The Muslim Question in Europe: Political Controversies and Public Philosophies

An estimated twenty million Muslims now reside in Europe, mostly as a result of large-scale postwar immigration. In The Muslim Question in Europe, Peter O’Brien challenges the popular notion that the hostilities concerning immigration—which continues to provoke debates about citizenship, headscarves, secularism, and terrorism—are a clash between “Islam and the West.” Rather, he explains, the vehement controversies surrounding European Muslims are better understood as persistent, unresolved intra-European tensions.

O’Brien contends that the best way to understand the politics of state accommodation of European Muslims is through the lens of three competing political ideologies: liberalism, nationalism, and postmodernism. These three broadly understood philosophical traditions represent the most influential normative forces in the politics of immigration in Europe today. He concludes that Muslim Europeans do not represent a monolithic anti-Western bloc within Europe. Although they vehemently disagree among themselves, it is along the same basic liberal, nationalist, and postmodern contours as non-Muslim Europeans.

Peter O’Brien is Professor of Political Science at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. He is the author of European Perceptions of Islam and America from Saladin to George W. Bush: Europe’s Fragile Ego Uncovered, and Beyond the Swastika. He has been a Social Science Research Council Fellow at the Free University in Berlin, and Fulbright Visiting Professor at Bogaziçi University in Istanbul and at the Humboldt University in Berlin.