Unity in Diversity: a portrait of Europe's Muslims

Outside the Balkans, a region that was left with large Muslim communities following the Ottoman conquests of the medieval period, it is only relatively recently that Islam has become established in Europe. This unprecedented situation is stimulating debate and provoking tensions,¹ quite aside from specific problems linked to radicalisation and terrorism. The “Muslim question” is now very much a fixture on the European agenda.²

For some, these tensions are both secondary and temporary: ultimately, they can be put down to the prejudices of the native populations and should fade away in good time.³ For others, the cultural conflict with Islam is symptomatic of problems that run much deeper, and that risk generating unprecedented difficulties.⁴

In the face of this uncertainty, the role of social science is to provide information that is as factual as possible. The problem is that the data available is both sparse in volume and limited in nature. Paradoxically Islam remains the “blind spot for social science”, as sociologist Olivier Galland bemoaned in the aftermath of the January 2015 attacks in France.⁵ The lack of data can be felt particularly keenly when it comes to attempting an international comparison,⁶ which is all the more regrettable when we consider that a comparison between several countries can help to compensate for a lack of longitudinal data. Studying different countries puts us in a position to ask questions such as: do Muslims constitute a diverse or homogeneous population? Do they hold different values to the rest of the population? Do they feel an attachment to the values of their country of residence and, if so, can it therefore be deduced that there is a more efficient process of integration taking place than the news reports would have us believe?⁷ It questions such as these that we wish to address in this paper, through analysing the data provided by the European Social Survey (ESS). However, before presenting this data, let us first outline the hypotheses that will guide our analysis.

Two competing, and equally acceptable, hypotheses regarding Islam have become widespread. The first is inspired by the sort of critical analysis that has been a feature of scholarly thought since the days of Ernest Renan or Max Weber. It regards the religion of Islam as having a structuring effect on its followers, its intrinsic features producing a determined set of values and behaviours. According to this hypothesis, which emphasises the importance of the role played by religion, all Muslims must therefore display common traits, regardless of their country of residence.

A competing hypothesis sees religion as a more flexible variable. This hypothesis, which thus puts the importance of religion into perspective, considers that the latter, far from having a structuring effect, is in fact malleable and fluctuating, capable of adapting to its surroundings. As such, the same doctrinal body may be the subject of different appropriations

1. olivier Galland, “Les jeunes musulmans et la République : l’angle mort des sciences sociales”, 11 February 2015, eu.com (available for consultation on www.telos-eu.com).
2. one exception is the European Values See, for example, Pierre Bréchon, “Religion et valeurs en Europe”, Futuribles, n° 393, March-April 2013, pp. 75-87, as well as Pierre Bréchon and Frédéric Gonthier, Les Valeurs des Européens, Armand Colin, 2014.
3. We understand “country of residence” to signify the country that the Muslims were in when they completed the survey, whether these respondents hold the nationality of the country in question or

and interpretations, in accordance with changing eras and locations. This hypothesis can point towards the precedent of Christianity, since this religion led to different realities: Roman Catholic, Protestant, Eastern  Othodox, not to mention the numerous national and regional variations. Observers tend to favour this second hypothesis because it fits in better with the theory of the secularisation of our world, according to which religion no longer plays a decisive role in individual identity building. We must also acknowledge that this hypothesis also has the advantage of avoiding a sensitive debate on the nature of Islam, which is often perceived as being the “religion of the poor”.⁸ Both approaches have their limitations. The first is guilty of excessive essentialism, the second of excessive sociologism. It is quite obvious that a single religion can give rise to different realities: as with Christianity, Islam has experienced schisms and has evolved differently in different parts of the world. Must we therefore deduce that “Islam does not exist”?⁹ That would perhaps be jumping to conclusions. The diversity of a religion does not mean that it has no impact on values, but nor does it mean that this religion accepts an unlimited amount of values. “The fact that one thought accepts diverse interpretations does not mean that it is compatible with any interpretation whatsoever,” writes Philippe d’Iribarne.¹⁰ Furthermore, the socio-historic argument regarding diversity can be reversed: if history creates diversity, it can also create unity, above all in today’s climate where we are clearly witnessing the “revival of Islam” around the world.¹¹

This is why a middle ground between the two appears to be the best solution.

