Islam in Europe: the unexceptional case

This paper examines the concept of ‘Islam in Europe’ alongside that of ‘religion in Europe’, indicating aspects of, and consequences of, the inter-influence between the two. An underlying theme is that there is little value in seeking to understand Islam in Europe as a category on its own, as the state of flux characterising the latter is to a large extent symptomatic of and simultaneously catalytic for the flux around religion-in-general in Europe. This much is evident in engagements with Islam at the supranational (European) level, in debates and policy developments around Islam within individual nation-states, and in local level adaptations to religious plurality traced through empirical studies of the Muslim presence in a number of towns across Europe.