in 'Louis Massignon, L'Herme Massignon', JF Six (ed) (Paris, L'Herne, 1970), p. 68.

30. Anthony O'Mahony, 'Mysticism and Politics: Louis Massignon, Shi'a Islam, Iran and 'Ali Shari'ati — a Muslim-Christian encounter' in Alan Jones (ed), University Lectures in Islamic Studies vol. 2, (London, Oxford, 1998), pp. 113-134.

31. See the following essays: M.L. Fitzgerald, 'Pope John Paul II and interreligious dialogue: a Catholic assessment', pp. 209-222; M. Ayoub: 'Pope John Paul Il and Islam', pp. 171-186; and. Ibrahim M Abu-Rabi, 'John Paul II and Islam', pp. 187-208; in John Paul Il and interreligious dialogue, ed. Byron L. Sherwin ad Harold Kasimow (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1999).

32. David Burrell, in the preface to Roger Amaldez, Three messengers for one God (University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), p. vii.

 

Ref.: Focus, Vol. 31, n. 3, 2001.