We will therefore start from the assumption that Muslims in Europe do not constitute one homogeneous block, not just because they come from diverse backgrounds linked to historic migrations (the Turks who travelled to Germany, North Africans who ended up in France, Asians in England, and so on) but also because, as with other minorities, Muslims are influenced by the cultural context in their country of residence. However, neither can we discount the impact of religion, above all in these modern times characterised by a resurgence of religiosity among Muslim populations, as evidenced by surveys carried out in France that are confirmed by the ESS data, as we will see later on.¹²

The ESS surveys constitute a precious source of information on European public opinion.¹³ They have been carried out every two years since 2002. Seven sets of data have been collected up until now, although the 2014 data is still not available in its entirety. We will therefore make do with the first six editions, carried out between 2002 and 2012.

In each of these surveys, only one question is asked about religion. To be more exact, respondents must indicate whether they consider themselves as belonging to any particular religion and, if so, which one.¹⁴ It is therefore a personal declaration.

The number of Muslim respondents in each of the editions of the ESS is too low (just a few dozen people) to enable a full statistical analysis. There is, however, a way of overcoming this obstacle: we will group together all the data released in the various editions from 2002 to 2012. By doing so, we will have access to an overall sample in which the number of Muslims reaches several hundred people, enough to reveal the broad trends.

We will present the results in four stages. Having given an overview of the sociodemocratic characteristics of European Muslims, we will study their relationship with religion in more detail by applying various hypotheses relating to “supply” and “demand”, before finally addressing their social and political values.

Muslims find it hard to access the job market.¹⁷ Their unemployment rates vary from 13% (in the United Kingdom and Sweden) to over 30% (Spain and Bulgaria). Everywhere, the unemployment rate among Muslims is much higher than among the rest of the population.

We have tried to confirm whether there is a link between unemployment and the flexibility of the job market (Graph 3). To do so, we cross-referenced the unemployment rate with the OECD employment protection index.¹⁸ There is an underlying trend: the more flexible the job market, the lower the unemployment rate. As far as France is concerned, the level of protection afforded to employees does not seem to aid the employment prospects among an often under-qualified Muslim workforce. It can nevertheless be observed that, even for those countries with a similar level of employment regulation, unemployment rates vary greatly (for example, between Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark, or between Greece, France and Spain). It is therefore unclear whether deregulating the labour market is an adequate solution to the problem of professional insertion.

The sense of belonging to an ethnic minority is quite pronounced among European Muslims. This feeling is particularly commonplace in Bulgaria (87%) and in the Netherlands (89%); it is significantly less prominent in Belgium (40%), France (30%) or Sweden (25%).

At the same time, a significant proportion of Muslims (Bulgaria aside) experience the feeling of being discriminated against due to their religion. In France, 15% of Muslims declare that this is the case  (a figure  that  rises to 25% among 15-24 year-olds). This is not exclusively a Muslim problem: other religious minorities often experience, albeit to a lesser extent, the feeling of being discriminated against. In France, perceived discriminations affect Muslims and the country’s other religious minorities to the same degree.

The sense of belonging to an ethnic minority is quite pronounced among European Muslims. This feeling is particularly commonplace in Bulgaria (87%) and in the Netherlands (89%); it is significantly less prominent in Belgium (40%), France (30%) or Sweden (25%).

At the same time, a significant proportion of Muslims (Bulgaria aside) experience the feeling of being discriminated against due to their religion. In France, 15% of Muslims declare that this is the case  (a figure  that  rises to 25% among 15-24 year-olds). This is not exclusively a Muslim problem: other religious minorities often experience, albeit to a lesser extent, the feeling of being discriminated against. In France, perceived discriminations affect Muslims and the country’s other religious minorities to the same degree.

