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Islam shaping a new Europe: Staking out their place in Europe (Evan Osnos, December 19, 2004, Chicago Tribune)

For the first time in history, Muslims are building large and growing minorities across the secular Western world--nowhere more visibly than in Western Europe, where their numbers have more than doubled in the past two decades. The impact is unfolding from Amsterdam to Paris to Madrid, as Muslims struggle -- with words, votes and sometimes violence--to stake out their place in adopted societies.

Disproportionately young, poor and unemployed, they seek greater recognition and an Islam that fits their lives. Just as Egypt, Pakistan and Iran are witnessing the debate over the shape of Islam today, Europe is emerging as the battleground of tomorrow.

"The French are scared," said Tair Abdelkader, 38, a regular at the tented mosque whose light blue eyes and ebony beard are the legacy of a French mother and Algerian father. "In 10 years, the Muslim community will be stronger and stronger, and French political culture must accept that."

By midcentury, at least one in five Europeans will be Muslim. That change is unlike other waves of immigration because it poses a more essential challenge: defining a modern Judeo-Christian-Islamic civilization. The West must decide how its laws and values will shape and be shaped by Islam.

For Europe, as well as the United States, the question is not which civilization, Western or Islamic, will prevail, but which of Islam's many strands will dominate. Will it be compatible with Western values or will it reject them?

Center stage in that debate is France, home to the largest Islamic community on the continent, an estimated 5 million Muslims. Here the process of defining Euro-Islam is unfolding around questions as concrete as the right to wear head scarves and as abstract as the meaning of citizenship, secularism and extremism.

That just reflects a lack of understanding of demographics. The rapid decline of native Europeans and the dependence on Muslim immigrants means Europe will indeed become an Islamic civilization, regardless of which strand prevails. However, higher native birthrates and massive Hispanic immigration, along with American particularism, mean that Islam in America will rather easily be shaped to conform to Judeo-Christianity.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 19, 2004 1:16 PM