The Islamic World and Islam in Europe

Abstract

Rethinking the nature of the relationship between Europe and Islam in our own time requires a re-evaluation of perceptions of history. In this chapter, the argument is made that Islam is a part of the European civilizational heritage and that as a result of migration in recent decades, a European Islam now exists and can be viewed as the latest expression of a long history of European-Islamic links. Europe has never been purely Christian, despite the overwhelming importance of that tradition in shaping the European heritage. The Judaic and Christian traditions were mediated by the earlier Greco-Roman tradition and also by the Islamic world, which despite its huge internal differences constituted a civilizational constellation in its own right. The place and role of Islam in Europe need to be evaluated in the light of the notion of a European inter-civilizational constellation as opposed to a narrow notion of a Western Civilization based exclusively on the Christian tradition. Islam played a greater role in European civilization than has often been acknowledged. While this cannot be exaggerated, or compared to the scale and influence of the Christian heritage, a case can be made for Islam to be seen as part of the European civilizational constellation. Within the broader European civilizational constellation, Turkey is the best example of an Islamic country that was also formed through the active engagement with a model of modernity derived from Western Europe. The relation between Turkey and Europe constitutes the most important intersection of East and West and an example of the coexistence of Islam as a variant of the Western model of modernity. The relation between Europe and Islam cannot be easily summed up as a single one or as a continuous one. It can be described as threefold and that the three modes of relating to Islam have been present in every era, with some being more pronounced than others in particular periods: the first is a relation based on fear and xenophobia, the second is one of fantasy and the third one of borrowing, translation and adaptation. The nature of the relation between Europe and Islam was variable, with the Self also being in part an Other. There is no simple boundary between an European Self and an Islamic Other; rather, Self and Other have been mutually implicated to a point that we need a new kind of analysis which recognizes such mutually interlinked histories.