Therefore, multicultural policies do not necessarily eradicate the notion of perceived discrimination. This surprising result can be explained by the fact that the feeling of being discriminated against does not only result from public policy: we must also assume that it depends on the personal, everyday experiences of the individual. Having said that, neither did we find any correlation between the levels of perceived discrimination and levels of hostility in public opinion, as measured by the Pew Research Center in its Hostility Index. Perhaps another explanation is therefore more appropriate, one that sees multicultural policies to blame for fostering a sentiment of discrimination by placing too much emphasis on ethno-religious identities. Such an explanation is consistent with the data gathered, since we can observe that a sense of belonging to a minority group is often accompanied by a sense of being the victim of discrimination. In the Netherlands, for example, where perceptions of discrimination are widespread, 29% of the Muslims who believe that they belong to a minority group feel that they are also victims of discrimination, as opposed to only 12% among those who do not feel like they members of a minority. In short, pro-minority policies can make individuals more sensitive to the issue of discrimination, fostering among them a certain image of life in their society.

What does it mean to claim to be Muslim? Does the act of declaring oneself  a Muslim automatically imply possession of a very distinctive religious identity, and a very strong dedication to that religion? Or on the contrary, do Muslims not keep their religion at arm’s length, as per the assumptions made by secularisation theories? The ESS survey provides various indicators that allow us to build a better overview of the profile of religious identities (Annex 3). We will focus on two of them: whether the respondents consider themselves to be religious²¹ and how frequently they practice their religion.²²

Why is a high level of religiosity such a prominent feature among Muslims? Two types of hypothesis can be put forward: those relating to supply and those relating to demand. As the data is not suitable for in-depth analysis of the effects of supply, we will broaden the debate to consider the impact of the surrounding environment. We will then look at the issue raised by Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, who proposed the notion of “existential security” as a means of explaining the process of secularisation.²⁴

Explanations relating to supply focus on the role of religious diversity, which creates an atmosphere of competition, and therefore of emulation, between different religions. One such explanation has been provided to make sense of the power that religion wields in the United States, where the coexistence of numerous religions has empowered each one to find its own identity, and continues to spark those religions into action in order to attract and retain followers. If we follow this approach through, religion can be seen as a market in which several different providers of spiritual goods compete against each other. As such, supply is creating demand.

This supply-based approach seems well-suited to Islam. The Muslim world has been in turmoil for many centuries, provoking an intense environment of internal competition. In Europe, many associations have formed in order to represent and supervise the Muslim population.²⁵ These associations cover a wide spectre, from very militant organisations like the Muslim Brotherhood or other preaching movements borne out of Salafism or the Tabligh, to less mediatised associations that include the Sufi fellowships. This competitive nature of this environment is amplified by the intervention of foreign countries that like to exercise a certain level of control over their emigrants, whether it be the North African countries or Turkey, not to forget the countries in the Middle East – such as Saudi Arabia – that wish to act in a capacity of spiritual leadership. This has all led to a climate of active proselytism, with each group putting itself forward as the worthy custodian of true Islam.

This militant dimension of Islam is obviously very important in the current climate, but the ESS data does not allow us to explore it in any depth. All we can do is to confirm whether there is a connection between religiosity and religious diversity. To do so, we will use the religious “fractionalization” index developed by Alberto Alesina.²⁶ The analysis is not conclusive and agrees with Norris and Inglehart’s observations, which found that secularisation does not correlate to the absence of religious diversity. In other words, secularisation is not necessarily stronger in countries where one religion enjoys a monopoly. It must nevertheless be emphasised that the religious fractionalization index tells us nothing about proselytism or the competition between the different movements within the Muslim faith, and we are therefore unable to pass comment on this point. At the present time, an explanation relating to militant activism can be neither confirmed nor disproved, and such a notion must therefore be the subject of further investigation.

