The Figure of the Muslim in Europe

Abstract

In this last chapter I will discuss the material and findings of the previous chapters concerning the role that the figure of the Muslim has played in public discussions and policies in the EU around the keywords of integration and cohesion. The first observation with which the proliferation of policies geared at Muslims is connected is the gradual abandonment of the notion of multiculturalism as a goal for Western European societies. This, it is clear, has been substituted by the establishment of concepts that are termed variously ‘integration’, ‘cohesion’ or ‘diversity’. In a general trend, Western European nations have, I argue, influenced each other and learned from each other’s policies and discourses, so that national differences in migrant policies have paradoxically converged on a more pronounced level than before 9/11, while politicians and publicists have called on immigrants to become more British or, respectively, to pledge their allegiance to the German Leitkultur or the laicist foundations of the French state. Here a turn can be perceived in which the addressee of policies and demands has changed from figures of immigrants, southerners or, generally, ethnically different newcomers into a quite clearly described, surveyed and analysed figure: that of the Muslim in Europe, which interacts strongly, or appears as the politicopublic version of the idea of a Muslim subject in the governmental regimes of European states.