24 - Islam in the West

Summary

Muslims represent a permanent, expanding and diverse element in the populations of most Western states. But contrary to popular perceptions, Islam’s presence in Europe goes back some 1,400 years, and it is claimed that Muslims were among the earliest visitors to North America, accompanying Spanish explorers. In Europe the main difference today is between the Balkan Muslims, who have their beginning in Ottoman conquests and migration from the fourteenth century onwards, and those who have migrated to Western Europe more recently. In the United States growing evidence exists of African Muslims being brought there as slaves, while in the twentieth century many African-Americans converted to Islam. Far smaller numbers arrived in Australia and New Zealand, largely for economic reasons, from the 1850s onwards.

These substantial Muslim populations have significant implications for the societies in which they live. Their distinct religious and cultural practices fuel an array of reactions, but responses to their presence in general betray little awareness that Islam has long been part of European history, just as Judaism and, more emphatically, Christianity have been. Instead of ‘Christian Europe’, the continent could be viewed as having been fashioned by these three world faiths with common origins in the Middle East. Islam, thus, is no more a usurper of Christian Europe than Christianity was of Judaic and ‘pagan’ traditions previously. All, it could be argued, are equally entitled to be recognised as part of the European or Western heritage, and not simply as the ‘Other’.