Now let’s turn our attention to the issue of demand, starting with issues arising from socioeconomic difficulties. There is a notion that religion, in line with Marx’s evaluation of the “opium of the people” – “the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a world without heart” – serves as a refuge that compensates for various frustrating social or economic disadvantages.

The fact that those who practice Islam are more likely to feel discriminated against than those simply of a Muslim faith suggests that we should re-frame the debate, in order to examine the difficulties directly related to certain aspects of Muslim practice. Rituals such as Ramadan,  the prescribed diet and the daily prayer are sometimes an awkward fit in host societies, which can generate a sense of discrimination, even where no harm is intended. This underlines the total ambiguity of the current situation facing Muslims, above all in a secular and egalitarian country such as France, where their claims to be treated with equality sometimes appear to be at odds with their desire to partake in religious practices that require very specific arrangements.

The thesis written by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart has now become essential reading for anyone looking to understand our relationship with religion. These authors propose a worthy interpretation of the situation, which resolves a number of difficulties. According to them, analysis of secularisation has been abandoned far too often on the pretext that it appears to contradict the preservation, or even revival, of religion that we are witnessing in certain regions of the world.

For Norris and Inglehart, these contradictory phenomena are easily explained if we consider that secularisation principally depends on what they term “existential security”, in other words the feeling of living in a safe and predictable environment. Their chain of thought has shades of Marxist analysis: when individuals feel safe, they turn away from religion; on the contrary, when they feel unsafe, they see religion as a source of comfort. Norris and Inglehart’s work nevertheless stands out due to its strictly sociological definition of security, as a concept that is reduced neither to the social position of individuals nor to social inequalities, but one that is also influenced by the manner in which institutions create a safe environment.

The case of Islam serves as a persuasive example for this theoretical framework. Muslim countries suffer from weak levels of economic development and a lack of democratisation, not to mention civil wars such as the one that afflicted Algeria in the 1990s. These are all factors that create conditions of insecurity that are conducive to the development of religion. This is an important point because, as we have seen, a large share of European Muslims are of migrant background; in this sense, they carry with them the anxieties that afflict their countries of origin.

But above all, where the notion of existential security is particularly pertinent in explaining why Muslims in Europe are such a diverse group. When we cross-reference degree of religiosity with development of the welfare state, represented here by social security spending, there is a strong correlation (-0.65 if we disregard Bulgaria). In other words, the higher the level of social security, the less prominent religion becomes. As such, the data confirms the hypothesis that those who feel safe about their own existence are less likely to seek refuge in religion.

Obviously, this correlation does not serve as 100% proof. It surely masks numerous intertwined effects that are hard to unravel. For example, countries that boast a strong level of social security also tend to be those where Muslims enjoy a higher level of income. However, no correlation exists between degrees of religiosity and levels of income, which implies that social security is indeed the more decisive variable at play here, above that of household income.

The ESS study offers an insight into a number of political and social values. We will look at four separate dimensions: relationship with politics (including both politicisation and political participation); position on the right-left political spectrum; trust in others and in institutions; and values relating to morals.

The relationship of the respondents with politics can be defined by studying four indicators: interest in politics, electoral participation, membership of a political movement or trade union, and participation in protests (such as a demonstration or a boycott) (Annex 4).

Two key trends emerge from these four indicators. The first is that there are

strong variations between Muslims of different countries. The level of interest in politics is, for example, very low in Greece (17% of Muslims claim to   be interested in politics), whereas it is a lot stronger in the Netherlands and Sweden (51%). There are also significant differences regarding the membership of associations: in Spain and Greece, only 3% of Muslims are members of a party or trade union, while a much higher proportion are registered with such organisations in Sweden (35 %), Belgium (39 %) and Denmark (41 %). Participation in protests (having been involved in various forms of political action) varies from 3% in Bulgaria to 39% in France, and as high as 45% in Sweden.

These variations do not occur by chance. The levels of politicisation and participation demonstrated by Muslims are very sensitive to the political context of a country. This is shown by calculating the coefficients of the aggregate results between Muslims and the rest of the population (Table 5). As such, the higher a country’s general levels of political interest or participation, the higher the levels displayed by that country’s Muslims. This result rings true for all the indicators, with the exception of electoral participation, which is a particular case. Results from the other categories seem to suggest that Muslims are capable of adjusting to the local context, even if this does not concern the act of voting.

Secondly, the levels of politicisation or participation demonstrated by Muslims are generally inferior to those displayed by the rest of the population. Often, the differences between these two groups are quite considerable, but this is not to say that there are no exceptions. For example, the level of political interest shown by Muslims is relatively high in countries like France, Spain and the United Kingdom, where it is around the national average.

The low levels of political participation displayed by Muslims are particularly visible when they are offered the chance to vote (Annex 4). At election time, the Muslim turnout is considerably lower than for the rest of the population. In Switzerland, 21% of eligible Muslims turned out to vote at the last elections, compared with 66% of the rest of the population. In France, 46% voted, as opposed to 76% of non-Muslims. The participation rate is higher in Belgium (72%), where voting is compulsory, and in Bulgaria (83%).

France and Belgium are nevertheless extreme cases. In other countries, the left’s presence is not as strong and Muslims tend to position themselves towards the centre or, even more likely, as apolitical (or not give a response). As a result, the percentage of Muslims who position themselves neither to the left, nor to the centre, nor to the right is a lot higher than that of the non-Muslim population. In the United Kingdom, 25% of Muslims refuse to classify themselves, in comparison with 12% of non-Muslims; in Sweden, it is 20% versus 4%, and in Germany, 27% versus 7%. France, the only country where this difference can be considered negligible (8% versus 6%), once more constitutes a special case, influenced by a general reluctance in the country to reveal one’s political orientation. However, France apart, Muslims seem to find it relatively difficult to personally relate to the left-right scale of politics. This result provides one possible explanation as to the low turnout of Muslims at elections: if many Muslims tend not to vote, it is perhaps because they have been less successful in integrating the codes of national politics into their own lives. This is understandable, as these are codes that demand a certain familiarity with the history and culture of the country of residence.

The indicators available to hand do not reveal a particular sense of distrust on the part of Muslims. Indeed, the reality is quite the opposite – and this is one of the most surprising results of the survey. The data available here is more varied, and two main themes can be identified: trust in others and trust in institutions. These two dimensions are evaluated in the form of three scales composed of a score from 0 to 10. We will study the issue of trust in the police, also attributed a score from 0 to 10, separately.

With regard to trust in others, Muslims differ only slightly from the rest of the population. They do generally appear to be a little more wary, but the main divergences on this regard are found in those countries where interpersonal trust is particularly high, such as in Denmark and Norway.

The Muslim populations of Europe are not homogeneous. They each display variable characteristics depending on their country of residence, giving lie to the assertion that Muslims constitute one single block. Not only do they not display the same character traits but, furthermore, they are influenced by certain specific characteristics of their countries of residence, on matters such as the place of religion in society, relationships with politics or the issue of values in general. In other words, the opinions of Muslims are partially informed by their socio-cultural environment and the preferences of the wider population, which serves as confirmation of the important role played by contextual factors when it comes to forming political and religious identities. However, while the data available puts any notions of a stagnant or immobilised Islam into perspective, it also refuses to let us believe that religion holds no influence at all. Certainly, the Muslim religion allows for a margin of flexibility depending on the context in which it is practiced, but it still serves as a framework for the values and practices of its followers. Indeed, there are a series of constants that are displayed by Muslim people in the majority of countries. These Muslims, taken as a whole, possess a certain number of specific and unifying characteristics, manifested in both their religious and socio-political attitudes.

We will therefore be careful about drawing overly optimistic conclusions from these results, and even more so given the data does not allow us to make forecasts about the future. The idea of religious characteristics progressively fading away, due to the effects of integration, cannot be ruled out. But another factor may go against this, and even drive the process in the opposite direction: the strengthening of the religion. As we have seen, the religion of Islam would appear to be alive and well in Europe, and the indicators analysed here only tell a part of the story. By asking more specific questions, the Berlin Social Science Center has shown, with the help of a study carried out in 2008 in six European countries (France, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Sweden) that religious fundamentalism is more prominent among Muslims than it is among Christians. According to the data, 44% of Muslim respondents in these six countries answered in the affirmative to the three questions that served to gauge fundamentalist tendencies, as opposed to only 4% among the Christian respondents.²⁸ The individual results stand at 30% in Germany and Sweden, 45% in Holland, 52% in Belgium and France, and 55% in Austria.

Contrary to perceived wisdom, religion appears to occupy a very prominent place in the lives of the Muslim population. The causes of this religious vigour are difficult to grasp. At the present time, there is nothing to say that they will be found exclusively, or even principally, within the internal mechanisms of European societies, whether in relation to perceived discrimination or distrust of institutions. Certainly, the feeling of being discriminated against is relatively commonplace among Muslims, but it only concerns a minority of people. Furthermore, we have observed no particular distrust towards public institutions, and any notion of distrust in the police is unsustainable. Finally, the level of religiosity does not seem to be affected by restrictive state policies towards religion.

Conversely, factors outside of Europe must not be overlooked, starting with the fact that a large section of the Muslim population comes from countries that have been unable to create the conditions of existential security outlined by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart. From this point of view, European countries appear less like a source of religiosity than a source of secularisation. The ESS data shows that the degree of religious vigour displayed by the Muslims, far from being a random phenomenon, is partially dependent on the degree of existential security offered by the social security systems in the country of residence. This particular result is worthy of our attention at a time when the welfare state is being challenged by the effects of globalisation and “europeanisation”, and maybe also by the effects of increasing levels of immigration, one effect of which is to weaken feelings of social solidarity.²⁹ To underline the impact of the welfare state on secularisation is not to advocate any particular political approach, but simply serves to underline that it will be difficult to engage in a process of secularisation for Muslims without retaining the mechanisms that have contributed to secularising Europe itself. The paradox is that it may become more and more difficult to maintain a high level of social protection in increasingly diverse societies, in terms of their ethnic and religious makeup. Can the legitimacy of the welfare state survive the progressive disappearance of the “making society” concept, if it is not compensated by an ambitious policy to foster integration? This issue will certainly be at the heart of the future European “social model” in a climate of mass migration. It is of particular relevance in France, where an increasing public demand for strengthened laïcité appears to coincide with the increasing volume of demands coming from the country’s minority groups.

For the moment, it is clearly impossible to know how the parallel dynamics of secularisation and integration are going to evolve, and even more so given the additional unknown of the international climate. Another unknown quantity concerns the evolution of moral values. This is a delicate issue, because there is a danger that the differences in attitudes between Muslims and non-Muslims on this subject will become irreconcilable, above all in Europe, the scene of triumph for cultural liberalism.

In short, a key question has yet to be resolved: are Muslims going to buy into the processes of secularisation and individualisation that are currently sweeping through modern European societies? Or are they instead going to lean towards reaffirming their rigid moral and religious values, as can already be observed in certain areas with a strong Muslim presence?³⁰ These two evolutions are not necessarily mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they may in fact feed off one another, the re-islamisation of one group responding to the secularisation of the other, and vice versa. As we have seen, developing a better understanding of the ongoing dynamics at work is a crucial challenge concerning the future of European societies.

Abreviations used: Mus. (Muslim), Cat. (Roman Catholic), Pro. (Protestant), Ort. (Eastern Orthodox), None (without religion). A dash (–) in a box indicates that the sample size is insufficient (under 100 respondents).